The role and performance of Ofsted

Memorandum submitted by Dr Steve Austin

Time to put Ofsted on Notice to Improve

Time spent as a local authority adviser and School Improvement Partner has left one former primary headteacher disillusioned with the Ofsted inspection system.

I must have been very lucky that during my time as a primary school headteacher, I had good experiences of Ofsted inspectors. In the main, they were polite, courteous even, when delivering difficult messages; they were credible with recent and relevant experience which enabled them to make judgements with authority; they were consistent in giving judgements which were not at variance with the school’s own self-evaluation or the views of local authority advisers. The staff that I worked with felt that the inspections we went through together were fair, professionally conducted, and came to the correct judgements.

After three years as a School Improvement Partner, I am disappointed and angry with a system that is on the brink of failure.

Widespread inconsistency

I am finding more and more education professionals who are becoming part of a growing consensus that suggests that Ofsted inspections are inconsistent in their judgements. The government operates in a way which depends upon different teams of Ofsted inspectors and HMI giving consistent judgements. Politicians and governors naively believe that Ofsted inspection is a scientific process and the same outcome would be achieved no matter who the inspectors were or what their personalities.

Almost no headteachers believe that this consistency exists. It has always been the case that there are differences between individual inspectors and inspection teams. There will always be a certain human element to this process. However, I am convinced that such issues are getting worse rather than better. There does seem to have been a significant increase in inspections whose judgements are questioned by heads, governors, local authority advisers (and even internally by some Ofsted inspectors and HMI).

I recently attended a continuous professional development session for School Improvement Partners. This was attended by over 100 SIPs from my region. At one point, a brave SIP took the floor and spoke out about the inconsistency of Ofsted inspections. She received spontaneous applause and a standing ovation. She had put into words what we were all thinking.

The inconsistency works both ways. Schools receive the ‘outstanding’ grade from an Ofsted inspection when the local authority does not agree. Other schools in the opinion of the local authority do not receive the outstanding grade when they ought to have done. Schools are placed into Ofsted categories of special measures and notice to improve when this is a complete surprise to the local authority and other schools avoid such a fate by being given a ‘satisfactory’ verdict.

The fact that the local authority advisers and school improvement partners disagree with an Ofsted judgement does not of itself make Ofsted wrong. However, I can verify from experience in my own local authority that discrepancies are definitely on the increase. At the very least this leaves headteachers confused as to what is expected. There is a growing feeling that the system has essentially become a lottery. A school’s Ofsted grade is considered to be more luck than judgement.

Ofsted’s management will refute these claims but the old industry adage that ‘perception is reality’ is a feature of the management theories and books from the world of commerce, industry and retail. Surely it is time for Ofsted to look carefully at itself and see the need to improve.

I recently met with a Regional Director of Ofsted. She was very relaxed about my suggestion of inconsistency and simply said: ‘There will always be some inconsistency.’ To a certain extent this is true but do Ofsted inspectors and their managers fully understand the devastating consequences for a school community and headteacher of erroneous or unnecessarily harsh judgements? I wish I had been talking to an Ofsted senior leader who was prepared to say: ‘not on my watch’ rather than take a complacent ‘well, what can you do?’ attitude.

Credibility

I firmly believe that during my time as a headteacher, I experienced a gradual but significant increase in the credibility of inspectors. I became a primary school headteacher in the early days of Ofsted’s inception. I considered the very first Ofsted team that I encountered to be professional and correct in their judgements but they were a team made up of people who were of a secondary school background. All subsequent inspections that I experienced were conducted by people with experience as primary school heads and most were still practising. I welcomed this change to a more credible Ofsted workforce.

I am in dismay that we seem to have gone full circle. Perhaps as a result of some recruitment crisis or shortage of suitable candidates, we appear to have lost sight of the need for credibility and recent, relevant experience in our inspectors.

There are so many inspectors now carrying out Ofsted audits of our schools who are without the kind of experience which should be a minimum expectation that I believe it is no exaggeration to state that this is a disgrace. A small primary school which I support was recently inspected by someone who had been out of school for many, many years and whose last post was as Principal of a Sixth Form college. I thought those days had gone but they are back and with a vengeance.

It is not at all uncommon to find myself at Ofsted feedback sessions being led by inspectors who do not have any recent and relevant experience of the kind of school that they are inspecting and therefore have no authority to make judgements that the head, governors and staff will take seriously. This leads to a situation where what is being judged and what is being required in terms of recommendations for improvement is not set in the context of any real understanding of what it is like to work in a primary school or any understanding of the job of a headteacher.

Having been through accreditation as a School Improvement Partner and having worked alongside an excellent team of SIPs, it seems to me that the government and National College for School Leadership has made a determined effort to ensure that SIPs are people with credible experience. It is a huge shame that Ofsted does not appear to have taken any such steps.

Manner and conduct

In the early days of Ofsted, we did have some mavericks. We allowed some unsuitable people to become Ofsted inspectors. The need to establish a Code of Conduct came out of understanding reached by Ofsted’s management that all was not well and some, power-crazy, authoritarian people with bullying tendencies had slipped through the net and become inspectors.

There was a time when Ofsted’s management seemed to care about such matters and took firm action to strike off unsuitable inspectors whose manner and way of dealing with schools and headteachers was unacceptable. Whatever one thinks of Sir Chris Woodhead and his time as HMCI, this was an area where he was particularly passionate and diligent. He did a lot to root out unsuitable inspectors who ought not to have been allowed to continue to inspect our schools.

I am convinced that this passion and diligence, born of a view that excellence is standard and only the best people should inspect our schools, has disappeared. Perhaps this is another victim of a perceived recruitment crisis. As a head, I never had occasion to complain about the conduct of inspectors. As an adviser, I have become involved in far too many examples of sheer bad manners, inappropriate comments, poor social skills and inspectors whose manner brings shame on the inspection system. And yet they continue to work. Even after serious complaints and even after very rare overturned judgements and voided inspections some people who should not be allowed to inspect schools continue with seeming impunity.

Complaints

I seem to be describing a crisis in which several inspectors, totally unsuitable for the role, are breaking their own code of conduct and engaging in conversations with staff in schools which can only be described as downright rude. How can this be? Surely Ofsted has an established system of feedback and formal complaints? Is it not the case that, according to Ofsted’s own feedback data, the vast majority of school’s are satisfied with their inspections?

Let me put this as bluntly as possible: headteachers generally do not complain. I have come across many heads who are given perfectly appropriate cause to complain but choose not to. There are many reasons for this lack of willingness to complain or to give critical feedback.

One comes from Ofsted itself and its own propaganda. There is an Ofsted publication on how schools which are placed into special measures go about effective and rapid improvement. One of its points is that the schools which make the most rapid improvement are those which do not waste time complaining or questioning the Ofsted judgements but rather get on with the business of tackling the issues for improvement. Such a publication actively discourages complaint and negative feedback.

Another reason is that an Ofsted inspection, even one with short notice, is a stressful time for headteachers, staff and governors. There is a great sense of relief when it is all over. Most heads want to move on and not go back over the details of how it was conducted and whether or not it was correct in its judgements. Even in those schools that have a good case for complaining, headteachers rarely do any such thing.

In my own local authority and in my own schools, I have been involved in trying to persuade heads to complain formally or to use the feedback process to make negative comments. Most choose not to. It is very hard to get them to put pen to paper and record the poor behaviour of Ofsted inspectors and HMI.

There is a fear among some headteachers. Will complaining make matters worse for my school? Will we be perceived as people who cannot accept Ofsted findings? Will we be re-visited by an early re-inspection? Will our complaints be noted, recorded and count against us in future?

We have all got used to the culture where there is no appeal. In so many walks of life there is some kind of fair appeals process which allows people to exercise a fundamental democratic right to a second opinion. Headteachers know that they can appeal against their SATs results if they feel that the markers have got them wrong; but there is no appeal against Ofsted judgements.

The idea that there was no appeal against Ofsted inspection judgements was not such a bad thing in the days when Ofsted inspectors were credible; when Ofsted’s management was determined to root out arrogant and inappropriate behaviour; and when there was more consistency. But now this aspect of the Ofsted framework must be reviewed.

Ofsted does not know itself. Its framework for feedback and complaints is abysmal and schools have no confidence in it. It is an organisation which has not set out proactively to seek views on its performance but relies on a discredited system to applaud itself that there are very few complaints.

I wonder what would happen if we did have a genuine appeals system. I believe that there would be a very large number of appeals, which is why the expense and time-consuming nature of such a system is greatly resisted by Ofsted. But I think it is absolutely necessary and as long as one does not exist Ofsted will continue to have a grossly erroneous and complacent view of itself as highly regarded.

Management and communication

The move towards a new framework from September 2009, has exacerbated the fault lines. There are serious problems built into the inspection system as it is managed at the moment and these will not be solved by the new framework. Ofsted does not know what is wrong with it as an institution and therefore is making no attempt to deal with its weaknesses which will be there just as much if not more so under the new framework.

Acting on behalf of my local authority, which was one of the pilots for the new framework, I have been actively involved in meetings related to the development of the new framework. One thing has become abundantly clear to me: Ofsted’s senior management is seriously flawed.

There is very poor communication between the Ofsted regional offices and the inspection contractors. I came across numerous examples, far too numerous to list in this article, of Ofsted contractors and inspectors on the ground not carrying out reforms in the manner in which Ofsted’s senior leaders had assured us they would. The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.

Some of the senior leaders and HMI mare in fact the very people who are the subject of much complaint because of their off-hand and arrogant manner when carrying out inspections. Many of Ofsted’s regional senior leaders suffer from exactly the kind of lack of credibility (as a result either of long years away from the job of teaching or lack of any relevant experience) that bedevils out current inspection teams.

The gulf between Ofsted expectations and what is actually happening in perfectly good schools is wider than it has ever been.

Ofsted does not know itself

What does Ofsted expect of our schools? That they should know themselves well and evaluate their performance effectively and accurately. That they should be rigorous in their search for feedback and seek out actively even the critical voices and the hard to reach parents and pupils so gaining a fully rounded view of how the institution is perceived. That they attract the right staff with relevant qualifications and experience suitable for their job. That they safeguard their pupils by employing only those staff who behave appropriately, avoiding those teachers who have a bullying mentality or a draconian approach to discipline. That they have an effective and transparent complaints procedure which encourages, rather than deters, honest comment. That they strive for improvement and accept that only the best will do.

I am only asking that as an institution and system, Ofsted expects of itself what it expects of schools. That is why I think that the organisation needs a Notice to Improve.

August 2010