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I have absolute no idea why the Government gets Ofsted (famous for schools) to do reports on New Deal providers.  The problem is, whereas with schools, each school is individually assessed; with New Deal each contract region is assessed in just one annual report.

1. Main issue with Ofsted report for New Deal

A New Deal contract can span multiple counties and consist of a service being delivered in numerous different training centres. This service provided will not be equal in all the different training centres even if they all followed the same company guidance and policies.

Whether Ofsted picks a random training centre, draw up a system where they rotate (such as the training centres that deal with the most people are seen first) or doing an average of all the training centres together – is unknown. (I will try and find that out and answer it at a later date.)

It is therefore difficult to appraise which training centres are performing the best, which are doing badly and any indication whether the training centre reported is indeed the flagship training centre or HQ which are therefore more likely to offer a greater service than say some run down training centre with the sole purpose of adhering to the contract.

2. The services are good

Too much in the Ofsted reports (I have read numerous ones on New Deal) they state phrases such as Communication is good. That sounds positive compared to bad, being negative, however we are talking an professional appraisal not some feedback of an 2 year old kid with obviously limited vocabulary.

When stronger words are brought in to play, such as excellent, great, superb and even “very good” for the positive side, and dreadful, terrible, and mediocre for the negative – good becomes solely satisfactory thus means rooms for improvement. This is far lower than the contract expectations state.

3. “Ofsted reports are fixed”

This indeed is a big statement to make and I do not suggest that training providers are bribing Ofsted even for a second, however I can’t help feeling that such reports are “dumbed” down in order not to allow the New Deal prime contractor to make a severe breach in their contract.

Ofsted is intended to be an independent body and thus why the Jobcentre Plus Contract Management Team (or whatever they call themselves) who are monitoring the contracts do not make such a report – as Jobcentre Plus is an Executive Agency of the Department for Work and Pensions who awards the contracts.

Participant feedback is tampered with by the provider. If anything is too dreadful then it is destroyed – they will typically leave in partly negative comments (so it appears genuine as you can’t please everyone) and allow Ofsted to freely audit feedback out of a pre-moderated pool of feedback.

Why not set up an independent system where participants can mail a feedback sheet direct to Ofsted or submit online?

4. No common layout

The Ofsted reports vary in content depending where the New Deal contract is.

Surely, every contract should equally be reviewed in an Ofsted report with the same sections etc. regardless where in the country there are?

This is a “post code lottery” if you like.  If no benchmark can be set, then the majority of the reports are pointless.

5. Tick box exercise

The whole Ofsted report is some “tick box exercise” bullshit to say that the Government does monitor, appraise and scrutinise what the training providers do with the taxpayers’ money which is spent on them.