FESIT

Yes, it is real. We have done ours.

Hi Tracy  

Thanks for the reply, why a new email address ?, is it compulsory and was it any use ?

Dave 

So the email does not just go to one person who may be on holiday. We have given four of us access to our FESIT email box. Yes I think it is compulsory but our deadline was October 3rd. All new so we will see. You should have got a big email with various attachments. It was discussed at an Ofsted update I attended a few weeks ago.

'We are pleased to introduce FESIT, an Ofsted web-based data tool that will be open and accessible to your organisation all year round.

As a further education and skills (FES) provider subject to inspection by Ofsted, we will soon be giving you direct access to FESIT.

This email will explain all about FESIT and how you will be able to access it.

FESIT is an inspection tool maintained and built by Ofsted to be a one-stop-shop for inspectors when preparing for FES inspections. To aid transparency we are sharing what inspectors use to help prepare for FES inspections.

Some headline points are:

• New data is updated in FESIT whenever it becomes available, which ranges from a monthly basis for some data sets to annually for others.
• All the data in the tool is data your organisation has supplied to the Department for Education (DfE), the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) or Ofsted. There is nothing in FESIT that you won't recognise.
• We have worked closely with the DfE and ESFA to replicate the calculations they apply to your data, for example calculating the qualification achievement rates (QARs).
• You are not expected to look at or use this tool to prepare for an inspection. You will not be judged on your knowledge of its content on inspection. We are simply sharing to be transparent.

To give your organisation access to FESIT, we need you to send us an email address your organisation would like to use to access FESIT and manage subsequent access controls. Please note, you cannot use the email address this message has been sent to, which is the one held for you in Ofsted's database. We recommend creating a new email address with FESIT in the name so that the email address cannot mistakenly be used for any other contacts with Ofsted.'

Fascinated by this:

• All the data in the tool is data your organisation has supplied to the Department for Education (DfE), the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) or Ofsted. There is nothing in FESIT that you won't recognise.

Immediately followed by

• We have worked closely with the DfE and ESFA to replicate the calculations they apply to your data, for example calculating the qualification achievement rates (QARs).

Rather than just, y'know, using the QAR itself??? Beverage of your choice to the first person that finds a difference!

Well, the learner counts seem iffy to me.

My boss created an email for this in September last year (ironically straight after we had just had an Ofsted visit!), and sent back the required information they were after, but we haven't heard anything more from it since.

Should we have been given access, or is this something we will be sent before our next Ofsted visit?

Tracey Richardson We were sent our login details back in November and we aren't due an inspection for a few years

Jessica De Melo, thanks for that. I think we need to chase this up perhaps, as I would have at least expected some login to have been sent by now.

We don't seem to have been emailed to set this up - who is it run by?  I can't find the portal.