Ofsted is incapable of reforming itself. It has rejected the advice calling for radical change (Ofsted to press ahead with new inspection regime despite opposition, 9 September). The new toolkit runs to 80 pages and lists 314 standards over seven areas that institutions will be judged on. It’s like deciding to repaint the Titanic after it’s hit the iceberg.
Anger is mounting about the opportunity being lost to create a humane and effective system of inspection. If the government accepts Ofsted’s gargantuan framework, the coming months will be consumed by conflict with the professionals.
There’s an alternative way forward. Ministers should set up a commission of teachers’ leaders, experienced inspectors and experts in inspection to produce a different model. It would support teachers to improve the quality of students’ learning, while dealing firmly, but sensitively, with the weaknesses that undeniably exist.
Why not test whatever model the government chooses by running alongside it a pilot of the best ideas on inspection, culled from national and international research? The pilot could take place in an area chosen to be as representative as possible of the country as a whole. Whatever system proved to be the more effective could become the makings of a new evidence-based approach.
The opportunity to enact reform comes round seldom. This one must be seized with both hands to end the decades of failure to raise standards. Will the government rise to the occasion and transform inspection for good? Over to you, Bridget Phillipson.
Frank Coffield
Emeritus professor of education, UCL Institute of Education
• When the secondary school that I led was first inspected by Ofsted in 1997 it involved 16 inspectors spending the best part of a week in school, going everywhere and seeing everything they needed to. The outcome report, though it pulled no punches, was thorough and largely accurate and provided a sound basis for our own development plan. Long before I retired, an inspection involved a mere four inspectors and lasted barely two days, with oral “feedback”, such as it was, being given after lunch on the second day.
Martyn Oliver, the chief inspector, says Ofsted’s new traffic light report card will give parents the information they deserve and ensure that the work of education professionals is fairly assessed. The sad truth is that, like the one it replaces, this report will be done on the cheap and provide the very flimsiest of evidence on which parents or professionals could base any worthwhile judgments. Even worse, it will continue to be used punitively in judging headteachers and their staff and do nothing to relieve the unrealistic pressures, which see nearly a third of newly qualified teachers leave the profession within five years.
Chris Dunne
London
