Ofsted inspection reports in early childhood education settings narrowly focussed: A corpus and sentiment analysis

High-quality early childhood education is key for children’s positive and long-term outcomes. Countries differ on how they quality assure provision. In England, Ofsted is the independent inspection body, often the source of controversy for lack of transparency in ratings. However, there is a dearth of evidence on how inspectors’ judgements are made, particularly in the early years sector. This study examines the consistency and nature of individual judgements in Ofsted reports, through an in-depth corpus analysis of inspection reports for non-domestic early years providers (nurseries and preschools) in England. It is the first to analyse the extent to which inspections focus on well-regarded understandings of high-quality early childhood pedagogy and provides an appraisal of the affective tone of the reports, using sentiment analysis. Results show that inspectors are fairly consistent, with similar high frequent terms present across reports, but the inspection focus may be too limited in scope. There is an over-emphasis on school readiness based on outcomes of older children, without clear references to the participation and engagement of younger children and process variables. A more positive tone in the reports is more frequent in high-quality rated settings, except for the section describing children’s outcomes, the shortest across reports.