Overall Ofsted judgement scrapped, but challenges remain

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If you haven’t read the news overnight, the government has kicked off the new academic year by removing single-phrase headline judgements in Ofsted inspection reports with immediate effect.

It’s a huge victory for the sector, which has been calling for this for years. And it puts some meat on the claim by Labour that it is resetting the relationship between teaching and government and is really listening to what the sector has to say.

But while the DfE team will be rightly praised for the move, it is important to interrogate the decision a little more deeply.

For example, the four single-phrase sub-judgements will remain: schools still risk being “graded” by proxy.

Likewise, “the worst performing schools” (in the government’s language) will still receive an academy order or termination warning notice. And while there is no longer a threat of conversion or transfer for those that may once have been deemed “requires improvement” (and are now termed “struggling” by the DfE based on sub-judgements), there is an immediate intervention from a “high-performing school”.

A Labour manifesto promise fulfilled

Though the call is indeed significant, it is also one the DfE had little choice but to make.

At some point, the government had to fulfil its manifesto promise to scrap single-phrase judgements and replace them with a report card (we now know these will be introduced in September 2025). This would have made inspection with single-phrase judgements until that transition happened problematic: if they are so flawed that they need to be replaced, how valid and ethical would it have been to force them on schools a single day longer?

We will also hear the results of Ofsted’s Big Listen imminently, which are very likely to indicate that the current inspection system as a whole is unfit for purpose - and that major changes need to be made. Again, how valid or ethical would it have been to continue the publication of a single-phrase judgement until those issues were fixed?

Yet even with the move, the next 12 months are going to be tricky to navigate for both chief inspector Sir Martyn Oliver and education secretary Bridget Phillipson.

Firstly, the decision puts huge pressure on the report-card plan to be developed and delivered within those 12 months - and for it to be judged fair and effective by the sector. That could be extremely difficult.

Secondly, it puts huge pressure on any pledges made in response to the Big Listen to be resolved to the sector’s satisfaction (and for Labour to find the money to fund those pledges) within the period, so the new system can start without caveats in September 2025. Again, in the current financial and educational climate, that is far from guaranteed.

And lastly, it puts huge pressure on both Ofsted and the DfE to maintain “standards” in the eyes of the public, when the method the public has used and understood for so long (the single-phrase judgements) will still be in effect in those schools already inspected (and will remain so until they are re-inspected under the new system), but will not be used in schools inspected from this point forwards.

Potential pitfalls of a two-tier system

A two-tier system risks chaos and misunderstanding unless there is a very good comms plan in place (perhaps increasing confusion even further, those schools with “old” judgements may start referring to themselves using sub-judgements only).

If all this was not enough, an additional political problem for Phillipson is that this new approach will certainly slow trust growth at a time when there is already substantial frustration at a backlog of conversion decisions and regional advisory board meetings. The absence of an explicit mention of trusts in the initial documents when it comes to school improvement will also raise eyebrows.

Is this a DfE “agnostic” on structures, as Sir Kevan Collins termed his own views, or are trusts set for a more hostile relationship with Labour compared with previous governments? Phillipson will need to reassure trusts - and soon.

All of this does not take away from the fact that this is a momentous and important shift in the regulation of English schools. Clearly, though, this is a step rather than a leap in the right direction - and the path ahead is far from smooth for all involved.

Read more on Ofsted reform:

• DfE scraps Ofsted single-word school inspection grades
• Ofsted report card should have ‘slim’ set of standards
• 12 questions for the Labour government on education