The bond is breaking between many children, parents and schools, with rising absences and more disruption. Even allowing for post-pandemic mental illness keeping more pupils from school, Amanda Spielman’s final Ofsted report, published last week, finds that in England “far too many children are missing school far too often”, with parents less likely to back schools over discipline, rules and uniform, but more likely to complain.
Did she ever consider Ofsted’s role in this decline? This has been a decade in which the inspectorate tormented schools and headteachers with a miserably narrow notion of “good”, when it was school resources that were most “inadequate”. That children are alienated from education is no surprise when schools are stunted by “examification” and a rigid, overstuffed curriculum offering so much less to spark their enthusiasm.
