As part of his Plan for Change, Keir Starmer has announced a “zero-tolerance” approach to “low expectations in schools”, stating that Ofsted reforms will help to drive up standards in hundreds of schools across the country.
Change is overdue: trust between schools and Ofsted has completely broken down, particularly since the suicide of headteacher Ruth Perry in 2023 after her primary school was downgraded from “Outstanding” to “Inadequate”. Too many schools operate in a culture of fear because inspections have become more punitive than supportive. The current process also demoralises teachers, who are already in worryingly short supply and are leaving in droves.
However, the proposed reforms suggest that Ofsted is merely tinkering with semantics rather than fundamentally re-evaluating its practices. Instead of a single-word judgement, schools will now be graded on nine areas: leadership, curriculum, teaching, achievement, behaviour, attendance, personal development and wellbeing, inclusion, and safeguarding. Each area will be ranked in a traffic-light system as either causing concern, attention needed, secure, strong or exemplary.
Ofsted was tasked with creating a new system that would reduce the pressure on schools, but this does the exact opposite. By broadening the assessment criteria, Ofsted has not only made a more complicated system, but a more demanding one. Once again, schools must demonstrate more and more with less and less time. It feels like all Ofsted has done is put the previous single-word judgements through a thesaurus, when we need to instead reconsider how to make the inspections themselves more effective.
The reforms need to be practical rather than linguistic. A more detailed report card only works if inspectors, and schools, are given the time, space and resources to make adequate judgements. Currently, inspectors are only in schools for one or two days, which is nowhere near long enough to make potentially over 40 different judgements — before 2005, they were there for at least a week. Schools also only get a day’s notice, whereas previously they had two months to prepare. It used to be that six or seven inspectors would visit a school; now it may only be one or two.
On the one hand, we have ever-expanding expectations of schools and criteria by which to measure them. Yet on the other hand, we have ever-squeezed deadlines and timeframes with which to prove success in all of these areas. It is this paradoxical situation which puts undue pressure on schools, and forces them to paranoically collect evidence on the off-chance they get the dreaded “call” and will only have 18 hours to prepare. This unnecessarily stressful situation will only get worse as schools are expected to fulfil more roles in society — for example, Starmer also wants free breakfast clubs and mandatory tooth-brushing lessons in schools.
Unions may want to abolish Ofsted altogether, but the reality is that Ofsted needs more time in schools, not less. It’s all well and good promising that a report card will offer more nuance and insight, but parents and schools need to have faith in the validity of the judgements, which will only happen if the inspection process is reformed as well. The current brevity of inspections means that something which should be holistic and contextualised has become a mere regulatory box-ticking exercise, and it is this bureaucracy which Labour should address.
When it comes to Ofsted, people like to trot out the old adage that “weighing the pig doesn’t make it fatter.” In light of the department’s proposed reforms, perhaps it’s better to say: “if you put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig.”
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SubscribeI’m sure one of the rules will be that if the school is called the “Michaela School” it must be downgraded from its “exemplary” status to “causing concern” in every category – in the name of left-wing ideological purity.
Star schools with star heads are great, but we do need a recipe which is replicable by average headteachers who are reasonably hard working.
I think there is too much emphasis placed on exceptional performance by charismatic individuals. More is to be learned from the ordinary individual achieving more than ordinary results.
At the same time, those ‘ordinary’ principals benefit from a discussion of Katharine Birbalsinghe’s principles, not just her practice. They are worth discussing, even if they can’t be followed in full. It’s interesting that there’s so much emphasis -positive or negative -on KS’ performance, but very little on the beliefs of that school community. Is it possible that it’s the philosophy that’s objectionable to your British education mandarins?
A school which employs ‘guided socialisation’ and where lunchbreak is “not free time in the usual sense” might be so far right-wing as to be left-wing.
The sentence in the article which struck me most was this; “Schools only get a day’s notice, whereas previously they had two months to prepare.”
To prepare? Does she mean, for example, sending all the badly behaved children away on a school funded trip on the day of the inspection? It seems that the author of the article misses the entire point of inspections.
I would love a truism to be embedded in the work ethos of all schools; namely that the school is ready for an unannounced inspection on each and every day. A program of continuous improvement seems to me to be essential if standards are to be maintained and our children well served.
Let me put forward this motto for consideration “We will fear not inspectors but will welcome them into our house.”
Bang on. We all get judged on our performance. The answer to this is to do your job better today than you did it yesterday. And do it as if you might be checked on tomorrow.
And yes, shipping out difficult children is not unknown.
I know I will sound callous, but headteachers are extremely well paid. That level of reward comes with the stress of being held accountable. If you are unable to deal with that, you should not seek promotion just because of the money.
Indeed. A day is too much. Inspectors should just turn up unannounced and report on whatever they find.
Indeed, surely the point of inspections is to see how the schools function day to day not how they might buff up like some Potemkin village after a couple of months. If notice is to be given then notice should be given to half a dozen schools in the area with only one actually inspected on the basis that the other five might have improved their procedures without inspection.
It is equally absurd that a revision in the process should take place in response to a single suicide of an overwrought headteacher however regrettable.
That said neither I nor my children went to state schools and the worst headteacher I encountered was an ex-OFSTED inspector who was clueless as to how to interact with the children or parents and came burdened with state ideas about reducing competition. Nor could he write correct English.
yep. teacher of 45 years here. schools should be given zero warning. my kids school has an outsider whose sole job is to come in after the notice is given and make the school look great. posters on hall walls, teachers and pupils briefed on what questions to ask and what answers to give , etc etc. Funny how schools hate one word decriptions like ‘failing’ but never had an issue with one word like’outstanding’.
Decoded, what this actually means is: more time to put in place all the things that really should have been in place anyway: like adequate lesson plans. The point of short notice is to give a snap shot of how the school is really performing, and provide less time to fake it.
If it has a side effect of making schools operate properly all the time, rather than just for the inspection, then that is a good thing.
‘Keir Starmer has announced a “zero-tolerance” approach to “low expectations in schools”’.
Utterly vapid weasel-words! Kier Smarmer displays all the symptoms of a charisma by-pass.
Inspection and grading serves multiple purposes. It helps schools to improve, by identifying their weaknesses, but it also sends a clear message to parents as to whether the school is currently any good or not.
An inadequate judgement means that, as it stands, the school is damaging children’s futures and setting them at a disadvantage to other children.
Allowance needs to be made if the school has recently changed management and seems to be on track, but otherwise radical measures are needed.
Retraining if it will work – taking place during school holidays for those teachers unfit to teach, or managers unfit to manage. Sackings where the cases are hopeless.
We need to be less tolerant of incompetence, not more. There needs to be intense action driven from outside the school to ensure that change happens before further damage is done to children.
Absolutely right!
This is a further watering down of terminology. Inadequate is not the same thing as causing concern.
Teachers complaining about the huge improvement in children’s attainment achieved over the past decade and more. International PISA rankings place us as among the highest western nations though we have dipped slightly since COVID. Are we ever going to catch up with the far east? Probably not.
This has all happened under the Conservative/coalition governments. As a parent (of non-school age children) I am happy that schools are called out on poor performance. The case of the headteacher committing suicide shouldn’t be the basis upon which policy is made. I think the new, more expansive criteria are a good idea as they give parents an insight into what areas of a school are of doing badly rather than having to dig into the detail themselves.
The teaching unions complained and complained under the Tories but the “teacher exitus” never materialised; having the whole summer, half terms and other holidays off is always going to attract certain people. Those who can’t do…
Schools will come a cropper when young people stop choosing university as a path. At the moment universities produce many teachers because there is no other jobs for the excess of graduates we produce.
The saying is “those who can do, and those who can’t, teach”.
Maybe those who can’t quote properly shouldn’t quote.
Your suggestion seems to be that school holidays will attract lazy people. Any lazy person who thinks teaching will suit them will find out that that’s not rhe case, very, very quickly.
Language is a joy to the artist and a cudgel to the pedant. I hope you never read any Shakespeare. He was constantly mangling quotes for his own purposes.
Not lazy, just happy to take their extensive range of convenient holidays year after year in a secure, professional job.
Ofsted. Another political tool.
Where will you read about Almondbury Community Scool in Huddersfield where the non-Racist Racist incident took place which Tommy Robinson reported on in 2018? Which led to him being imprisoned for contempt of court last year for releasing his investigations in his video film ‘Silenced.’
This school was closed down in 2019 by Oftsed! The teachers were all made to sign NDAs so they couldn’t corroborate what Robinson had said. Ofsted.
How can you trust an institution, Ofsted, which acts as a political cover-up tool of government?
No, it isn’t.
Watch ‘Silenced’ and then say that.
Unherd won’t let me reply. I asked if you had watched Silenced. Dolts.
The key criteria for parents are SATS, GCSE and A level results, everything else is secondary and very much driven by the teaching unions and teacher educators to whom Labour are in hock.
Schools need to go back to doing what they were designed to do. Teach kids maths English and science and throw in the arts for the non academic.
Unfortunately schools are over paid day care for working parents and substitute parents for lazy parents. They also think that they are psychiatrists for undamaged children( undamaged until school has finished with them) but only trauma informed enough to recognise that looked after children are hard work and therefore should be somebody else’s problem.
That sounds a bit gradgrind to me.
They’re trying to do too much and not succeeding in anything. Also stepping into areas that they shouldn’t, such as parenting.
Admittedly, I have no love for school. Any time I have to deal with them through work, I’m reminded why I home educated my own.
The current brevity of inspections…
Does anything change?
In the House of Commons debate on pauper schools on 11 June 1903, it was noted that one factor in the previous year’s Holly Mount School scandal was infrequent and cursory inspections.
The Poor Law schools had the objective of teaching children skills. Today, schools are needed to teach skills with tooth brushes and, given some reports, potty training.
In 1903, one MP described the management regime in these pauper schools as ‘hard officialdom’. Today, are schools themselves managed this way by government? Would the day-to-day operation of the Michaela Community School merit the term ‘soft officialdom’?
Despite the grim conditions of the Edwardian pauper schools, at least pupils didn’t attack each other with bladed weapons and assault the staff.
any schools are convinced that what inspectors want to see is detailed, written policies and plans. The problem is that many inspectors are equally determined that these are the benchmark. What is actually important is the outcomes: did children’s learn what the teacher planned and did it stretch them? By the end of each year have children made visible progress at an appropriate (or better) rate? Is the anti-bullying policy followed such that there is no bullying? And so on… Ofsted used to stress this principle, but inspections are now too short to focus in such depth. I doubt inspectors would admit this publicly, but it’s true! It’s worth adding, good teachers do not fear inspections when they trust the headteacher to have guided the school well.
If words alone changed things
If just by churning out press releases then a thing was completed
If you could bottle hot air and take it to the bank
Then Labour would be the most accomplished government in living memory.
I am a reform member and I believe that a fundamental change we have to make in Britain is to take power away from the state and give it back to citizens. No more rationing, no more bureaucrats making decisions without consequences. In the case of education, give each child a £5000 education credit that they can use at a school of their choice. Allow many more schools to open, develop particular characters, cultures and specialisations, help children who need extra help and instead of having one school rating agency have many. Where there is competition, excellence becomes the norm. Bad restaurants close and so should bad schools. We owe our children excellent educations and we need to pay our teachers more and expect more of them. 20 children at £5000 each yields £100,000 – surely that is enough to pay teachers well and provide good facilities. How much of the education budget is wasted?
Box ticking has replaced actual work in bureaucracies to an alarming extent over recent decades. There are many reasons for it (I witnessed the problem myself). Reversing the problem will not be easy but good governments would help. Sadly, good governments are as rare as hen’s teeth today.