As you can see from the range of articles in Ofsted News, today’s Ofsted has a wide remit. We regulate and inspect early years’ services, such as nurseries and childminders, that benefit one and a half million children. We inspect schools, with their eight million pupils and students. We inspect further education colleges, where another four million students of all ages, and 3 million adult learners and their employers benefit from publicly funded training. We inspect teacher training, with 60,000 primary and secondary teacher trainees and around 20,000 further education trainees. And we regulate and inspect children’s social care services, working to raise standards for over 385,000 children. In total, more than a third of the population in England uses the services Ofsted regulates or inspects.

With such a wide-ranging remit, it is perhaps not surprising that there are those who feel that we should do things differently. Some feel that Ofsted does too much and others believe that they should be left to evaluate themselves. As an organisation that believes in evidence, we believe in getting the facts. So we ask independent organisations, such as Ipsos MORI and the National Foundation for Educational Research, to do independent research about the views of parents, children, older learners and professionals. And what is interesting - and encouraging for us - is that the loud voices we sometimes hear against inspection are not widely shared.