The role and performance of Ofsted

Memorandum submitted by South East Association of the Directors of Children’s Services

The impact of the inspection process on school improvement and the weight given to different parts of the inspection process and the role of Ofsted in providing an accountability mechanism for schools operating with greater autonomy.

It is clear that Ofsted does have an impact on schools and that schools aspire to get a good Ofsted grade.  So the focus of inspections is particularly important.  As the role of the local authority with respect to school improvement reduces, it remains vital to have a regulator who ensures that children are provided with a high quality education.  Ofsted inspections need to pay particular attention to the education of vulnerable children and we would like to see a greater focus in the inspection process on the following:

· The effectiveness of the schools ability to narrow the gap for vulnerable groups eg free school meals, black and minority ethnic, special educational needs and children with emotional and behaviour difficulties

· The use of temporary and permanent exclusions.  We would like Ofsted to take a more forensic look at the reasons for the last few exclusions implemented by the school and whether appropriate support plans have been put in place prior to the exclusion

· The effectiveness of the way in which the pupil premium is used to narrow the gap

· An examination for secondary schools of how many young people had become (Not in Education Employment or Training) NEET after leaving schools and some of the reasons for this

We would recommend that failure to respond effectively to meet the needs of vulnerable children should be a limiting judgement in Ofsted terms – ie the school could not receive a good or outstanding judgement if any of these were poor.

We are concerned about further increasing the length of time between inspections for schools who are good or outstanding.  In our view schools can change very quickly.  We believe this decision should be risk based and should use information such as school results, value added, attendance, exclusions, staff turnover and parental complaints as a trigger for increasing the frequency of inspections if necessary.  We also want the local authority to have the right to request an earlier inspection.

Since schools funding is largely protected, it will be important also for Ofsted to increase its focus on the extent to which it examines whether the school is providing value for money.

It may also be valuable for Ofsted to do some themed inspections of support for vulnerable children so that best practice is shared.

The consistency and quality of inspection teams in the Ofsted inspection process.

We are concerned about the consistency of inspections, and do not feel that all current inspection teams are of the same quality.  We would like to see a greater involvement of trained peers and customers in the inspection process.  For schools this could mean the greater involvement of children, young people and parents, with the possible inclusion of school leaders from other schools in the inspection team.  For local authorities this could also involve children, young people and parents, and also other senior leaders from other local authority children’s services.  We believe that this would grow capacity in the providers as well as ensure that Ofsted inspections teams keep abreast with the latest changes in the field.

The judgement nature of inspection can have adverse consequences

We would like to see a more formative process for inspection. For schools when there is an inspection, a link HMI works with the school doing monitoring visits over the next year.  There is no equivalent for local authority children’s services. There need to be more links back between inspection and improvement. Inspection should look at learning and improvement over time.  At present it is difficult to see if any improvement has been made as the bar to reach keeps being changed

Finally Ofsted needs to keep abreast of the changing expectations of Government.  At present funding is reducing before legislation to remove statutory requirements is occurring.  Ofsted need to take this into account in their inspections.

November 2010