In the words of Alanis Morissette, “Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?”
I’m not talking about a “black fly in your Chardonnay”, or “rain on your wedding day” (perhaps neither of which are actually ironic). I mean calls for Ofsted to play a greater role in school improvement.
OK, it’s not a catchy verse for a pop song. But Ofsted irony is something we need to be wary of, for reasons I’ll explain.
The role of Ofsted in schools
With some justification, it can be argued that Ofsted’s influence could do with being dialled down. This is not only about the pressure placed on leaders, though this is a compelling factor. It’s also about the extent to which inspection drives school practices.
Which is why I find it odd when some argue that inspectors should play a greater role in school improvement by making firmer recommendations, getting involved in commissioning support or even trying to improve schools themselves.
The reason frequently put forward to back up this argument is that giving Ofsted an enhanced improvement role will change the nature of inspection conversations and reduce the high stakes of inspections. Perhaps.
But somewhere out there in the policy multiverse is a school system where inspectors have become entangled in school improvement, and inspection has become even more high stakes as a result; a world where Ofsted continues to report graded judgements, and where there continue to be concerns about validity and reliability - only now these have bled through into an improvement agenda, too.
Mixing inspection and improvement?
Mixing inspection and school improvement blurs the lines of accountability, undermines the independent stance necessary for impartial inspection and risks wrestling agency for school improvement away from the very people best placed to enact it: school leaders.
Consider the scenario where an “Ofsted approved” strategy is at odds with a school’s strategic direction, informed by its understanding of the needs of its pupils and community.
Should the school’s leaders feel compelled to follow a prescribed path for fear of repercussions during subsequent inspections? Where would this leave principles of school agency and governance?
And what of the risk of reinforcing a singular, possibly myopic, approach to educational quality, stifling innovation and adaptive practice in a diverse educational ecosystem?
The inspection cycle
Most worrying would be the situation where a school follows inspectors’ advice and performance suffers as a result. We might wonder where accountability would sit in this instance, come the next inspection.
The periodic nature of inspections also raises questions. If school improvement is perceived as an event tied to Ofsted visits every four years, it undervalues the continuous and nuanced process that school improvement inherently is. Effective school improvement is not episodic and uncontextualised but dynamic and iterative, an ongoing journey of development that does not align neatly with inspection cycles.
The idea that improvement is brought about by external advisers dropping in with clipboards (or the laptop equivalent) every four years fails to grasp what the system has learned about school improvement: it requires the flow of capacity and implementation as much as it requires external advice.
If it’s advice from peers that school leaders need, let’s use the benefits of school groups and tools like peer review to provide it. Not inspection.
Keep your distance
This is not to say that inspection serves no improvement function. His Majesty’s chief inspector, Amanda Spielman, was right to argue, early in her tenure, that Ofsted should be a force for improvement.
Part of inspection activity’s value is in its diagnosis. It’s a form of evaluation that helps us to see where schools and the system have strengths and weaknesses.
Preserving a distance between inspection activity and school improvement maintains a clear distinction between evaluation and intervention, ensuring that Ofsted remains a diagnostic tool rather than becoming a greater prescriptive agent.
Historically, Ofsted’s forays into advocating specific practices have led to the propagation of now-discredited methods, only rectified through subsequent myth busting. We should think carefully before heading down this path.
None of this is a slight on inspectors, many of whom are successful school leaders in their own right. Nor am I arguing that conversations with inspectors are without value to leaders. Opportunities to talk, debate and reflect can be incredibly powerful.
Release the pressure
My sense is that the real concern is about the overly high-stakes nature of inspection.
If that’s the case then let’s make that the target of reform. Let’s talk about the appropriateness and necessity of graded judgements. And let’s also talk about the consequences of inspection.
Is intervention currently calibrated intelligently enough? Might there be other regulatory steps - perhaps school improvement-related - that sit between an Ofsted outcome and sponsorship/rebrokering?
Maybe. But none of these require us to recast Ofsted itself as a school improver.
There are better avenues for enhancing school improvement capacity in the system. Advocating for Ofsted to take a greater role in improvement, while simultaneously calling for it to rein in its influence, is indeed ironic like the “traffic jam when you’re already late”.
And who would’ve thought that figures?
Steve Rollett is deputy CEO of the Confederation of School Trusts
