We recently carried out research on hundreds of OFSTED Inspection Reports (available online at www.ofsted.gov.uk) that took place at Childminder settings between April 2009 and April 2010, from these reports we noticed similar improvement steps appearing regularly within reports, these improvement steps listed by the Inspectors would have possibly resulted in the childminders receiving a grade of 2 or less (good, satisfactory or inadequate) for particular area(s) within the Record of Inspection Judgement instead of the coveted Grade 1 - Outstanding that every childminder wants.

If a childminder needs to improve their setting, the OFSTED Inspector will advise on what the Childminder should do to make this improvement, these notes are listed within the "What steps need to be taken to improve the provision further" section on the report.

During an inspection there are various areas within the setting that the Inspector will monitor and want to see information relating to, this can include amongst others: Policies, Individual Learning for Children, Planning, Parent partnership etc and the overall effectiveness of the setting etc, in total there are 17 areas where the childminder will receive a grade from the Inspector from 1 - Outstanding to 4 - Inadequate.

Using Baby's Days in your setting will ensure you do not receive a commonly appearing improvement step within your report when your next inspection takes place.

Listed below are a number of improvement step notices that have appeared within hundreds of OFSTED reports over the last year, we have detailed which area of the Baby's Days system will cover the improvement step so as to ensure you do not receive this notice within your next inspection report.

ILP - Individual Learning Plans / Next Steps The EYFS places strong emphasis on meeting children's individual needs in your setting, it expects practitioners to meet children's individual needs and support them in taking the next steps in their development, it is very important that you note each child's Next Steps in their learning and link these Next Steps into your planning either on a weekly/daily basis within a group or on a weekly/daily basis individually with the child.

Baby's Days allows you to add Next Step notes for each child at various areas on the system, including the child's Progress page, Focused Plan page and the child's ILP Next Step notes section.

Once a Next Step note has been added to the system for the child you can assign this note to an Individual Learning Plan for the child, once the note has been marked as completed the system will automatcially add the date the Next Step was completed to the linked Development Matter in the child's Progress.

Every Individual Learning Plan you have ever created for each child on the system is saved and can be quickly and easily shown to the OFSTED inspector, so they can see exactly how you have been working with each child's individual learning needs / Next Steps.

Shown below is a list of improvement steps related to children's Individual Learning that were required to be undertaken by a large number of childminders within the last year, if they had been using the ILP - Individual Learning Plans / Next Steps section of the Baby's Days system, the improvement steps below would not have been assigned to the childminders:

• Develop the assessment and planning systems to incorporate children's next steps in learning.
• Develop the detail and use of observations to assist in planning for the relevant starting points and next steps in children's learning
• Develop the planning for individual children to promote their next steps in their learning.
• Develop the systems for observing and assessing what the children know and can do and use the information to plan effectively for the next steps in their learning.
• Develop further the systems for assessment and planning to Ensure that next steps are routinely incorporated in to individual children's plans for learning and Development.
• Develop skills in observation and assessment in order to plan to meet young children's individual needs.
• Develop the quality of planning for individuals to Ensure that each child is offered an enjoyable and challenging experience across the areas of learning.
• Ensure that children’s next steps are being clearly identified and used in leading future planning
• Extend observation and assessment to link into children's next steps and provide more individualised learning experiences.
• Develop play plans to include planning for individual children.
• Further identify the child’s next step in their learning and Development and plan a range of activities to support progress towards the early learning goals.
• Improve further the observation and assessment records of children to identify their next steps clearly in order to set challenges in learning effectively
• Improve observation and assessment systems to show clear evidence of individual children's progress and the next steps in their learning
• Strengthening further the systems for activity planning to provide focused learning objectives for each individual child.

Policies The EYFS itself identifies the policies and procedures that childminders need to have; it also states clearly that most of these do not need to be written,childminders are expected to explain what their policies are to parents and any assistants and it is important, for example, that parents know the childminder's policies on equality of opportunity and safeguarding.

Some childminders find it easier to have this information for parents in writing, while others choose to explain their policies in conversation, OFSTED may check at inspection whether parents are aware of the childminder's policies, but would not necessarily expect to see written documents.

Baby's Days allows you add all of your Policies to the system, in addition there are over 60 Policies already written for you and included on the system, these Policies can be used as is (if they suit your setting) or modified to suit or deleted from the system if you do not need to use them, the Policies can then be assigned to individual children on the system, when parents connect to your Baby's Days system they can read, agree to and then sign their acceptance of your policies, you can then show the OFSTED inspector this information and the proof that your parents have read and agreed to your Policies.

In addition the system allows you to assign review dates to every Policy on the system ensuring that you review and keep your Policies updated with new legislation.

Shown below is a list of improvement steps related to Policies that were required to be undertaken by a large number of childminders within the last year, if they had been using the Policies section of the Baby's Days system, the improvement steps below would not have been assigned to the childminders:

• Develop and implement the safeguarding children policy and procedure and make sure this information is shared with parents.
• Ensure all documentation, policies and procedures are updated in line with the Early Years Foundation Stage.
• Ensure the complaints policy is accessible and copies available on request.
• Review all policies and procedures to Ensure they reflect changes to new legislation.
• Share with parents the procedure to be followed in the event of a parent failing to collect a child or of a child going missing.
• update policies and procedures and Develop administering medication procedures in line with current legislation.

Parental Access During your OFSTED inspection you will be asked to show and explain how you work in partnership with the parents of the children you care for, in fact within the record of inspection judgements, one of the 17 areas you will be marked on is: "How well does the setting work in partnership with parents and others?"

Considering that close to 8% of your OFSTED inspection is graded on your parent partnerships it is imperative that you form a good working partnership with all of the parents of the children you care for, you must be able to communicate a steady flow of information regarding their child's progress, activities, development and more and be able to demonstrate how you do this during your Inspection.

Baby's Days allows you to form this partnership with your parents simply and effectively, when a parent connects to your system they are able to view numerous areas of the system and these include Daily Diaries, Progress & Assessment Scales, Photograph Galleries and Policies, within the Daily Diaries they can read their child's daily activities, view photographs and leave comments for you to read and respond to, within the Progress section they can read Progress note, view photographs and see exactly what development level their child is currently at.

In addition they can read, agree to and digitally sign their acceptance of your Policies.

Shown below is a list of improvement steps related to the Parent Partnerships that were required to be undertaken by a large number of childminders within the last year, if they had been using the Parent section of the Baby's Days system, the improvement steps below would not have been assigned to the childminders:

• Continue to Develop positive relationships with parents to support children's learning and Development both at home and in the setting.
• Ensure partnership with parents is supported further by regularly sharing children's profiles and observations to further support children's learning and Development and keep parents up-to-date.
• Establish further systems for working in partnership with parents.
• Further Develop opportunities for parents to be involved in their children's learning and to contribute to children's records.
• Maintain a regular two-way flow of information with parents.

Progress & Assessment Scales It is important to track every child's Progress within your setting, by doing this you are able to plan for the appropriate next steps for these children and, therefore, their learning and development will move forward at an appropriate rate.

Baby's Days has a Progress section for every child on the system, this allows you to add achievement dates, Progress / Assessment notes and Progress photographs to every Development Matter within an Aspect of each Area of Learning ie: CD, CLL, PD etc, the Progress section is a complete and comprehensive Learning Journey for every child on your system, not a tick sheet but a detailed journey of each child's developmental achievements through their Early Years.

Shown below is a list of improvement steps related to the Progress & Assessment Scales that were required to be undertaken by a large number of childminders within the last year, if they had been using the Progress /Assessment Scales section of the Baby's Days system, the improvement steps below would not have been assigned to the childminders:

• Develop assessment and recording systems to help children move to the next stage in their learning and to share with parents.
• Develop systems for making observations and assessments of each child's achievements, interests and stages of Development, using the early learning goals for the six areas of learning.
• Develop systems of observation, assessment and planning to fully support children's learning and Development.
• Develop systems to observe and assess children's achievements, interests and learning styles and use these to identify learning priorities.
• Develop the systems for recording, evaluating and planning for children's individual progress towards the early learning goals, including next steps for their Development.
• Develop further the matching of observations to the expectations of the early learning goals.
• Develop effective systems for observations to clearly show children's ongoing progress.
• Develop systems for observing and recording children's progress and Continue to use observations to inform planning for individual children.
• Develop the assessment systems to identify any gaps in children's progress towards the early learning goals.
• Develop the systems to monitor children's progress and achievements by linking observations to the areas of learning and the early learning goals.
• Improve the systems of observation and assessment of children's progress towards the early learning goals in each area of learning and use the information to plan for the next steps in their Development.
• Develop further the systems for ongoing observations and assessments in order to plan for children's ongoing progress towards the early learning goals.

Planning Good planning is the key to making children's learning effective, exciting, varied and progressive. It enables practitioners to build up knowledge about how individual children learn and make progress.

With Baby's Days creating Medium, Short/Weekly and Focused plans is a breeze, linking the Areas of Learning, the Aspect and then a Development Matter to your activity is a simple click of the mouse, there is no longer a need to look through EYFS books to find which Development Matter your activity links to as the system will display and allow you to select a Development Matters within a particular Aspect of an Area of Learning to select for your activity.

Once your Medium Term Plan has been created, creating a Short Term/Weekly plan is even easier, just select the activity you want to use for each day by selecting it from your previously created Medium Term Plan, all the data will be instantly pulled in to your Short Term Pla, you just need to add the resources for the day.

Having created your Short Term plan, you need to carry out a Focused activity, again a simple process of selecting the day for the Focused activity, the system already knows what you are doing on this day so pulls in this information, you just complete a few extra details and your Focused plan is ready.

Shown below is a list of improvement steps related to Planning that were required to be undertaken by a large number of childminders within the last year, if they had been using the Planning sections of the Baby's Days system, the improvement steps below would not have been assigned to the childminders:

• Continue to implement and Develop observations and planning for all children in the EYFS age range and include children's next steps.
• Develop the written observation and planning system, linking the observations to the areas of learning they cover.
• Ensure planning of activities supports the well-documented assessment and observations of children's learning and Development in order to fully identify the next stage of their learning.
• Ensure sufficient planning enables children to Develop in all areas of learning.
• Develop systems of observation, assessment and planning to fully support children's learning and Development.