We must have high expectations and standards of what takes place in the classroom every day - I don’t think anyone would dispute that. It’s important that schools and teachers are properly held to account for our role in education. Children only get one chance to go to school and the quality of their education has an impact on the rest of their lives.

Although teachers are almost entirely well-motivated people who want to do the best job they can, it’s no different from any other walk of life in that, without regular and effective monitoring, things slide and people can stop doing some of the things that they are supposed to do. It is important that we have checks and balances in the system and I have always been happy to be held to account in a thorough and systematic way for my work.

But accountability has gone wrong in schools: processes are often clumsy and the stakes are too high.

Rather than a ”healthy pressure” that keeps schools on their toes and helps to motivate, the system is full of fear, and dominated by discussion about “what Ofsted is looking for?”. This has led to the introduction of clunky processes, primarily as evidence-gathering exercises for external accountability, which take up precious resources that would be better directed in the classroom. A thirst for evidence of improvement rather than actual improvement has added to workload pressures and disillusioned many; this, in turn, has added to the recruitment and retention challenges across our schools.

Does it have to be this way?

It’s easy to blame everything on Ofsted and, while they are clearly a central part of the accountability problem, it’s important to acknowledge a positive change in tone and approach in recent years.

Campaigns led by good people at the top of the organisation, such as Amanda Spielman and Sean Harford, are focused on important issues such as tackling teachers’ workload and debunking outdated ideas and processes that exist across schools. Ofsted has also become so accessible these days - it’s incredible how easy it is to tweet, email or talk to senior officials quite freely, and get answers to queries or concerns that might otherwise trouble us.

The myth-busting campaign has been a genuinely useful tool in helping schools to free themselves from outdated practices such as graded lesson observations, arbitrary measures of pupil progress and marking policies requiring lengthy written comments. My only gripe, I suppose, is the term “myths”. These “myths” aren’t the stuff of supernatural beings from ancient fictitious kingdoms; most of them they actually happened in schools in the past 10 years.

It was an Ofsted inspector who sat in my office and told me that we couldn’t be “outstanding” unless reading writing and maths progress was 3.7 APS or above in every key stage 2 class. It was an Ofsted inspector who told me what “they” were looking for in terms of marking: unmarked books were “inadequate”, books simply marked equalled “requires improvement”, marked books with next step comments meant “good”, and “outstanding” could only be achieved if children were then obviously responding to the marked comments (ideally using purple or green pen). It was also an Ofsted inspector who led me around my own school asking me to make judgements of individual lessons based on 10 minutes of being in a lesson and then fed back to me as to whether I was right or wrong.

The way forward for Ofsted

But this small issue of terminology aside, it really does feel like those at the top of Ofsted understand the issues that inspections cause and that there is a much more positive dialogue taking place around school improvement and accountability. With rumours now afoot that there are more changes ahead, here are three things I’d like to see as positive reforms to the inspectorate.

1. Audit safeguarding in every school, every year 

Over 1,200 schools in England have not been inspected in the past seven years, and almost 100 have not been inspected since 2006. With so many schools not having faced external inspection for so long, it is completely unacceptable that their safeguarding processes have not undergone external audit or inspection during this time.

In the same way that a school’s finances are externally audited annually, so too should their safeguarding processes. The current safeguarding audits that take place in schools on a short inspection (Section 8) are a good basis for an annual “check” that should happen in every school, regardless of its grading. The current regulatory arrangements suggest a system that values a school’s finances as more important than keeping children safe.

2. Depersonalise school reports

While information on how well schools are performing should, of course, be in the public domain, the current process of written reports describing school leaders who can be identified either by name or by description places unnecessary pressure on individuals. This is often why people avoid taking the next steps into leadership posts. There’s no problem with leaders being held to account for improving their schools, but I don’t see why public and personal descriptions of leaders (positive or negative) must be a part of the process.

If a school drops to “requires Improvement”, why can’t there be a period “behind closed doors” when Ofsted, the local authority or trust and governors work intensively to address any issues? Only if they are not rectified should perhaps the report then be made public. Transparency of data and any gradings is fine; it is the “damning reports” that follow that often make it untenable for school leaders to stay in post. Currently, in Northampton, there is only a single headteacher who has been in post for more than three years out of the 11 mainstream secondary schools. This is catastrophic and there must be a recognition of the undue pressure that personal and public accountability brings.

Positive reports can be just as problematic, with glowing letters posted publicly attributing the school’s success to its “uncompromising” or “inspirational” headteacher. Whether or not these statements are true, they feed the “hero head” narrative, which is counterproductive to authentic and wholesome school improvement.

3. Remove ‘outstanding’ and simplify the Ofsted categories

The “outstanding” tag has become such a distraction for schools, which spend their time obsessed about achieving this status rather than just getting better. It also often drives insular behaviour from those schools with the top grade, which are protective of their status and are, therefore, reluctant to play their part in supporting other schools and the wider system. Worse still, it is widely thought that the pursuit of “outstanding” has led to a narrowing of the curriculum, back-door exclusions and off-rolling to try to keep a school in the right place in the league table.

Recent research has shown that schools in disadvantaged areas are 10 times less likely to become “outstanding” than those in more affluent areas, which makes a mockery of the top judgement. The banners and signs that are splattered around schools in leafy villages and well-heeled parts of the country are often a reflection of their intake and funding rather than any “secret sauce” that can be replicated elsewhere. In my experience, the pursuit of “outstanding” is more of a hindrance than a help in improving overall standards across schools, and I would be pleased to see the back of it.

Switching to alternative gradings would allow schools to focus on continuous and sustainable improvements, rather than trying to jump through the almost imaginary hoop of “outstanding”. 

Tom Rees is the executive headteacher at Simon De Senlis Primary School, and the education director at Northampton Primary Academy Trust