Schools can “expect” Ofsted’s Big Listen consultation to address single-word inspection judgements, the inspectorate’s national director of education has said.
Speaking to Tes in an exclusive interview, Lee Owston said that, although the one-word grading system was not specifically referenced in Ofsted’s sector-wide survey, it was “inevitable” that people would refer to the issue of whether this is the best way to grade schools’ performance. He added that this is the “right debate to have”.
The Big Listen was announced by Ofsted chief inspector Sir Martyn Oliver in March to gain the views of teachers, parents and children on how inspections should be reformed.
The move followed widespread criticism of the inspectorate last year after a coroner found that an Ofsted inspection contributed to headteacher Ruth Perry taking her own life.
Calls to scrap Ofsted judgements
But the Big Listen consultation has itself been criticised for not directly asking whether people support single-word Ofsted inspection grades, amid calls for them to be replaced.
In response to this, former Ofsted inspectors have created an alternative consultation to get people’s views on the issue.
However, Mr Owston suggested that in the section of the Big Listen on “reporting”, respondents would inevitably use the open text boxes to write about single-word judgements, “given the strength of feeling”. The watchdog will “analyse and pick up on” contributions made, he said.
The Department for Education recently confirmed that, although it “will continue to look at alternative systems” to single-word judgements, it still believes there are significant benefits from having an Ofsted overall effectiveness grade for schools.
Labour has said that, if elected to government, it plans to consult on scrapping single-word judgements and replacing them with a report card-style system.
Safeguarding and inspection
Mr Owston told Tes that there are some major topics emerging from the Big Listen even at these early stages (the consultation will continue until June). For example, the “place of safeguarding within our inspection framework” and “how much weight we place on safeguarding”.
As part of its consultation, the watchdog has asked whether safeguarding should be inspected more regularly than through the normal cycle of school inspection.
Ofsted is also consulting on separating the safeguarding aspect from its leadership and management judgement and on withholding issuing a judgement for three months on schools that are set to fail an inspection on safeguarding alone.
The proposals for changes come after the coroner at the inquest into Ms Perry’s death issued a prevention of future deaths report, which warned that because safeguarding is a limiting judgement a school judged to be “good” in all areas apart from safeguarding could receive the same “inadequate” grade as a school that was “dreadful in all respects”.
The stress caused by inspections
Another issue highlighted by Mr Owston is the stress caused by inspections, particularly the anxiety felt by school leaders.
While all active Ofsted inspectors have now had two sessions of mental health training, the watchdog has announced it will have a “roadmap” for further inspector training.
“There’s our specific mental health training [around] how to recognise the signs and symptoms and how to respond to those in terms of the appropriate processes,” Mr Owston said.
But he told Tes ”there will also be another track” of training that will cover “how do we ensure that the inspection process itself doesn’t add to the anxiety and distress?”.
Primary framework concerns
Mr Owston was previously the deputy director of schools and early education for the watchdog and is a former primary teacher. He said he recognised his former primary colleagues’ frustrations with Ofsted’s current education inspection framework (EIF).
Some in the primary sector have previously warned that the curriculum and subject focus of the EIF means that inspections are looking at schools through a secondary lens, and that Ofsted inspectors do not always consider challenges specific to primary.
But Mr Owston said that changing the EIF is a “really big thing to think through” because it risks going back to “lower expectations”.
When asked whether Ofsted does enough to take a school’s individual context into account, Mr Owston stressed the importance of the inspectorate holding everyone to the same standard.
“Let’s say Lee comes from the North East and, considering the challenges in the North East versus the challenges in the North West, should we have a different standard? Well, absolutely not,” Mr Owston said.
“We don’t want to go back to the soft bigotry of low expectations,” he added.
The complication of a general election
Mr Owston admitted that due to this being a general election year, it will be a “tricky period” for introducing reform.
“I wouldn’t want to make a change now for us to then have to make a different change again in another three, six, nine, 12 months,” he said.
Sir Martyn made similar comments this week, when he told the School and Academies Show that “the system is in too fragile a state right now to deal with consequences from decisions I make”.
However, Mr Owston said that doesn’t mean there is not an appetite for change.
“There are frustrations for Martyn, and there are frustrations for me,” he said, “because actually you want to get on with the job.”
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