The role and performance of Ofsted

Memorandum submitted by Carrie Dunne

1. If schools are to operate with greater autonomy, with an independent inspection system focused on improving schools, then the current work of Ofsted is not adequate. The changes to the structure of Ofsted, and an increasingly generalised Ofsted Framework, have allowed the inspection system to become too distracted in its use of private contractors, too wide in its range of inspection settings, too focused on compliance with central government policy and too superficial in its quality of reporting. It is essential that the role and performance of Ofsted are simplified and redefined to ensure that it is fit for purpose, stable and more sharply focused on its central function as the ‘Office for Standards in Education’.

2. As the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (launched in 2007), Ofsted state online that their work..

..touches the lives of millions of people in England every day. One in every three people uses the services we inspect or regulate, or the information we provide. 1

3. Such a statement immediately identifies the worrying breadth of Ofsted’s work which is described (on the same webpage) as ‘extensive’ , spanning the ‘inspection and regulation of children’s services and inspection of education and skills for learners of all ages’- a system that is now very different from Ofsted’s original structure, function and purpose as the ‘Office for Standards in Education’, created by the Education (Schools) Act of 1992.

4. It is worth taking the historical perspective from the Cambridge Primary Review (Alexander, 2010) about Ofsted’s origins to understand these differences and to recognise Ofsted’s impact on schools and schooling. Although Alexander (2010) describes, with implied negativity, that Ofsted’s creation was a ‘deliberate attempt’ to privatise school inspections, it was the replacement of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate (HMI) that was seen, then (and now), as a major concern. (p.33)

5. Such a change from the use of HMI, who had ‘previously offered central government officials advice [without ‘fear or favour’] about the effects of government policy’ (ibid) to Ofsted, and their large number of private contractors, was the ‘subject of considerable controversy’. However, since 1992 the number of private contractors has decreased dramatically (three now cover large geographical areas), HMI have been reintroduced to carry out inspections and Ofsted has expanded to include, for example, regulating Children’s Services. From my own experience, as an Ofsted inspector and as a contractor, such structural changes have had significant effects on carrying out inspections as well as producing major bureaucratic changes for managing inspections.

6. During 2001-2004, while working for an Ofsted contractor, I was part of three separate tendering processes for gaining a contract with Ofsted to inspect all school phases. On each occasion a contract was won and by 2004 our quality with Ofsted had improved and the number of inspections increased - becoming one of the largest contractors in England with 350 inspections per year. However, throughout this success, huge tensions existed – tensions associated with maintaining the highest quality for Ofsted (training inspectors, quality assuring inspectors, inspections, reports and complying absolutely with small administrative procedures) as well as making a growing and healthy profit as a private contractor. As a consequence, such tensions created a real distraction away from the work of inspection because of the need to satisfy the administrative layers within Ofsted and the managerial layers within the parent company. At times, I believe, working as a contractor and employee of a private company caused unnecessary instability for inspectors, the inspection process and ultimately schools.

7. However, since 1992, not only have there been significant structural changes but also significant content changes to the Ofsted Framework.

8. The original Framework contained the following four main inspection functions (Education Act, 1992, chapter 8, section 2):

· The quality of education

· The educational standards achieved

· The efficient management of financial resources

· The spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils.

9. Although these main functions continue to characterise all inspections, they have since then increased in number and broadened in their scope. For example, the functions within the current Framework, used from September 2009, now include the need to inspect ‘community cohesion’ and ‘well-being’ (2009a, p.4). In addition, Ofsted also state that the 2009 Framework ‘has the greatest impact possible on school improvement and outcomes for children and young people’ 2 - but, crucially, the central remit for an ‘Office for Standards in Education’ is now difficult to identify in an increasingly ‘issues-led’ inspection process.

10. Ofsted justify the structural and Framework changes as a direct consequence of national developments and legislative changes (Ofsted, 2009b). For example, in the latest Ofsted report for a Post16 Campus School (Appendix 1) it is very clear that ‘The sexual health clinic is used well’ yet the reader has no idea how well students are being taught English or mathematics or whether students are reaching good enough standards. Such an issues-led process for inspection is a serious concern if parents etc. wish to understand ‘the quality of education’ and ‘the educational standards achieved’. Therefore, serious questions must be raised about Ofsted’s breadth of work as well as its independence in their attention to national initiatives.

11. Ofsted maintains its independence by declaring that it provides ‘impartial information’ to Parliament, 3 however, as Alexander (2010) states, the effect of Ofsted remains a ‘very powerful, though indirect, way of regulating the system by ‘policing’ [schools’] compliance with national directives and severely limiting high– or even medium-risk experimentation with content or process’ (p.33) – in other words, as an unintended consequence, schools have become stifled by regulation. Such strong criticism may be questioned, but the essence of this ‘policing’ is evident within the following comments from two secondary school teachers:

‘I am all in favour of accountability but the modern teacher seems to spend an inordinate amount of time on justifying themselves or learning the latest Ofsted inspired teaching methods rather than simply teaching’

12. I’ve had to tolerate dozens of "Ofsted says" statements over the years. Whether true or not, teachers believe

1) You must have a starter, body and plenary to every lesson

2) You must write your objectives on the board

3) You must test your learning outcome at the end of every lesson

And so on....

13. Rather than Ofsted being independent and reliable4 in evaluating the work of schools, the teachers clearly state that there is a perceived need to comply with a set of predetermined criteria.

14. Taking mathematics as an example, these personal experiences are backed up in a study by Brown et al (1998) who questioned the extent to which the methods in the National Numeracy Strategy were based on evidence about ‘what works’. The study drew a conclusion that ‘many schools will adopt [the Strategy] so as to avoid criticism from Ofsted inspectors and Local Education Authority (LEA) officials’ (p.366). Most worryingly, and a serious concern for the autonomy of schools, the work of local authorities to act as almost agents for the National Strategies was a recommendation by Ofsted’s own evaluation of the Primary National Strategies (2005):

‘ensure that [local authority] primary strategy managers have sufficient authority to exert appropriate influence’ (p.3)

15. With this Ofsted directive in mind, my own experience while working as a contractor with about 1000 inspectors, caused me many times to question the reality of inspector independence when many also worked in other areas of education eg: as strategy managers (mentioned above), Headteachers, Local Authority inspectors (as I did myself), School Improvement Partners (SIPs) or as education consultants employed by Ofsted contractors. Without disparaging the work of many, many excellent inspectors, it is a concern that needs raising and I have much sympathy with former HMI Colin Richardson about the need to reinstate HMI as:

‘a stand-alone independent, publicly funded body who would report regularly to MPs and whose work would be periodically reviewed by a commission including representatives of all relevant stake-holders and drawing on the expertise of inspectors, researchers and educationists’ (Richardson, in Alexander, 2010, p.33) .

16. My own experience of HMI through their monitoring of inspections, inspectors and inspection reports, have found them, on the whole, to be objective and pragmatic, keeping their work focused on evaluating learning. However, for quite a number of inspectors working for contractors, I often found that their day job in advising schools became mixed with their occasional job of inspecting schools. I recall regular guidance being distributed to inspectors from Ofsted that informed them to be objective in their observation of lessons and not to advocate particular teaching methods. For example, Ofsted’s Update 38 and Update 40 (no longer available) warned inspectors that they should not expect to see ‘three parts’ to any lesson and reminded them that the National Strategies were non-statutory (all very different from Ofsted’s own recommendations in 2005!) However, this guidance was mostly ignored as LAs were putting pressure on all schools to follow the National Strategies, and more recently Assessing Pupils’ Progress (APP, 2008) to make measurements about each child’s progress based on National Curriculum level descriptions. It is not a surprise that in recent years teachers have not been able to recognise which advice or documentation are statutory and which are non-statutory – such is the fear of Ofsted and LAs.

17. Sergeant (2009) summarises her concerns about Ofsted as an inspection process that ensures each school’s compliance with the latest government initiative (p.43), which are as Alexander (2010) states ‘universally viewed as obligatory’ (p.209) – in other words, the content and the teaching methods are accepted, without question, and enforced openly by Ofsted. This was also a similar concern raised by a House of Commons Committee (2010a) when discussing the ‘tick-box mentality’ of inspection – the current compliance culture is a serious problem.

18. Although it is very clear from the House of Commons Select Committee transcripts (2010b) that Ofsted’s independence is essential (p.9), this independence in practice does indeed need to be questioned. The current Ofsted Evaluation Schedule (2009c) states clearly that inspectors evaluate ‘how well teaching promotes learning’ (p.31) which appears to imply independence, but further comments from three primary school teachers based on their discussions with inspectors during inspections, would question this independence:

‘The inspector said my lesson wasn’t good because I didn’t have my learning objective on the board for all children to see. The inspector didn’t want to listen when I told her that the objectives came out of the lesson’

‘I was told that my class shouldn’t sit in rows – they should be sitting in groups’

‘I spent too long at the beginning of the lesson explaining something. She said that 10 minutes on the carpet is long enough for Y1 children.’

19. Such comments from teachers resonate with the criticisms made by Alexander (2010) about the range of ‘principles’ of teaching which are ‘empirically questionable’, and ‘characteristics’ of teaching which are ‘disappointingly vague’ listed in various DCSF documents (p.297). In other words, inspectors appear to be drawing on a set of approved generalisations to judge and advise schools for improving teaching and (most likely) evidence of inspectors mixing their day job with their occasional inspection job.

20. This concern about approved generalisations about teaching can be found when examining the findings of a small survey using fifty randomly chosen Ofsted inspection reports (November 2009). When studying the recommendations made by inspectors, the idea of ‘challenging pupils’ as a way of improving teaching occurs in almost all of the reports without any detailed analysis of what is meant by ‘challenge’ in the main text of the report. Inspectors would argue that the detail is given to the school during the inspection but the lack of detail in reports suggests that the reports themselves cannot be used for one of their main functions – improving schools.

21. Using mathematics as an example once more, the lack of detail to mathematics in individual school inspection reports is a serious concern. When examining a series of reports downloaded from the Ofsted website5 for any individual school, the dramatic reduction in the reporting of mathematics is clearly evident. For example, an inspection report written in 2001 or 2003 contains a number of pages with a detailed evaluation of the judgements inspectors have made about mathematics, such as the learners’ standards and their progress as well as the quality of teaching. However, an inspection report written in 2009 lacks the same detail (see tables a and b). In other words, inspection reports are not providing enough information to improve schools – the situation is no better for English!

Table a: Judgements made about mathematics in a Primary School for 2001 and 2009

Table b: Judgements made about mathematics in a Secondary School for 2003 and 2009

22. It would appear from these tables that between 2001 and 2009 Ofsted inspection teams have continued to report on learners’ standards. Although, the current Ofsted framework states that one of its main functions is to improve schools through inspection (2009a, p.2), and there cannot be any disagreement with the following end note (28) from the Cabinet Office Report (2008):

...school results and inspection reports create public pressure for improvement, and legitimacy for change when things are not good enough.

23. However, it is in the nature of gathering the evidence for judging improvement that raises further questions - the use of data, based on tests, teacher assessments, tracking documents (including the use of APP) is a further worrying and serious concern illustrated by the following quote from a secondary school teacher:

‘[Ofsted] base their judgements on school results, and causes the over valuation of tests.’

24. However, what is worse, is that the use of such data (based on the National Curriculum level descriptions) has been responsible for potentially putting a ceiling on learners’ achievements as illustrated in the following comment from a maths co-ordinator during an inspection in 2009:

‘When I had an interview with the inspector about maths he questioned why children in Y4 were doing work that children in other schools would do in Y6 in the Numeracy Strategy. He wasn’t very happy when I said it was because they could!’

25. In other words, what the inspector saw did not fit with the national expectations.

26. Once again, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector warned, in her 2010 online guidance, Ofsted News6, that inspectors should not make their judgements based on an analysis of test and examination data alone. However, discussions in a House of Commons Select Committee meeting, a month later, urged Ofsted to ‘rebalance its inspection framework’ because of the ‘disproportionate use’ made by inspection teams of a school’s results when judging a schools’ effectiveness (2010a, p.9). Such a strong focus on results ensures that their link with Ofsted has significantly raised the test’s and examination’s high stakes status exacerbating a fear of inspections by schools.

27. As a final example of Ofsted’s focus on test results and data, the report of an outstanding primary school, inspected in 2009, contains two main recommendations which focus their attention even more closely on data and tracking processes which inevitably increase the level of bureaucracy for the school (see Appendix 2). In other words, as described by Pollard’s article in the Daily Telegraph (May 2010), Ofsted appears to be ‘just another arm of the [education] establishment’ providing further evidence of each schools’ inability to innovate and, therefore, use their professionalism....even for highly successful schools!

28. If, as the current 2009 Ofsted Framework states that, one of the ‘essential functions’ of inspection is for parents to have informed choices about schools (p.2) and that inspection aims to help users understand the findings of an inspection and help to drive improvements (p.1) - all undoubtedly worthy but these ‘essential functions’ cannot be achieved with the current inspection system. The original remit as the ‘Office for Standards in Education’ has lost its way and, consequently, inspectors are too generalist, inspections are too generalised and reports are too superficial. A review to understand the purpose and nature of school inspection for schools who will operate with more autonomy is, therefore, critical.

Notes

1 http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/About-us/Working-for-Ofsted

2 http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/News/Press-and-media/2009/June/New-inspection-system-to-improve-outcomes-for-pupils/(language)/eng-GB

3,4 http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/About-us

5 http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/

6 http://ofstednews.ofsted.gov.uk/issue/35

Recommendations

In order to simplify and redefine Ofsted’s work as the ‘Office for Standards in Education’ and to recognise a new autonomy for schools:

Create a new Ofsted structure

· The current work of Ofsted is too wide - there needs to be a separation of Welfare and Academic inspections. Ofsted should focus only on Academic settings with a new inspectorate to focus only on Welfare settings. To ensure school autonomy, the welfare aspects in a school should be monitored by the school themselves (and possibly LAs).

· The current work of Ofsted and inspectors is not as independent as it should be - there is a need to reconstitute an independent HM Inspectorate to carry out school inspections and (quite separately) carry out surveys for checking government initiatives.

Publish a new Ofsted Academic Framework for schools

· The current Framework is too generalised – there needs to be a new set of principles which recognises a school’s autonomy so that inspectors evaluate ‘outcomes’ in relation to each school’s work rather than using a predetermined set of criteria to ensure compliance.

· The content of the current Framework is too broad – there needs to be a sharper focus on school improvement by only evaluating the following:

pupils’ standards and achievement (their academic achievement and their behaviour),

the quality of teaching,

the effectiveness of leadership (including impact of the curriculum, CPD , finance and safety issues),

· There are no clear analyses about learners’ standards and achievement in the current Framework – there needs to be a renewed focus for inspectors’ work by evaluating as few areas as possible:

Reading, writing, speaking and listening

Mathematics

How these subjects have an impact on other areas of the curriculum

Importantly, after this change there needs to be time for a new structure and Framework to settle so that there is a real stability and a genuine confidence in the system.

References

Alexander, R. (2010) (Ed.) Children, their world, their education. Final report and recommendations of the Cambridge Primary Review London: Routledge

Brown, M., Askew, M., Baker, D., Denvir, H. and Millett, A. (1998) Is the National Numeracy Strategy research-based? School of Education, King’s College London BRITISH JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL STUDIES, ISSN 0007–1005 VOL. 46, NO. 4, DECEMBER 1998, PP 362–385

Cabinet Office (2008) Excellence and fairness: Achieving world class public services HMSO

DCSF (1999) National Numeracy Strategy Primary Strategy – Mathematics Framework (2003/2006)

http://nationalstrategies.standards.dcsf.gov.uk

DCSF (2008) Assessing Pupils’ Progress (APP, 2008)

http://nationalstrategies.standards.dcsf.gov.uk/node/243338

Education(Schools) Act 1992 http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1992/ukpga_19920038_en_1

House of Commons (2010a) Children, Schools and Families Committee School Accountability: Responses from the Government and Ofsted to the First Report of the Committee, Session 2009–10, Third Special Report of Session 2009–10, House of Commons, 22 March 2010

House of Commons (2010b) Children, Schools and Families Committee (2010) From Baker to Balls: the foundations of the education system, Ninth Report of Session 2009–10, House of Commons, Formal Minutes 24 March 2010

Ofsted (2005) The national literacy and numeracy strategies and the primary curriculum HMI 2395

London: Ofsted

Ofsted (2009a) The Framework for School Inspection: The framework for school inspection in England under section 5 of the Education Act 2005, from September 2009 London: Ofsted

Ofsted (2009b), Talisman: Issue 78, Sept

http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/Publications-and-research/Browse-all-by/Documents-by-type/Newsletters/Back-issues/talisman/talisman-78

Ofsted (2009c) The Evaluation Schedule for Schools London: Ofsted

http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/Forms-and-guidance/Browse-all-by/Other/General/Evaluation-schedule-of-judgements-for-schools-inspected-under-section-five-of-the-Education-Act-2005-from-September-2009

Pollard, S. (2010) Gove’s first fight is against the enemy within The Daily Telegraph 26 May

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/7765866/Michael-Goves-first-fight-is-against-the-enemy-within.html

Richardson, C (2009) in Alexander, R. (2010) (Ed.) Introducing the Primary Review.

Sergeant, W (2009) Wasted: the betrayal of white working class and black Caribbean boys

Surrey: Centre for Policy Studies

October 2010

Appendices

Appendix 1 – Inspection report for Shooters Hill Post 16 Campus (2009)

http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/oxedu_reports/display/(id)/117236

Appendix 2 – Inspection report for Lea Valley Primary School (2009)

http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/oxedu_reports/display/(id)/109777