Ofsted and CQC re-visit

Last updated: 22 February 2023

Ofsted and the CQC conducted a 3 day re-visit to Kent in September 2022 to assess whether the local area – KCC, NHS Kent and Medway, and local schools and settings – have made progress in addressing the areas of significant weakness identified in their inspection of the local area in 2019.

They have now published their letter, which states that the local area has not made sufficient progress in any of the nine areas of significant weakness raised during their inspection in 2019.

We fully accept the findings in the letter and offer our heartfelt apologies to all the children and their parents and carers who have been let down by the insufficient progress across our services and we are very sorry for the impact this has had on families.

We take the findings from Ofsted and the CQC very seriously, and our immediate focus now is to rebuild trust and confidence in the SEND system by building on very recent improvements rightly demanded by families and to be more responsive, transparent and collaborative.

You can:

• Read the Ofsted letter
• Read our open letter to parents and carers (PDF, 111.7 KB)
• Read our media release
• Read our letter to schools and settings (PDF, 80.2 KB)

We will now be working with the Department for Education to produce an Accelerated Progress Plan to transform services and we will be publishing further details of this, what it entails and who it will involve in the coming weeks.

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