The role and performance of Ofsted

Memorandum submitted by John Riley

In January this year my wife, Anne, school had a Section 5 inspection. It was her fourth inspection in the ten years she had been headteacher at Coppice Primary School and her sixth inspection as a senior manager. By 11.00am on the first morning of the inspection she had suffered ‘an acute stress reaction’ in other words a breakdown and I had to collect her from school. The only people she had met with were two Ofsted inspectors the subject matter discussed was Safeguarding. She had no medical history to suggest that she prone to such a reaction.

She has not been able to return to work.

A series of complaints were lodged with Ofsted (a synopsis is attached [1] ) and it is the experience of the way Ofsted have conducted themselves that leads me to write to you and highlight four of the many areas that I believe need to addressed;

· Lack of Accountability

· Lack of Transparency

· Inconsistency of Approach

· Inadequate and Biased Complaints Procedures

1. Lack of Accountability

It seems that Ofsted, as a Quango, are able to do pretty much as they please within budgetary guidelines. Specifically, they appear to determine inspection frameworks with little reference to anyone. The result is that schools are not only expected to take account of developing Government policy but also Ofsted’s latest ‘flavour of the month/year’. Last year it was ‘Safeguarding’ and ‘Raising the Bar’. This year the approach to both has softened. Surely Ofsted should be following Government policy and not their own agenda.

Inspection Frameworks should evolve and be fully reflective of Government policy.

2. Lack of Transparency

During the complaints processes it became clear that the information being provided by the inspectors to Ofsted bore no relation to the information shown and discussed during the inspection. It was only after obtaining papers under Freedom of Information and Data Protection that it became clear that the inspectors had made a number of serious, unsubstantiated, and untrue, allegations about my wife, the school and the Local Authority. None of those allegations were raised in the end of inspection report to the school or indeed in the final inspection report.

The school was judged to be ‘Unsatisfactory’ in ‘Overall Effectiveness’ but ‘Good’ on ‘Capacity for Sustained Improvement’. The ‘Unsatisfactory’ judgement was based on alleged ‘Safeguarding’ shortcomings. The school were led to believe that this was purely a clerical issue.

Inspectors should be required to present all back up evidence for their judgements and be open to challenge before leaving the school. Similarly that evidence should be part of the information provided to Ofsted with the draft report for the report to be moderated. Instead the word of inspectors is just accepted. A similar approach by a school would not be allowed by Ofsted.

Ofsted should, as minimum, be subjected to at least the same standards as they expect from schools. This is not currently the case.

3. Inconsistency

As noted in point 1 there are year to year inconsistencies of approaches to inspections. As a result comparing schools in an area is only meaningful if all the schools were inspected against the same inspection framework. As an example, under this year’s framework my wife’s school would not have been judged ‘Unsatisfactory’ because the approach to safeguarding has become more sensible.

More worryingly is the inconsistency between inspection teams. In Derbyshire we are aware of a number of schools with the same clerical issue related to safeguarding. In all the other cases the inspection team used common sense and allowed the school to make a correction. Unfortunately, at my wife’s school, the inspectors seem to have a different agenda.

Clearly there needs to be year to year comparability of inspection reports or an explanation of the specific framework against which the school is being judged.

The issue of the inconsistency of the approach of the inspection teams appears to be more prevalent with Additional Inspectors and is probably reflective of the variable quality of the people being recruited by the contract companies.

4. Inadequate and Biased Complaints Procedure

As you will see from the attached synopsis the only version that Ofsted complaints investigators are prepared to take account of is that of the inspectors regardless of evidence provided. The standard response is; ‘we have spoken to the inspectors and they say they did nothing wrong’ and with that a complaint is dismissed. When irrefutable evidence is produced it is either completely ignored or the investigator effectively calls the complainant and witnesses liars.

There is a case for minor technical complaints being handled by Ofsted but serious complaints similar to those we have raised should be dealt with by an independent panel from the start. For example, the panel could consist of representation from Ofsted, Local Authority, Union, School Governors and a Lay Person.

5.0 Summary

Ofsted are charged with helping to raise standards in school. Instead they have created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation which actively runs counter to their stated objectives. The standards by which they judge themselves are way below those that schools and their staff are expected to achieve. My wife’s case, incredible though it may appear, is not isolated. The way in which Ofsted has addressed my wife’s situation and that of her school is symptomatic of an organisation that is arrogant and rotten at the core and whose intrinsic ethos has less to do with high standards but is more concerned with self-preservation.

It is time for a fundamental restructure.

I hope the above points are found to be helpful. My wife, like many headteachers, has always seen the need for an inspection regime. Indeed she has had full respect for the previous five inspection teams she has encountered even if on some issues there has been an agreement to differ.

However, a measure of the quality of an organisation is how it acts when things go wrong. In this case it is Ofsted that has been found wanting and it Ofsted that now requires ‘Special Measures’.

October 2010