In the past few weeks, the school inspectorate, Ofsted, announced a significant change in how schools are regulated. These reforms were announced by Ofsted’s new Chief Inspector, Martyn Oliver, against a backdrop of controversy following a Berkshire headteacher taking her own life after her school was downgraded from ‘outstanding’ to ‘inadequate’.
The problem the schools inspectorate is trying to solve is the adversarial nature of the school inspection process. Critics argue that it is too pressurised and the approach of dropping into a school for 1-3 days (depending on type of inspection) leaves workforce morale low while simultaneously failing to provide enough time to get an accurate picture of the school and its performance against the metrics.
The new reforms do certainly change the methods by which schools are inspected. The new system inspects nine areas (Achievement, Leadership and Governance, Curriculum, Development and Teaching, Attendance, Personal Development and Wellbeing, Sixth Form, Behaviour and Attitudes and, finally, Inclusion) as well as a safeguarding evaluation and grades.
This is a marked change to the breadth of areas inspected under the now previous inspection criteria (Quality of Education, Behaviour and Attitudes, Personal Development, Leadership and Management and Post-16).
However, the length of inspections has not changed, meaning that inspectors will be required to measure more in the same space of time, the impact of that will almost certainly be higher levels of stress for both inspectors and school leaders as they try to navigate this new approach.
Incidentally, it is perfectly possible to make an eloquent case for most of the nine areas of evaluation, as well as safeguarding.
The probable exception is with wellbeing which, while profoundly important, is incredibly difficult to measure with any real accuracy given the abstract and highly subjective nature of wellbeing as a concept.
However, the problem with the new Government’s inspection reforms is not one of coherence, but one of capacity. The reality is that Ofsted has neither the staffing capability, nor the in-house expertise to accurately measure those nine areas, plus safeguarding, in three days.
Similarly, there is simply no capacity (nor will within the sector) to extend the length of Ofsted inspections while still maintaining oversight over the entire school system without significant investment in a noticeably greater number of inspectors. Given that many of Ofsted’s inspectors are drawn from the education sector, increasing its inspectorate workforce would compound the recruitment crisis in teaching.
We now have a situation where the perfect is being allowed to become the enemy of the good. A system with flaws is being thrown out in favour of a system that looks effective on paper, yet is logistically impossible to make effective.
In its rush to deliver change, Ofsted has also mistaken change for genuine reform in the realm of single-word judgements. Speaking as a teacher myself, I have always welcomed the idea of a straightforward judgement that gives a clear idea of the overall effectiveness of an institution. For parents, the lack of an overall effectiveness indicator will leave them less able to evaluate a report that they do not have the sectoral knowledge to unpack.
It would be substantially better if Ofsted pressed pause on the reforms, went back to the drawing board, and worked out what we need to do in order to support decent schools to improve and hold the ones who are underperforming to account.
This inspection change will not deliver that, and the Government needs to step in to stop the plans being rolled out in their current form.
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