“We are not ‘raising the bar’.”

Amanda Spielman’s reassuring message to schools last month about her controversial new inspection framework was clear and to the point.

But could it be one that the Ofsted chief inspector lives to regret? It may have proved useful in winning over heads, spooked by a new focus on the curriculum that almost half of primaries scored poorly on in trials.

However, it is also a major break with the past. School inspection revamps are an expected part of the Ofsted cycle that have almost always been about “raising the bar”. They have worked hand in glove with government efforts to “drive up standards” and push schools on to even greater achievements.

That’s why they have come around so frequently. Don’t let schools get too comfy, has been the thinking. Changes things up and keep teachers on their toes.

The last revision to the framework in 2015, carried out by Ms Spielman’s predecessor, Sir Michael Wilshaw, was the exception that proved the rule. But that was from an inspectorate on the back foot where the focus had to be on greater consistency of judgements. Prior to that, Sir Michael had been keen to talk about the need to “raise the bar”.

When ‘satisfactory’ became ‘unsatisfactory’

And so it was with his predecessors. In August 2010, the Association of School and College Leaders actually begged Ofsted to stop “raising the bar”. But a bullish inspectorate, then led by Christine Gilbert, responded by saying: “People tell us they value our work in driving improvement and it is right that we should raise expectations whenever the school inspection framework is revised.”

The previous year she had “raised the bar” by putting more emphasis on raw exam results - unadjusted for pupil background when judging schools - admitting that things would be “tougher” for schools with “poor” data.

Gilbert’s predecessor, David Bell, was also explicit in raising the bar with his revised inspection framework in September 2005. And two years previously, he had even decided that any school with too many “satisfactory” lessons would, in fact, be judged “unsatisfactory”.

Ms Spielman, by contrast, has opted to comfort schools worried about being downgraded. It is an unusual message to take to the general public that relies on Ofsted to uphold standards and to the ministers that demand them. 

A difficult promise for Ofsted to keep

But its potential problems go much deeper than mere presentational issues. This is because Ofsted is not only pledging not to toughen things up, it also has a “commitment to keeping the overall proportions of schools achieving each grade roughly the same”.

That will not prevent some schools from moving up or down in grades within the framework, the watchdog has stressed, so long as overall proportions remain constant. But for an inspectorate supposed to be grading each school “without fear or favour on the quality of education as we see it”, that could be a very difficult promise to keep.

It is hard not to draw the obvious parallel with the comparable outcomes approach to grading exams that took centre stage at Ofqual when Ms Spielman was chair at the exams regulator.

The basic philosophy was exactly the same as her stance at Ofsted today - when introducing a new national assessment system, ensure that schools are not penalised because of it. So while a pupil’s exams were still marked and graded individually, at a macro level Ofqual ensured that the proportion of grades remained broadly the same as previous years once the cohort’s prior attainment was taken into account.

For exams, the process was both controversial and complicated. But you could at least do it with all the marked scripts in at the same time, allowing you to work out what adjustments were needed to ensure the overall grade profile was correct before you actually released the results.

Ofsted will not have that luxury. Its school inspection reports will be released one at a time, when they are ready, just as they are now. And inspectors will be expected to base their grades on what they find at each school.

Confident

Nevertheless, Luke Tryl, the watchdog’s head of strategy, is confident Ofsted will be able to “set the bar in the right place” to maintain the existing grade profile.

“Through inspector training, we ensure that inspectors understand what the different grades might look like,” he told Tes. “Through our pilots, we are able to see what profiles inspectors are giving against current judgements. We can then recalibrate training accordingly...

“At the same time, our reports go through a quality control process to make sure the right judgements are being given.”

But the sample, used in the pilots that this exercise will be based on, is unrepresentative. At the very least, it does not include any “inadequate” schools. And what happens if, several months into the framework, the grading profile does change? What if, despite Ofsted’s pledge, the proportion of “outstanding” schools starts to drift away from where it was before?

Does Ofsted then start to tell inspectors to get tougher or be easier with schools to get things back to where they should be? Does it start giving inspectors quotas for particular grades? Or does it start revising the grades it has already given out?

And this is where the explanations start to dry up. Mr Tryl has been clear to Tes that “this is not comparable outcomes or quotas”. But he has not offered any other suggestion as to what will happen if Ofsted does not get its grading profile right first time.

Does the watchdog have a secret solution up its sleeve? Or is this potentially huge problem simply the result of Ofsted not thinking through the full implications of its well-meant reassurance for schools? If there is a plan B then no one is letting on.

William Stewart is news editor at Tes