At the beginning of her tenure as Ofsted chief inspector in 2017, Amanda Spielman promised that the organisation would become a “force for improvement” in education.

As she prepares to step down next year, how much of that improvement have we seen and how far are any failures to improve the responsibility of her organisation?

I would argue that we now have a sector more battered and bruised than ever before, one clinging on to its status as a graduate profession. You can see this clearly evidenced in the teacher recruitment and retention statistics.

Most notably, the government missed its recruitment targets last year by almost a third and trainee teaching applications are tracking at an even lower level than this time last year. Recent survey data has also suggested that nearly a half of all teachers plan to leave teaching altogether by 2027.

Scores of former teachers cite unnecessary bureaucracy, unmanageable workload and the pressures of only being as good as your last set of results. Significant numbers point the finger at Ofsted as the culprit in creating this culture.

Is that fair?

A question of quality

Certainly, the “checking culture” in our school system is damaging and Ofsted is the main vehicle for that. Hidden behind a smokescreen of “necessary accountability”, teachers are simply not trusted to do their jobs well enough.

So is Ofsted - on behalf of the government - being unreasonable or is there a genuine problem of quality?

One way to look at this is to focus on teacher training. Is teacher training good enough, rigorous enough and well-enough resourced? If it is, then Ofsted’s checking culture could be claimed to be disproportionate.

As someone from this sector, I would argue that we are doing the best we can within the confines we have been given. What we do is very good, but 36 weeks of postgraduate initial teacher training falls some way short of providing the necessary time to train teachers effectively to do the job.

As a result of this, Ofsted does sometimes find performance that is not at a high standard but the focus is on the school, not the length of training.

That means that the “fix” is targeted at the wrong place and can result in the demoralisation of teachers and the creation of a culture in some schools that feels burdensome and oppressive.

You could make similar arguments across multiple facets of inspection with the same conclusions: behaviour challenges as a result of local health agency failures, leadership problems owing to a lack of quality in leadership training programmes, safeguarding concerns resulting from a lack of access to social services.

Ofsted inspects the outcome but doesn’t inspect the cause.

A shift in focus

So if we want to change the profession, how do we shift Ofsted’s focus?

A school and its teachers are heavily influenced by the conditions in which they operate, and so our entire country would be better served by shifting the inspectorate’s focus to policymakers, those who manage the sector and the trainers.

Ofsted’s main role should be to set out what a world-class education system looks like and inspect the government’s ability to provide the necessary conditions, resources, funding and training to enable this.

By looking at the system in this way, we can better assess school quality because we will be looking at the true factors involved in under-performance. As such, we will be better at targeting interventions to improve school performance.

That would force the government’s hand on funding for aspects such as extending the period a teacher trains for, or for local health and social services. If those elements are deemed adequate, then we can really see what is happening in schools that is impacting quality.

Radical views

Labour’s shadow education secretary, Bridgit Phillipson, announced last week that Ofsted’s current grading system should be swapped for a “report card” that tells parents simply and clearly, how well their school is performing.

But if a report card is still a collection of numerical judgement scores, this won’t solve anything.

And it’s a far cry from Angela Rayner’s assertion in 2019, as shadow education secretary, that Ofsted should be scrapped altogether, citing its negative impact on the teaching profession and the competitive culture created between schools. 

Certainly, Rayner’s views and my own may sound radical, but we have to recognise that the current system is broken - it’s driving teachers out, and the job is not attractive enough to entice in the numbers required.

It’s time to admit that Ofsted has got it wrong and its focus has to change.

Only a courageous government would allow its education ministry to be inspected, and it would take an even more courageous HMCI to suggest it.

But it is the kind of leadership our sector is crying out for in order to maintain teaching’s status as a profession.

Professor Geraint Jones is the executive director and associate pro vice-chancellor of the National Institute of Teaching and Education at Coventry University