I spent 3 months in the UK working with Ofsted through the Data Science for Social Good Fellowship, hosted by The Alan Turing Institute and The University of Warwick. Ofsted is the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills, a non-ministerial department of the UK government. Ofsted is responsible for the inspection of services providing education and skills for learners, as well as inspection and regulation of services that care for children and young people. Team Ofsted worked to build a machine learning pipeline to use Ofsted’s data to predict whether an independent fostering agency would fail an inspection if it were to be inspected within the next 6 months, in order to generate a prioritized list of agencies for Ofsted to consider for earlier inspection. Earlier inspections allows Ofsted to determine the agencies that most need additional support, thereby ensuring safe and stable care for the children under their care. I worked with an exceptionally talented and dedicated team comprised of Annika Brundyn, Jobie Budd, Viviana Hernandez, and myself, as we were guided by the calm and practiced wisdom of Joshua Sidgwick and Adolfo De Unánue Tiscareño. To learn more, please watch our final presentation here.
I gave a short presentation half way through the summer. You can see that presentation below.