The role and performance of Ofsted

Memorandum submitted by Jonathan Prest, Principal of Barton Peveril Sixth Form College

If there were no Ofsted there would need to be one. A nationwide and independent accountability mechanism is essential, more so with greater independence of schools from local authority control.

I have experienced six Ofsted inspections of colleges since 1987, have been college nominee on one of those occasions and Principal at two different colleges. My verdict would be that Ofsted does a Grade 2 "good" job. It is important to distinguish between Ofsted performance and the performance measures for colleges. The latter I would describe as excessive, muddled and ill thought through.

1 Ofsted plays a part in improving performance in Britain’s schools and colleges by establishing guidelines eg on what makes outstanding practice, by highlighting both good and poor practice in reports and by training Ofsted staff who also work in or return to the teaching profession.

2 Desk based analysis of data by Ofsted can provide significant information and may make many bread and butter inspections unnecessary. After the event (but not during) it is pleasant for outstanding and good schools and colleges to have the affirmation of an Ofsted report, and the best of them can be very well written. However, high quality self-assessment habits and robust data mean there is little Ofsted adds through its reporting. This may not offer good value for money in the current financial climate.

3 Identifying underperformance then carrying out inspections to provide an independent evaluation of issues remains essential for satisfactory and unsatisfactory provision.

4 Where Ofsted does carry out an inspection, resource needs to be sufficient to be able to draw sound conclusions. Where Ofsted tends to provide the weakest service is where it attempts to draw conclusions from too little information (eg on teaching and learning from a skimpy number of classroom observations).

5 Ofsted practices are not without inconsistency which serves to undermine its reputation. Three examples:

a) Lead inspectors have considerable power to influence the findings of an inspection. Based on almost identical data they reach difference conclusions.

b) FE colleges and sixth form colleges are measured against different benchmarks. A tertiary college (FE) with 2000 A level students in a middle class catchment will be assessed "outstanding" against FE benchmarks whilst a sixth form college in an inner city with 1000 A level students and similar outcomes might be "satisfactory" against sixth form college (and higher) benchmarks.

c) The inspection framework for schools is so different from colleges that comparison of grades can be misleading

I do not feel sufficiently knowledgeable to comment upon whether Ofsted is capable as an organisation of meeting its new wide ranging brief of pre-school and children’s services departments in local authorities.

October 2010