How to have a debate about Ofsted

There is still a certain amount of media coverage around complaints about Ofsted, much of it related to the death of headteacher Ruth Perry that I discussed in my post “How not to have a debate about Ofsted“. Having blogged extensively about Ofsted in the past, particularly around ten years ago in the era when they were enforcing progressive teaching methods, I am somewhat torn in current debates. I want to scrutinise Ofsted, but I don’t want to join a campaign that might end up prompting politicians to replace them with something worse.

In the debate around Ofsted, there seems a lot of conflation between two different questions:

1. Are Ofsted’s judgements reliable and fair?
2. Should headteachers be held accountable by inspectors?

I am concerned about the first issue. Partly, this is because I remember how unfair they have been historically. It’s also because of complaints I hear now. However, it is mainly because 88% of schools are currently graded to be good or outstanding. This seems implausible to me. Speak to supply teachers about their experiences. Enquire into vacancies in schools that seem to have high staff turnover and maybe visit and see why. Is 88% of any public service good or outstanding? I haven’t much experience of the more recent inspection framework, but over the years I have seen many obviously terrible schools graded good or better. This is where the questions need to be asked. Are Ofsted actually effective at challenging failing schools?

Of course, this is not the issue being discussed. Almost all discussion is of schools being given bad grades. Which brings us back to the second issue. There appear to be many people whose complaint about Ofsted is that headteachers may lose their jobs, and that this is stressful. Obviously, if they lose their jobs unfairly, that is a concern. But if the claim is that all headteachers deserve to keep their jobs, regardless of how things are going in their schools, I have no sympathy at all. There are schools where children are not safe. There are schools where children are not learning. There are schools where bad outcomes are being caused by bad management. Also, if Twitter output can be used to make judgements, there have been a few headteachers who appear to be insane. A headship should not be a job for life, and schools should not be left to fail their pupils just to avoid upsetting the headteacher.

I suspect some will suggest that this second point, that some criticism of Ofsted comes from those who are just opposed to accountability, is a straw man. I know that when Amanda Spielman said something similar in an interview, there were those who didn’t accept that anyone was against all accountability.

This is similar to the debate over GCSE and A-level grades during the pandemic, in that people seemed to just assume that inaccuracies in low grades were the problem, and high grades being devalued didn’t matter. Also, like the debate over GCSE and A-level grades during the pandemic, many people seem more interested in sharing criticisms than in checking whether the criticisms being made are compatible with each other. People seem united in wanting Ofsted gone even if they have no agreement at all about what is wrong with it and what should replace it.

However, in this debate, what would replace the status quo seems critical. I remember how bad Ofsted used to be, and how many people were willing to accept that. An Ofsted replacement, or reformed Ofsted, could easily be worse than what we have now. It could go back to judging the lessons of individual teachers. It could be dominated by some interest group within education, like in the days when inspection teams were full of consultants using their position to promote their own training in how to teach. Worst of all, a new regime could become the mechanism by which successful schools are sabotaged. A system of “peer review” could be used by mediocre headteachers to “cut down the tall poppies” i.e. the schools that are so good they make the other schools look bad. I also have memories of my experiences in the 00s, when LAs seemed determined to “help” failing schools by doing everything they could to damage successful and popular schools or even schools that were merely improving faster than their neighbours.

A centralised inspectorate which is independent of local rivalries and LA bureaucrats seems like a necessity if schools are to be held to account in a fair way. It’s a good thing that we debate whether the current inspectorate is doing that. However, those who will not be satisfied until school leaders can fail their pupils with impunity, and harvest grievances indiscriminately, are not going to make a helpful contribution to that discussion.