• Find an early years and childcare inspection report
• Understanding an early years and childcare inspection report
• Types of early years and childcare Ofsted inspects
• Inspecting early years and childcare
  • Inspecting registered early years providers
  • Inspecting registered childcare providers
• Types of early years and childcare Ofsted regulates
• Caring for children in their own home
• Regulating early years and childcare; applying to be a provider
• Children's centres
• Safeguarding children
• About our survey reports
• How to complain

Inspecting early years and childcare

Early years

We inspect early years providers to judge the quality and standards of the care, learning and development of children – these standards are in the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage.

Inspectors give providers one of four grades:

• outstanding
• good
• satisfactory
• inadequate.

To reach an overall judgement, inspectors will ask themselves ‘what difference is this provider making to the learning, development and progress of children in their care?

Childcare

We inspect childcare providers to check that they comply with all the requirements of registration, but we do not make any judgements about the quality of their setting.

The inspection result will be measured in one of three ways, indicating how well the provider is meeting the requirements of registration. They are:

• met
• not met – and notice to improve
• not met – and enforcement measures taken.