Ofsted Nominee with David Wastie

Mark Simpkins (00:03)
Hello everyone and welcome to today’s episode of Effie Gold, your source for real talk and real solutions in the world of further education. And as always, I’m your host, Mark Simpkins, here with my guests to bring you insights that will hopefully take your provision to the next level. And today it’s Christmas time. So in very traditional, lovely kind of Christmas jumpers.

I welcome David Wastey to the pod. How you doing David? well? Good. Yeah, it’s lovely to see you mate. I’ve been trying to get you onto this pod for a little while and so this is an ideal opportunity to do so. David is a COO at Althouse Digital, but rather me give you a bit of a low down on him, David.

David Wastie (00:36)
Thank you. Yeah, breaking up.

Mark Simpkins (00:58)
Take the floor, just give us a bit of an overview, mate, to you and your role at Outhouse.

David Wastie (01:04)
Golly, yeah. Okay. So as you’ve already said, have the glorious position of being a CEO over the coup as they keep saying horrible tag. but yeah, I think this has been natural evolution at old house in terms of, know, just growing in the space and we’re growing out our funded provision. And I guess, yeah, it’s just end up taking more and more responsibility. And luckily we’re doing okay. So that’s.

Mark Simpkins (01:11)
Yeah.

David Wastie (01:34)
That’s kind of where we are at the moment. Ofsted nominees still, although, you know, looking forward to eventually passing that onto somebody else. we’ll crew that in a bit, but yeah.

Mark Simpkins (01:44)
Yeah

Good, good, thank you. So like you kind of just kind of introduced there, one of the biggest reasons that people come and obviously visit my website in terms of my quality consulting role and something that they’re very interested in is obviously the being Ofsted nominee. And like you say, you’re still Ofsted nominee at our house. But today we’re gonna delve into what the kind of nominee role looks like.

Yes, we’ll talk a little bit about preparation and we’ll talk a little bit about the role during inspection. We’ll talk about next steps and I guess really also draw on your own personal experiences of being in that role. Let’s start with that. Let’s start with the actual nominee role itself. Give us a guess before we delve into the detail.

Tell us a little bit about your off-stead journey without house.

David Wastie (02:50)
Hmm. So to make it really clear, I’d never been a nominee before until I started old house where, so old house was the first time where, you know, we went through new provided monitoring visit and then had our full inspection. previous to that, I’d been involved in, I don’t know, three or four different off-stead inspections.

And I know it’s crazy to think, but I’m even old enough to remember what the ALI inspection was like. It’s hard when you’re only 25, but. So yeah, so I’ve been close to it, but never nominee. And I think that helped because you do watch and learn when the pressure isn’t on you from a nominee perspective. But sometimes you don’t know how much you pick up until you’re in the forefront of a nominee role, right? So.

Mark Simpkins (03:41)
Yeah,

yeah. So when was your inspection? Let’s just clarify. When when was, when did outhouse start? When was NPNV? When was, what was the time scale before then for the inspection?

David Wastie (03:54)
Yeah, so we founded Old House right at the back end of 2019, but you could say technically the beginning of 2020. We started delivery in the September of 2020. throughout the pandemic and all the rest of it. Let’s not go there. Then literally 18 months from then we had our new provider monitor visit, you know, all the guidance. was literally letter to the law. You know, it was exactly 18 months.

the new provider monitor visit and then as of last early spring last year we had our full inspection which was again about the right time between new provider monitor visit and a full inspection so it was by by the book you could say

Mark Simpkins (04:36)
Yeah, great. you know, you obviously said, you, you know, you’re kind of, how did you fall into the nominee role? Was it just kind of natural selection in a sense that obviously you were founded and you were then like, kind of, you know, at the time, correct me if I’m wrong, head of delivery and quality and ops and everything, right? So was it like a natural thing that kind of fell on you as being a nominee?

David Wastie (05:05)
Yeah, you could say that, or there was no one else to do it. You know, you start a new provision, you don’t have the benefit of having loads of staff. So not to use a football analogy all the time, but it’s, it is that five aside mentality. You have to play many positions. And sadly for me, I’ve done a lot in my past. So it was, I was kind of all things, whole house, apprenticeships and boot camps. And yeah, so it was just kind of obvious it was going to be me really. I don’t think there was anybody else that could have done it. So.

Mark Simpkins (05:35)
Yeah,

David Wastie (05:36)
It was just

my experience and I was happy to take responsibility to be honest it was something I’d never done before but you you got to give it a go haven’t you?

Mark Simpkins (05:46)
Yeah, you do.

Of course you do. Of course you do. you know, when you knew you were going to be nominee, what kind of, I guess, you know, preparation for the role were you given? Because I know that there are, you know, there are workshops out there, know, companies that deliver workshops and often nominee and all of these kinds what kind of, you know, advice and guidance and training did you have, if any, you know, to take up this role? Because it’s not an easy role.

David Wastie (06:01)
Yeah. Yeah.

100 % agree with that and I have to remember back what it was like in the early days. So to those who are actually listening to this, like I understand when you have wake up in sweats at nighttime because even though people say, yeah, it’s all about the preparation, you know, it’s not about when office they come, you still, you still panic about it. You still don’t know because a lot rides on it. For me, I know the personal investor that put money into Alt House.

You it’s not like a couple, couple hundred quid, you know, you’re talking hundreds of thousands of pounds and you kind of go, if we mess up, you know, if, it all went terrible, that could be it. That could be his investment wasted. So for me, that also was on my, on my brain of consciousness that we wanted, even though it wasn’t the focus course, you want the outcomes to be good. You want our journey to be good. what, what we worried about, but you just, yeah, you

In the middle of the, in the middle of the night, you’re not rational thinking, are you? You, all things kind of kicking to brain. So I guess the reality of that is it is hard being a nominee. It’s not for everybody. However, what I’d say about training is don’t wait around for others to help you go, I think you need this. You just need to go work out what you need. And I was lucky enough where I’ve got people who, who focus on quality. So like yourself, who I knew all at any time. And I know we.

kind of worked together kind of on and off since Old House started. I was lucky that I knew of provisions out there like Finn because I’ve used them in previous provisions and we’d be using their resources and we were members with them and that has a lot of good information and resources there. I think now we’re in a different spot but back then that was the main, you two were the main things I could get and help with more easily.

Mark Simpkins (08:08)
Yeah, just clarify just for those that are on, you know, that are listening, who Finn are, what’s Finn?

David Wastie (08:14)
Federation of inspection nominees. I think it’s Federation of inspection nominees. So they are an organization headed up by Kerry Buffy and she has kind of a bit like a group of previous offset inspectors or those who have been in quality for a long time supporting ITPs and they are a service you can get membership into. I would say it’s actually really good value for money compared to some others that are out there.

Mark Simpkins (08:18)
Ha

David Wastie (08:43)
It’s not just the advice that they give you, they just give you a whole load of plethora of information on their platform. So if you’re sitting there going, want to do an MOT on something, they’ll probably have a bank of questions for you that you can do that MOT with. Or if I need a default template for SAR, there’s one. And at the time, they were also trying to help provisions like us split out what the expectation is for a full inspection compared to a monitoring visit.

which I personally found a challenge, which I’m sure we can come onto later, is that sometimes everything I found out on the web or examples was everything for a full inspection where you’re scrubbing around going, yeah, but I don’t need to do that. I have a monitoring visit, which is different. And it was awkward at time. Again, I think we’re lucky now in 2024, we’ll end off, where there’s a few more materials that are kind of very much written for provider monitoring visits. But that was definitely a challenge as a nominee, which I can expand on in a bit.

But going back to training, I kind of went on a bootcamp that was with Finn on that time, because that was what was available. It was a bootcamp, it was a two day residential, basically addressing what it’s like to be a nominee. They also, I remember they did various different things, kind of helping you to evaluate your own provision. But what they did the most is they put you through a dummy inspection. So they tried to replicate what it was like to be an inspector.

Mark Simpkins (09:56)
Mm-hmm.

David Wastie (10:11)
what they kind of are looking at and what their focus is for inspection. So, that was good for me. I like that. can be around and surrounded by sort of 18, 15, 18 people who were going through the same thing. So suddenly you’re not alone. And actually I’ve kept in touch with people since then. And it’s nice because you sometimes when you have that little panic or a little bit of a moment where you just need a bit of, a bit of help, you can give them a call, right? And they can give you a call and you help each other.

Mark Simpkins (10:24)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Great, so that’s a great little bit of promotion. You’re welcome, Kerry, in terms of Finn. But yeah, I strongly agree. Yeah, the resources and bits and bobs, when I was nominee and went through that process, they were very supportive. So fair play to that. So I guess, what did you learn in terms of, obviously, the core responsibilities of being nominee, but the type, guess, the type of character, the type of skill, the type of quality,

that you would expect to find or need to have as an Ostead nominee.

David Wastie (11:13)
So quality in terms of what we’re expecting people to see or.

Mark Simpkins (11:17)
Yeah, I’m just thinking,

as a type of person, if I was to be nominated, what type of person, what kind of qualities would I need to have? What type of skills and characteristics would be ideal for me to have?

David Wastie (11:24)
Yeah.

Got a good question. So it’s hard to answer that with it’s a default type, but number one, you need to know your organization inside and out. So I would give advice that if you have just started with a company and told you are now the nominee, I would probably, without knowing the circumstances, say no. Because you need to know the ins and outs, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

of your own provision. So I’d probably argue that you need to be in a provision for about a year. It’s also difficult to say a year because it could be a small one or it could be a huge one, but I’d say somewhere between six and 12 months. So you get your feet under the table, you’ve looked over all the rocks and looked underneath them and you really know that business inside and out. So that’s one quality. The other quality I’d say is you need to be organized. You need to know your data. Even though I know there’s a lot of

Information out there that says it’s not about data. I would argue differently I’d argue you need to know your data inside and out backwards and forwards because it’s about showing you know where things were at and how you’ve changed things and showing the impact and you need two sets of data to show impact as well as the narrative that goes alongside it, right? That’s one thing I think you also need to be quite driven Being a nominee is so difficult because you are

Mark Simpkins (12:46)
Mm-hmm.

David Wastie (12:56)
Educating at the beginning, you’re explaining to people left, and center about the inspection, education, inspection framework. You are driving high expectations and standards throughout the company. You’re being really clear about what we’re expecting. And this is all hopefully a year or two in advance of offset even coming. Cause as they say, all in the preparation. You know, we did adapt that philosophy as create the panic early. We tried to create the panic a year before.

Mark Simpkins (13:18)
Mmm.

David Wastie (13:26)
of the game in the first instance, but there is a reality. You can’t keep your staff at panic levels for 12 months and a year because yeah, it just wouldn’t be very nice. I think my personal style is getting people to buy in and get it. People understood for me, and actually, apologize in advance, it wasn’t about the Ofsted for us. It was about we want to create great learner journeys for our customers and our customers, our learners and our employers.

That’s the sole point of RITP, isn’t it? Is helping companies to find talent or upskill talent or develop talent within the businesses to make them better, right? That’s what we’re there to do, to serve that, right? So we just try to think about it, a little slightly unorthodox in a way, but just that’s the point of us. And I just want to keep it simplistic. I didn’t want to use an off their language. Like, I want to be outstanding. I just want to be great.

Great for all our learners because they bloody deserve it and they and our customers deserve a great service in proving faith in, know, helping us, helping them to help us and the other way around, you know, that type of thing. Because obviously we attach funding around learners and it helps the provision to grow. So that was another key aspect is that vision of greatness.

If we ended up with good or outstanding, well, that’s okay. Long as it wasn’t anything other than that. So yeah, so that’s the visionary part of being a nominee. You know, it’s hard. Nominee, you’ve got to a lot of things, haven’t you?

Mark Simpkins (15:03)
Yeah, we’ll come on to those because we’re going talk a bit about that prep phase and we’ll talk about the actual during inspection in a minute. just before we kind of move on to those, do you think there are any kind of common misconceptions about the role?

David Wastie (15:21)
How’s there any common misconceptions?

Mark Simpkins (15:25)
I think one for me, if I was asked that question, I think one of them for me would be that during inspection, that you’re expected to be involved in everything. Okay. And you kind of mentioned that you need to know your business and of course you do. Okay. Right. But, know, if you have a team of four, five, six inspectors, whatever it will be, and they need to talk about curriculum and they need to talk about safeguarding and they need to talk about this.

David Wastie (15:36)
Yeah,

Mark Simpkins (15:53)
As nominee, you don’t have to be in all of those meetings, right? So for me, there’s this misconception that you have to be know and absolutely know everything inside out of everything. you need to be able to use your team and utilize your team, right?

David Wastie (16:08)
100%.

100%. So I think when we, you know, we had a good inspection, but one of the things I’d always credited is, you can’t get a great grade, a great grade on your own. You’ve got to have a solid team around you. Right. So that’s true. Yeah. A hundred percent. I think also the role of a nominigo about your original question is it’s like the anchor role, right? Because like you say, depending on the size of the business, depending on the inspections you got in and what they’re looking at, you can’t be off everywhere. It’s impossible. But what you need to be is.

kind of at the bottom, at the anchor and kind of let people go and come back to you. So it’s kind of the flows of communication back and forth and you’re there to receive it. And I guess the skill is, is understanding what they are seeing and then going, okay. So for instance, we always say that old house when inspectors come, we don’t want them to mind for gold.

as in like physically try, look, here’s a nice portfolio. there’s some gold in it. We want to show them the gold really, really quickly. And it’s up to them for them to make their judgment. They can look at two or three or consistency, right? So in that, that’s the layering with the staff about showing inspectors the gold. And then in that, in this back and forth communication, if they perhaps haven’t seen enough of what I would perceive as our strength,

Then it’s my job to sit there and go, okay, whoever it is that’s leading on that. Can you now make sure that they go in this kind of direction? Or you’d at least talk to your team about, we’ve got a bit of an issue. This is what we need to do. You know, that happened in our monitoring visit, you know, there was a question after day one. And we just made sure that when they came in on day two, we had an abundance of examples where what they were, they thought was complete rubbish.

And here is evidence for that. And they came in the morning by 10 o’clock, all that mini-panic the night before had gone. They’d seen more than enough to be pretty wrong. There you go. So that’s another skill of the nominee, is being able to…

Yeah, I suppose it’s almost as well to, you know, it’s hard to say this, but just try and relax in the moment. I think you said something which we want to say. They’re here now, so you can’t go into panic. There’s nothing more you can do. It’s about being centered in the moment and just now leading it solidly going, okay, let’s take things out. Let’s try and be objective and think what can we do to solve the problems or to show gold or whatever it might be.

Mark Simpkins (18:45)
And can only control what you can control, right? Yeah. So great. Let’s go back then and revisit that kind of preparation phase. So as an approach, how did you effectively prepare yourself and the organization for the inspections?

David Wastie (18:55)
Mm-hmm.

Good one. So… How did I prepare myself?

Obviously when you get, I mean, if it’s before the call, it’s just having, you know, for me, it was about structure. You know, we had regular meetings in the diary. We obviously had a solid quality improvement plan. We had expectations across line managers to drive that forward. You know, kind of, you’re probably all sitting there going, we know how to get ready for an inspection. But.

In that creating the panic early, like I said, we would have about a couple of, I think it was every six months, like evaluations. What we used to do with not everybody in the organization, but certainly this is triangulate to get them to, you know, if they felt like, you know, something that I don’t know in quality of education was of outstanding criteria. you, when you. rate it against the IF the challenge in the room was, well, then can we get three examples of that? So it’s not a feel it’s fact.

and can we triangulate it between three different evidence types? It’s like back in the old assessor days, isn’t it? When you’re trying to prove competence, but hey-ho. That’s one of the preparation, but what that did is people might say, it’s a lot of time for senior leaders. It’s not because it’s the power of team to evaluate and learn about the power of triangulating. Can I say it? And that’s all that they do when they come. They just want to see it. So you’re doing the right preparation for what’s coming.

Mark Simpkins (20:20)
You

David Wastie (20:43)
But like everyone would say, when they come, there’s nothing more you can do. Yeah, you can tidy up a bit, you know, go around and just make sure everything’s tidy, but you can’t fundamentally change something if it’s not there. So for us, we’d really is kind of get the cloths out and just go around and polish up a bit. No painting. There was no painting in the library. No fresh face, fresh paint from the inspectors, that smell when they come in. And then it was when we got the call, it was very much…

Mark Simpkins (21:01)
hahahaha

Hehehehe. Hehehehe.

David Wastie (21:12)
we followed the plan that we had in place. So that’s probably the other top tip is, know, the inspection call, make sure it’s all organized. You know, I think you’re quite good at that. You gave us, gave me some advice early days. Think about when they come and have it all organized before they come. Even down to you get that 10 minute presentation. You don’t want to write it and they give you the call. You know, I had my probably 80 % there. And then when they gave me the call, I polished it up by 20%. Right.

So that means I’m more calm about the whole situation. And then really it’s your inspection plan. You know, there’s various different ones around. There’s ones on FIM. I know you’ve got one, Mark. And it’s just making sure that everybody knows what they’re doing when you get the call. And we called it champs. We called it so you’d have a personal development champ or a safeguarded champ. And everyone knew their role. And that’s the organization that you can do regardless, right? But then they’re there when the call comes.

Mark Simpkins (22:07)
Yeah.

Yeah, and what kind of I guess, from a communication perspective, and I know it will be different again, depending on the size of the business, but what kind of I guess communication channels had you already set up in preparation for when that call comes?

David Wastie (22:22)
Now you

Yeah, so we had a Teams chat and we always said that and that was more around, probably I think the backs and forth around quality improvement plan, how people are doing. We’ve changed it since because we’ve got bigger and that doesn’t always work. But just for the highlights that when people said they’ve done something to, yeah, I think we just ended up utilizing that thread returned into the Ofsted chat. So every time…

a skills coach might have been in sort of OTL aid or observed or something’s going on. We just got the threads back and forth. So I could sit there and if I haven’t heard it verbally, I can see it in the chat. That’s a definite good thing to do is it could be WhatsApp, could be Teams. I suppose it’s thinking about how can you centrally communicate effectively. But then you also need to be careful. It doesn’t pop up on screens as well. So watch for that. Just try and keep it private.

so that you everyone can help the nominee as best they can and the nominee can give directions as best they can.

Mark Simpkins (23:35)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

before I want to go on and talk about talk about the actual inspection itself. The role of shadow nominee just recently come in.

David Wastie (23:47)
Mmm.

God sent. I’ll tell you why. I’ll tell you why. I hated our monitoring. As I say, I was new to being on me. Okay. So I didn’t, you don’t always know what you’re going to go through until we go through it. The biggest criticism I said to the inspectors on the new provider monitoring visit was I felt it was a little bit unfair at the end of the day.

Mark Simpkins (23:52)
So tell me a little about what that was.

David Wastie (24:17)
because they’re expecting you to come in, they’re throwing at you, it’s been a long day anyway, and then they’re throwing at you loads of information about what they’ve been doing and what they’ve seen and kind of where their heads are at with it. And meanwhile, I’m supposed to sit there and absorb what they’re saying, listen to the language that they’re using, because that’ll help you work out again if you read the EIF and what’s the other… what’s the other Bible I had printed out next to me?

in the green folder.

Mark Simpkins (24:48)
the handbook, Further Education Skills Handbook.

David Wastie (24:50)
Thank you, yeah.

Which is another thing, top tip, get it printed out. I know it’s a bit old, traditional, something out, but it’s dead helpful, because you can just highlight things or revert to it when you’re of walking around. I appreciate that, the handbook.

Mark Simpkins (25:05)
Yeah, no, that’s

right. Keep going, David. just need a dog scratch at my door. So you carry on, mate.

David Wastie (25:09)
Yeah, yeah. So

yeah, you’re in that very difficult kind of situation. And I said, like, this doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t in a way of I can’t listen to you and take everything you’re in and take notes and listen to the language you’re using and then think about giving them because they want directly kind of not that they’re

That’s the time where you’ve got to challenge. Cause if you don’t challenge then you’ve missed it. So that is not an easy situation to be in. And if things haven’t changed, I’ll be absolutely recommending this as a top tip of get some training or something that kind of gives you that experience being on the spot, having to kind of challenge, listen, note, take, think about tomorrow or at the same time. However,

Thank goodness. So at that time, they said the next day, they sort of said, actually they’re thinking about bringing in this shadow nominee. And I was a bit jealous really, cause I was like, well, I’ve just been through it. Cause I think I even said to them, could you mind if I bring in just a note taker there? I’m not going to say anything. All they’re there to do is take notes. all, you can’t do that. It’s like, for goodness sakes, it’s ridiculous. I’m glad to say shadow nominees here and what a difference it made when we had our full inspection. I could not have operated the way that I did without there was a lady called Lisa.

Mark Simpkins (26:15)
Yeah

Hahaha

David Wastie (26:36)
And I’ve worked with Lisa before that for a good 18 months, two years. I’ve worked with Lisa in previous permissions as well. I really trust Lisa. She’s great. But what she’s amazing at is she’s got that incredible skill of touch typing. So she would just take in everything. And I’ll tell you, a smoke coming off her fingers, she was brilliant. Yes, she was not allowed. It was nice hearing the lead inspector say to her, you’re not allowed to say anything, which was quite funny. Probably the only person.

that old house has told her to do that. But it was like, yeah, she, she was good because then she would listen. And then when we came out of those meetings, we could look over notes, but also talk through kind of what we just heard. And just having that second person in the room makes a big difference because sometimes you miss things or sometimes you get the wrong impression of things or yeah, it’s just brilliant. So anybody who’s going, going to go through this, think hard.

about who your shadow nominee is gonna be because that teamwork is essential. It really help you as a nominee.

Mark Simpkins (27:43)
Yeah, great. I totally agree. And the experiences that I’ve seen and been involved in since, it’s vital that that person is there and is listening to that language that’s being used. It’s really important. And touch typing is obviously a great skill to have if you’re in that room.

David Wastie (28:00)
Hey, I tell you what, unbelievable that was.

Mark Simpkins (28:02)
Yeah,

so, okay, so the call came, let’s talk about for inspection as opposed to NPMV. The call came, you talked about how you had a plan step by step, this is what we’re going to do, this keeps you nice and calm, keeps you on track, just about you obviously you’ll have, you know, kind of your evidence ready.

And it’s just about tidying up those kind of extra sort of 15, 20 % of things that you just needed to scrub up and make sure, things like your nominee presentation. It may be that actually, your tutors, assessors, whatever they’re called need to go in and just make sure that the marking is all up to date and all that kind of like little l’s and so that you need to do, right? How then, how did you kind of then manage the daily rhythm of

inspection and how did you know in in terms of did does it feel a little bit like normal day-to-day running stood still for four days or how did how did the organization keep running during that period of time

David Wastie (29:09)
Yeah, yeah,

it’s a tricky, it’s a tricky one. So I guess…

There’s so many ways I could answer that. For us, in creating that panic early, I’d like to say that people knew what they were going to do. So there was probably an expectation on line managers to say to their teams, look, when we get the call, we just all need to step up over that period. So if I’m not around, just kind of crack on and you’ll, you know, call me and I’ll call you back when I can type thing for the film, my line managers and the same for me. you know, we,

from a physicality point of view, we met every morning early. think we got in around eight o’clock or half seven or something. Can we kind of already had a plan from the night before, but we would talk through it to sort of remind everybody. think we’re out in our reception area. just so we’re ready to go and yeah, business had to carry on as normal. And I’d say for the, for, I suppose I had a nominee team and I’m looking

Mark Simpkins (30:14)
Yeah,

you called them the Something Squad, didn’t you? Do you remember? What was it? I’m trying to remember the name that you had on it, because it was the Something Squad. I can’t remember off top of my head. I’ll remember it as soon as the pod finishes.

David Wastie (30:27)
think it was…

want to think? Alt House Avengers Assemble I think it was. Something like that yeah. The AAA, Alt House Avengers Assemble yeah. But yeah was just no it was the crack team wasn’t it that’s what I ended up cracking because yeah it was just just something humorous isn’t it it’s quite a pressurized situation so you just got to if you’re not funny you know try your best to break the ice.

Mark Simpkins (30:35)
that’s it.

Uhhh, that’s right.

David Wastie (31:01)
So yeah, it was good. And yeah, that team, I think it was about five, five leaders, I think, in terms of supporting me. And they just had to find a balance between making sure the wheels are running behind the scenes, but also being there for me and making sure that when it was their part in what they’re championing or what they’re leading in or their teams are leading in and that they are available. And so everyone just had to kind of, yeah, I think, I think for me, everybody knew what was going to happen. think Edwin had kind of been…

part of an inspection before and that helps.

Mark Simpkins (31:36)
Yeah, and I think those kind of usual activities that you’ll have going on, you

your training sessions, coaching sessions, progress reviews and things like that, you try and line up and fill as much time in the inspector’s calendar almost as you can. you know, one of the things I would say is that fully expect them not to attend everything. You know, that there’ll be there’ll be sessions that will just be lined up for them and they’ll be organized in your calendar and your plan, but they won’t go to all of them. They’ll be ones that they’ll just miss often.

So don’t expect everything to go to plan. I think that’s probably another thing, right?

David Wastie (32:10)
Listen,

you’re absolutely right. So go back to that kind of plan that we had before they come. And obviously that weekend, FYI, just make sure people know as a nominee, don’t focus all on Ofsted stuff because you get to Tuesday and you’re knackered. You’ve got to find, you’ve got to kind of rest and, but you will not stop thinking about it. But you’ve got to try and break up that weekend before, so that’s preparation. But you’re absolutely right with.

You can try and timetable all the inspectors, but you’re absolutely right. They go where they want to go. So somewhere you just want to go, don’t organize anything until they come. But the reality is sometimes it really depends on who you get and what they want to see. Don’t be caught with your pants down, you know. So it’s have that expectation filled 70 % and expect it all to change. And also think about

Mark Simpkins (33:01)
Yeah.

David Wastie (33:06)
you know, if we’re still talking about that first couple of days in the inspection, you know, think about the practicalities, you know, think about even down to how are they going to be welcome when they get to your building? You know, think about it if you are on the flip side, if you’re an inspector, you know, it’s about managing expectations and first impressions count, in my opinion. So think about who’s opening the door when they arrive.

Think about if it was any other guest or a work person, like I said, a trades person, what do you do? Just do what you normally do, which is, hello, who are you? Can I see some ID? Can you sign in on the register? Why? Because that’s what we do. But I think people can kind of get giddy or whatever it is, get nervous and forget. But all inspectors are looking to see, I think, is what you do normally.

Mark Simpkins (33:46)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm.

David Wastie (34:03)
When they arrive, do they feel welcomed? Do they know what to do? Do they know where the toilets are? Can you show them to the room and make sure they know where they can get a nice cup of tea? We found that they’re just human beings. know, they bring their own lunch in sometimes, you know, they don’t try and schmooze them with getting more fancy lunch and stuff. They’re just going to work. know, just balance it. Treat them like a normal employee in some ways.

Mark Simpkins (34:32)
Yeah. Because they already have an opinion of you before they even get to you. That’s the funny thing, because they would have seen your self-assessment report. They’ll know about your data. They would have looked at your websites. They would have looked at your policies that were on your websites. They will obviously have the planning call with the nominee as part of the lead up to inspection. So even before they get to you, they’ll know a lot about you. And that first hour,

David Wastie (34:38)
What if they’ve mixed?

play.

Mark Simpkins (35:01)
and that nominees presentation is your opportunity to make them feel welcome and settled and give them an idea as to where you’re heading and where you believe your strengths and areas of improvements lie.

David Wastie (35:13)
100%. The other thing I would say about that first day is…

They’ll go upstairs, they will sort themselves out, they’ll be saying hello to each other, they’ll be creating a plan, and then you’ve got your nominee presentation, right? There’s your 10 minutes. They are strict with the 10 minutes. Don’t quite put a stopwatch and put it in front of you. But again, prepare that some mic, because each inspection, I think, is different from what I’ve heard. Just make sure your presentation is 10 minutes.

Mark Simpkins (35:37)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

David Wastie (35:51)
nine minutes 30 practice it. You can do all that before. Right. I, I made sure with me was, just want to be honest. We were transparent as a business where digital up and coming, you know, or a new provision, we’ve got not a lot to hide in terms of gremlins under the sink, so to speak. So a lot of our stuff is on our systems. And unfortunately, with things being electronic on systems, there’s not a lot to hide either. and explain on expand on later, but point being is.

I needed to be the window for what they’re going to see when they go round for the next three days. So if you want to put a bit of BS and put a bit of kind of, this is what you’re going to see and go over the top, guess what? They’re not going to see it. Cause unless if I’m lying, so I was just honest and very authentic, told him what to see. I told him what we were not very good at and what we’re trying to improve. And I can’t remember if I, I don’t think I said what we’re doing about it at that stage. Cause that’s more later on, but

It was, it was an honest account of where we’re at as a business. And that was it. I do it. know, and I, people panic about that 10 minute presentation, right? Some, some have hours and hours of presentations on how great they are as a business and how they’ve been working in 15 years in that. I mean, they’re great, but they don’t care. I just think it keep it snappy. Less is more for me in that 10 minute presentation.

Mark Simpkins (36:54)
Yep. Yep. Yep.

David Wastie (37:17)
And like I say, think the most important thing is it’s you give them intro to like reading a book, like read the back page of that book. That’s your 10 minutes. And hopefully everything they’ve heard you say is what they see. And that is about them building confidence as well.

Mark Simpkins (37:32)
Yeah, and that’s why they keep it to 10 minutes. Simple as that. So give me just a flavor. Obviously, as part of Austin nominee role, what challenges did you come across and how did you overcome them? Because part of the role is to challenge in a certain way at certain points, right? So how did you do that? And, you know, what was your approach?

David Wastie (37:34)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I’m trying to give a specific example, but absolutely. I would say, I don’t think I necessarily waited to the end of the day to challenge from on this, mate. I challenged throughout the day. I made sure I was available to all the inspectors at any time almost. They knew where I was at the reception and sometimes they just come down and get me. And…

think I was just really clear that if they were heading in a direction, you’ve got to listen to the language. What is it that they are? They’ve obviously seen something and they’re going, based on what I’ve seen, this is what I’m thinking. They use better language than that. I just don’t, you know, that’s the bit about your prep. I would go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that’s not right. We had some challenges because we’re an online provision. You know, I still think at that stage for some…

inspectors that’s a reasonably I don’t want say a new thing but it was a some some are more used to a face-to-face delivery I don’t want to use the word traditional I think you just got to understand what they’re to get them to where you are step by step and don’t take destination that was one of the things we learned so one of our challenges was on curriculum and how our curriculum was built almost like a wheel

So to a certain degree, learners can start the curriculum, can start their apprenticeship journey at any point. But we were just explaining about, first of all, the curriculums and how they’re sequenced to workplace. And that’s why we made it sort of a into a curriculum at certain points, because, for instance, most marketing companies really want that SEO module first. So we were explaining how we did that.

But I think on one example, I think one of our skills coaches just kind of took them straight there and it kind of confused one of them because they were asking questions and quite understand. And once we brought in one of the curriculum leads in with them and they re-explained how it all worked and how learners are not disadvantaged by starting at a point before they start their next subject, they were like, OK, yeah, the penny’s dropped, they got it. So.

It didn’t feel like a major hurdle because I suppose it was more preventative. You know, was like we got in there early by listening to what’s going on and what they’re not quite seeing, I guess. sense?

Mark Simpkins (40:29)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, 100%. And,

you know, great example and things on there. It’s, there’s something in your ability to challenge and how you challenge and not in an aggressive or defensive type manner. It’s

It’s, you know, obviously, if they bring something up that they’ve seen, they’ve seen it, that they’re not, you know, being fictitious about it, right. But it’s just about to go, OK, let me fully understand what you’re saying. And actually, have you looked into X, Y and Z? And can I put this in front of you instead? And can you speak to this person? It’s about actually then, you know, coming up with that positive solution as opposed to being aggressive or anything about it, because that just won’t get you anywhere. Right.

David Wastie (41:06)
Absolutely.

Exactly. I think my point, to be really clear, is I think I had to tell some of the, you I understand the staff are on the tense, it’s a panicky situation, but it was almost to say, when you’re explaining something to inspectors, take your time and calm down. And that’s where that panic was jumping straight from, well, we did this and then we got straight to the end. It’s like, whoa, just take them there step by step.

Mark Simpkins (41:32)
Yeah.

David Wastie (41:36)
The way I did it was said, be proud of what you built. Now explain it to them so they understand. And it worked, know, for two or three of them that worked, you know, cause that shit was like, yeah, I should be proud of myself. Yeah, you should bloody should be. Yeah, you worked hard on this. Now, you know, some, one of the staff members was like, I’m really looking forward to the inspection. Why is that? Well, because finally I’m going to get somebody for three days who are just going to look at the work I’ve done when it was respect, but other people look at it for like half an hour and go great job. And that’s it.

Mark Simpkins (41:43)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

David Wastie (42:05)
And I loved that. was like, yeah, what an attitude to have. You’ve got to be dedicated to really looking over your provision for three days, right? I’m sure a lot of people have that opinion, but it’s what motivates people, right? And they should be proud of what they’ve built, if it’s good.

Mark Simpkins (42:05)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely. I’m just looking at the time, David. We’re on 42 minutes already. So I’ve got a couple more questions that we’ll kind of speed through and stuff like that. So you got your outstanding, which is fantastic. Obviously, the elation and the hard work and everything was just reward for, you know, for everything that you’ve implemented and done. What as nominee, and you say you’re still a nominee, what have you done since inspection? Because having got that off-stead grade, you can go right.

David Wastie (42:27)
Yes, it was.

Mark Simpkins (42:51)
I’m not going to see them now for years. So what’s been your tact? Where are you now as still nominee at Outhouse?

David Wastie (43:01)
Yeah, we carried on as normal Mark, because I think my attitude is they’re not, nothing’s guaranteed, is it? In this industry, not to say it would, but you can’t have that laxity days attitude, go, yeah, we’re good now for five years or seven years, whatever. And then also go back to what I said to you originally, it wasn’t about the off-stead, it was about creating a great service to our customers and that stays.

Mark Simpkins (43:10)
No, no, you’re right.

David Wastie (43:30)
I want, know, for instance, I, you know, I look at my sales team and I want them to be credible when they’re out there with customers to be confident, which they are. But when they’re selling it to these customers, they need to be proud of what they’re selling. I’ve spoken to a lot of customer engagement people and they said the worst thing is standing there in front of customers, knowing that they’re selling them the dream, but in reality, they ain’t going to get it. And with us, it was always supposed to be the other way around.

And so in a small way, that’s another thing that is about, we want our product to be great. So whoever it is talking about it or our customers are receiving it, nothing to worry about. So that was very much the attitude post-Offstead. The reality is it’s for some people, you’ve got to watch the motivations because that will change because they’re a bit like, well, why are you giving me more constructive feedback in my OTLA when I just got outstanding from, from Offstead? You’re going to get some of that. Right. But you know, we…

Mark Simpkins (44:08)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

David Wastie (44:26)
I could talk about it for hours, but it’s about having that genuine continuous improvement culture. It’s almost saying that we’re never going to get there. We’re going to never arrive. Right. There’s always going to be something our skills coaches can do better. Our provision could do better. I’ve always had that approach. It is exhausting for some people, but I was born on it, you know, in an engineering kind of world. There’s always a way of doing it slightly better, more efficient way, optimized, et cetera. That

Mark Simpkins (44:47)
Mm.

Yeah.

David Wastie (44:54)
for me needs to be that culture across every business is you never settle for it’s okay. You it works. There’s always something you can do. So it’s keeping that in place. It’s keeping the leadership in check as well, like our exec and ST. So there’s just no, we’re understanding, you know, we’re not, but things could slip. You know, you’ve got to be on it all the time. So yeah, I think that were the main things we sort of just carried on and.

Mark Simpkins (45:22)
Great. And so I got my last question and then we’ll come to a close. OK. And I think the one that everybody wants to know is how did you deal with the stress? How did you sleep? How did you get through it? And you know, what was the secrets to keeping you calm?

David Wastie (45:39)
Yeah, that’s a good one.

Team, one is team. say, one thing I’ll say is, look, your team helps you with the inspection, okay?

Mark Simpkins (45:44)
Yeah.

David Wastie (45:52)
I would, if I could magically create a…

It’s almost like having a dedicated friend, somebody who’s outside of the business or somebody who understands enough about what you’re going through, but isn’t in the detail. It’s having a buddy around. You just give them a call any time of the day or text them the night, I’m tripping out, what do I do? And that, that.

Mark Simpkins (46:21)
Hahaha

David Wastie (46:25)
that will get you through, for me that’s what got me through because you just, when you’re not being rational, you need someone to help you be rational. So for me, how did I get through it? Various, I’ve got a couple of friends, I had you at end of line from a professional and a personal level, I guess. My sister unfortunately lives in Canada, so the time zones would work. So if I was awake at three in the morning,

Mark Simpkins (46:28)
Hmm.

David Wastie (46:51)
I think you already said that to me once is that sometimes when you’re up at three in the morning, you might find fight back to sleep or just get up. And I think I just try not to do work because I want to be fresh. I just did something that just kept my mind off it. And my famous sister and sit on the sofa for half an hour. We just chatted or, you know, just chat about some house eventually.

Yeah, you just got to find what works for you, but just make sure you’ve thought about it. Make sure you got people around you because you’re never going to do it on own. Never. I don’t think you can. Fair play if you can, but.

Mark Simpkins (47:20)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I think you’re right. think when anybody is being scrutinized, particularly at that level, you know that you’re going to be anxious, you’re going to be apprehensive. I don’t think anybody can just fly through an inspection just without out of care in the world. It just won’t happen. You know, that feeling of being prepared, that feeling of having steps aligned, having people around you, having a team that’s going to deliver the things you can’t control is the team, the inspectors.

David Wastie (47:41)
Yeah.

Mark Simpkins (47:54)
who they are, what their background is, when they come, these things are out of your control. Okay. And you could only then, and like I said earlier, you can only control what you can control. And so, yeah, absolutely. You know, just, just do what works for you. So look, I’m going to have to close this. We’re now on 48 minutes. So I realized this is becoming a much longer pod than I would usually do.

And have you got any, know, you’re a nominee now, if there was any nominees out there and they wanted to get in touch with you in terms of, you know, perhaps some wise words or whatever it may be, how would they do that?

David Wastie (48:29)
Yeah, just reach out. mean, most people have LinkedIn. Reach out to me, drop me a message more than happy to give people a call. happy to be there and, yeah, just reach out and we’ll go from there. But if it helps, have kind of summarized eight points if you want of top tips, if you want me to finish on that. That help? I would say top tips from a nominee is no one person achieves outstanding. That’s number one. you’ve got to your wider team engaged.

Mark Simpkins (48:32)
Yeah.

Great.

Go on, do it, yeah, go for it.

David Wastie (48:58)
So as you saw on your quip and so forth. There is a big thing about data. Know your data inside and out. It’s still important, as I mentioned earlier, because it’s about showing how you know there’s a problem, what you’ve got to do to change it, and how you measure the impact, right? Make sure you’ve got support around you. That is the key thing as a nominee, because you just need it. Don’t think you can do it on your own, because if you’re like me, you don’t know what you’re going to go through. But anything can happen in inspection.

Mark Simpkins (49:05)
Mm-hmm.

David Wastie (49:26)
Think about your intent to impact. That’s a key measure for me with inspections. Always make sure safeguarding is in great shape, regardless of everything else, because as we all know, that is a key aspect that is looked at in inspection. And create the panic early. know, it is all in your preparation. Create the panic early and then create the culture that you want inspectors to see, but don’t do it two weeks before. Do it over a year before at least.

Mark Simpkins (49:53)
Yeah.

Great,

well that’s really useful mate. I mean, we contextualized all of that throughout the chat. So look, it’s been really insightful listening to you. And so I’m gonna bring that to a close. That’s a wrap for today’s edition of FE Gold. Thank you so much, David, for your time. It’s been really insightful. I love chatting about it and stuff with you. So yeah, I hope all you listeners have gained some valuable tips and inspiration that will help you improve. Obviously, if you enjoyed the show,

David Wastie (49:57)
Thanks.

Where is?

Mark Simpkins (50:26)
tell your connections, friends, colleagues that will help it grow. You know that I’m about obviously as part of my consultancy role. And you can get in touch with me from www.simkinsfequalityconsulting.co.uk. And like you say, David, you can catch me on LinkedIn. I want to wish you all a wonderful Christmas and festive new year. And yeah, that’s been my FE Gold.

with me, host, Mark Simpkins and David Wastey. Thanks for stopping by.

David Wastie (51:01)
Ciao.