Ofsted has been accused of promoting the “snake oil” school-improvement industry by speaking at an event on the new inspection framework that is charging hundreds of pounds per ticket.
Professor Daniel Muijs, head of research at the education watchdog, is speaking at a Westminster Insights conference on the draft-inspection framework next month.
At £390 (£325 plus VAT) for a teacher, the tickets are twice as much as some cash-strapped schools’ entire annual budget for staff continuing professional development (CPD).
Advertising for the conference promises it will “provide greater clarification and guidance on what the new education inspection framework will mean in practice and discuss how the planned changes will affect the way Ofsted inspects schools”.
Professor Muijs will speak on the latest updates to the framework, present Ofsted research and outline the “curriculum quality indicators that have informed the evaluation criteria for the new framework”.
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Ofsted’s chief inspector, Amanda Spielman, has promised the new framework would “sound the death knell” of a “school-improvement industry” divorced from real learning.
“Perhaps Amanda Spielman should tell Daniel Muijs, Ofsted’s head of research, that he is actively promoting, rather than sounding the death knell, of the school-improvement industry,” National Education Union joint general-secretary Mary Bousted told Tes.
“It is, quite simply, unbelievable that Professor Muijs could ever have thought this was an appropriate thing to do. I expect Professor Muijs to reconsider and to withdraw from this speaking engagement. If he does not, he is part of the ‘snake oil’ school-improvement industry that Ofsted declares school leaders should pay no heed to.”
Publicity for the conference promises teachers will: “Learn how to develop a broader and more balanced curriculum that is right for your school from the headteachers of three of the 23 pilot schools that took part in the second phase of the Ofsted curriculum research.”
But Ms Spielman has said she does not expect schools to “spend a single penny” preparing for the new curriculum-focused inspection framework.
“That is why we have put out so much explanatory material, and why we continue to run events on the proposals across the country,” she has said.
“You already have enough demands on tighter budgets without the supposed necessity of preparing for a new Ofsted framework adding more.”
An Ofsted spokesperson said: “We regularly share our research and insight at a wide range of events, but these presentations are absolutely not designed to help schools prepare for inspections.
“There is no secret formula behind our inspections and we repeatedly tell schools that there is no such thing as an Ofsted-approved curriculum.”
Ofsted will introduce a new inspection framework in September that is intended to place more emphasis on a rich curriculum and penalise “exam factory” schools.
Advocates say the changes will be “era-defining”, incentivising schools to revamp their curriculums and changing how school leaders think of their roles.
But critics have questioned whether Ofsted can be neutral when assessing curriculums, arguing that the schools watchdog favours knowledge-rich approaches.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT headteachers’ union, has warned that school leaders were “worried” by the planned changes.
And in January the regulator drew fire from the NEU teaching union for showing a draft of the new inspection handbook to a group representing multi-academy trusts before it was officially published.
