Nurseries and childminders in England that require improvement will have just two years to achieve an Ofsted "good" rating, Ofsted says.

From November the current "satisfactory" judgement will be replaced by "requires improvement" for early years providers.

Any that do not "get to good" in the time frame will face the prospect of being judged "inadequate", Ofsted says.

However at the same time as this change, the local authority duty to provide information, support and training to all childcare providers is being revoked.

Liz Bayram, Chief Executive of PACEY, comments: “PACEY agrees with Ofsted that childcare providers graded as requiring improvement must take the necessary steps to improve the quality of their care quickly. So it is good news that Ofsted plans to intervene earlier when things do not improve. But this is only part of the solution, critical to the success of this change in inspection will be two things.

Firstly that childminders and nurseries have confidence in the Ofsted inspection judgements being made about their settings.

Secondly, that support and information on how to improve is readily available to settings judged as requiring improvement. 

Alongside this we hope Ofsted will set a clear timeframe for when it plans to include childminders in this new framework, to ensure parents are able to compare and contrasts different types of childcare using the same grading system.