As some of us predicted earlier this year, thousands of teachers and teaching assistants have now fallen uncontrollably in love with many of those newly branded “deep-diving” Ofsted inspectors. 

Many an inspector will now play a starring role as the newly invited partner at the family table this Christmas.

“Hi, Auntie Sue. This is my new boyfriend, Graham.”

“Ah, yes, the deep-diver! I’ve heard all about you, Graham.”  

Or they may just turn up unannounced, in line with the stated plan of the new government. 

All of which marks a long-overdue step forward for Christmas dinners. The pity is that we won’t all be able to have the benefit of having an Ofsted flame join us for dinner. It’s quite clear that we need it. Too many Christmas cooks have been coasting for way too long. 

The Ofsted Christmas dinner

It may be a little unclear precisely how or why, but meal standards are bound to be higher if someone at the table were to begin passing around the judgement and dishing out the grades. 

Doesn’t matter whether the inspector concerned has any kind of personal record of preparing a quality meal themselves, or whether they were better known for creating a dog’s dinner. We just need to get it done. That’s how it works now.     

We need more rigour and accountability in that kitchen of complacency, more checking among the various stakeholders at the table that they all know what they are eating and why.

It’s all about identifying the “intent, implementation and impact”, from the overall intent behind the meal itself to the longer-term impact of those Brussels sprouts.  

All concerned are bound to be so much better cooks and consumers at future Christmases for being handed a simple set of grades for the overall effectiveness of the dinner, the quality of the food, the behaviour of those assembled, the personal development seen, and the quality of the leadership shown. Nothing glib, patronising and insulting about that at all.  

Optional trimmings

Traditional Michael Gove supporters will rightly urge the inspector to focus on the quality of the great EBacc turkey and on the more random (sorry, academic) Ebacc optional trimmings: parsnips, carrots, cranberry sauce and Latin, say. These are plainly better than all those peripheral plates of sausages, potatoes, stuffing, bread sauce and the like.  

Those lucky enough to have an inspector at the table will also enjoy that special moment when he or she announces the new Ofsted party trick and deep dives into the plum pudding or the now ubiquitous block of stollen. 

As he delves deeper and deeper, slightly mystified diners will be observed and quizzed on what the pudding consists of, and whether everyone shares the same aims and objectives when eating it. 

Giant turkey

At the risk of perhaps over-egging the Christmas pudding, this is just another way of saying that Ofsted has not really changed at all this year, despite those so-called reforms. 

As long as it continues to turn up like some unwanted relative at a Christmas dinner, passing judgement on meals rather than helping to prepare them, it will continue to be a costly cause of resentment and distress to all present. 

The new deep-diving inspectors might come beautifully gift-wrapped. But, underneath, they turn out to be of no more use than they were before. 

People need to stop defending this giant turkey on the grounds that “the parents like it”. If those parents were similarly treated, and publicly graded for their parenting, they might feel rather different.

Stephen Petty is head of humanities at Lord Williams’s School in Thame, Oxfordshire