Ofsted inspectors have been forced to “make up” evidence because the computer system they use to record inspections sometimes crashes, wiping all the data, an Observer investigation has found.
Since 2018, inspectors have made live notes on laptops or tablets as they interview staff and observe lessons after Ofsted invested in a new electronic evidence gathering (EEG) digital platform. However, our investigation has discovered the technology has had serious issues from the beginning, sometimes crashing unexpectedly and losing all notes from interviews, or even whole days of evidence, so that inspectors have to replace those notes from memory without telling the school.
The Observer spoke to several current or recent inspectors on condition of anonymity who said such problems had been “common” for years, and that senior leaders within Ofsted were aware of this, but “there has been a lot of covering up”.
After this story was initially published a spokesperson for Ofsted told The Observer that chief inspector Sir Martyn Oliver “is initiating a rapid review to satisfy himself that the EEG and the guidance to inspectors is robust”. The spokesperson added that if schools or inspectors have concerns “we would want to hear about them directly, so we can respond appropriately”.
Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, said: “This has echoes of the Post Office scandal. The idea of inspectors making lost evidence up, or remembering what they can, is abhorrent. It’s not how schools are allowed to conduct themselves.” He argued that if such a practice has been commonplace, “essentially every inspection conducted over the past five years should be disregarded”.
A spokesperson for Ofsted said: “We take the processes we use to come to an inspection judgment very seriously.” They stressed that “all judgments are backed up by sufficient evidence” from the inspection team and are also quality assured by senior staff in Ofsted.
The spokesperson described the EEG tool as a “simple platform used only for recording written evidence” and said: “All inspectors have been issued clear guidance on what to do if they are unable to access the system.”
One current inspector told the Observer: “In the middle of a meeting with a school, you might suddenly lose all your evidence. The advice is that you mustn’t let on and keep an inscrutable face.”
He recalled sitting in a hotel trying to input a day’s evidence after the system shut down and he lost everything: “You’re exhausted because the inspection day is long and non-stop and you have documents to read for the next day.”
Once colleagues at headquarters wanted to do a “rigorous check” on an “Outstanding” grade he had just given a school. “They were asking for evidence but it just wasn’t there,” he said. “There has been a lot of covering up.”
A second former inspector described how he sat and watched as evidence from a lengthy interview “just disappeared bit by bit from the screen, like a Banksy artwork self-destructing”. He said: “It’s very hard to avoid giving any body language clues while that’s happening.” And he added: “The instruction then was just to make it up.”
He added: “I know for a fact that there are senior leaders in Ofsted who know about these problems.”
Ofsted conducted an investigation into EEG last year, which inspectors say confirmed serious issues, but none was aware of any significant changes being made in response.
Education providers have largely been totally unaware of any of these problems. However, the Observer has seen Ofsted’s written response to a complaint from a school about missing evidence. It says: “You state that during the final meeting the lead inspector declared: ‘It’s all gone’, referring to the evidence on her computer.”
The response also notes that the draft report included a school motto “which was not actually your school motto”, and that the school had “little confidence in the evidence base”.
Ofsted rejected this, saying the lead inspector logged that the record of the final meeting had gone but all other evidence was recorded and “subject to enhanced quality assurance”. The Observer understands the school was never shown evidence of this.
A third former Ofsted inspector said: “I lost everything in the middle of a meeting with a coordinator at the start of a deep dive [into the teaching of a specific subject]. The lead inspector lost everything when she got back to the hotel that night, as did the new inspector on the team.”
Three inspectors reported that they or colleagues started making notes in Word because they didn’t trust the system, but Ofsted threatened disciplinary action if they didn’t use EEG.
Julie Price Grimshaw, a former inspector who now advises schools, said while she served in the pen-and-paper era, “lots of inspectors” had told her about times when the system crashed and they lost evidence.
She said: “It’s clear that substantial chunks, and possibly entire evidence bases, have been disappearing into the ether and are never seen again.”
Ofsted said that if the EEG system did not work, inspectors were advised to record their evidence in a “reasonable alternative way” and “transfer it to the system at the earliest opportunity”. Ofsted’s spokesperson added: “If during the quality assurance process there was insufficient evidence on the system to support the judgment, inspectors would be instructed to return to the school to gather and record further evidence.”
