It was our IT department that realised first,” one college principal recalls. “They spotted a sudden spike in web traffic on the college website from Ofsted. We knew what it meant. Not long afterwards, the phone rang.”
It was that phone conversation - a potentially critical moment in the career of a chief executive. Receiving “The Call” from Ofsted means only one thing: the inspectors are coming.
Within minutes, the message spreads from the senior leaders to the furthest outposts of the campus, which buzzes with nervous activity. Inspection action plans, honed over years, are hurriedly put into practice.
In a high-stakes accountability system, the judgements made by inspectors can make or break careers. Accordingly, planning for routine inspections has become a major activity in further education providers of all shapes and sizes.
This inevitable distraction from the core educational business of teaching and learning has led some to questions as to whether there could be another way of holding colleges and schools to account.
In recent years, there has been no shortage of organisations - from the Liberal Democrats to the teaching unions - calling for Ofsted to be reformed or even abolished.
The impact of inspections in terms of educational improvement is also disputed. A 2004 study looking at the direct effects of school inspections on student achievement in English secondaries found “small but negative effects in the year of the school visit”.
Indeed, Frank Coffield, an emeritus professor of education at the UCL Institute of Education and a constant thorn in the side of the inspectorate, has long argued that Ofsted does “more harm than good”.
But it doesn’t have to be like this. Over the past decade, there has been a groundswell of support, particularly in the school sector, for a “self-improving system”, in which institutions and professionals take responsibility for their own standards and accountability.
In its 2015 Blueprint for a Self-Improving System, the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) posited an accountability model in which the inspectorate “has moved towards a model that holds trusts and federations of schools to account for the quality of support and challenge they provide”. In short, a model in which institutions hold themselves and one another to account - with an inspectorate simply existing to ensure that the system is working.
To FE professionals in England who have worked in institutions bruised by a critical Ofsted report, this may sound like an educational utopia. But it’s remarkably similar to a radical new approach to inspection that is already in place - and far closer to home than you might realise.
Routine, four-yearly inspections of Scottish colleges were scrapped in 2018 and replaced by dry-sounding Evaluative Report and Enhancement Plans.
These set out the areas in which colleges believe themselves to be working well, and those aspects in need of improvement. Colleges give themselves one of six grades in three overarching areas: outcomes and impact; leadership and quality culture; and the delivery of learning and services to support learning. They also provide evidence of trends in performance against outcome agreement measures and priorities, and detail the college’s response to Scottish government priorities.
But this isn’t just a case of colleges praising themselves: their findings are then assessed by HMI inspectors from Education Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council (SFC).
Last month, the first set of reports for 2017-18 was published. And colleges seem to have taken well to the new system, if their self-assessment grades are anything to go by. Twelve out of the 26 FE colleges in Scotland whose reports have been published were graded “very good” for student outcomes, 10 received a “good” grade and four were rated “satisfactory”.
In “delivery of learning and services to support learning”, 14 colleges were rated “very good” and 10 “good”. Finally, on leadership, five colleges were graded “excellent”, 11 “very good” and the remaining 10 were “good”.
To readers working at an English FE provider, this may sound like little more than an exercise in patting oneself on the back. But Janie McManus, Education Scotland’s strategic director of scrutiny, says the new system is actually more rigorous than the one that preceded it.
“What we had before was that colleges were subject to external reviews by HMI - they lasted about a week and were every four years,” she explains. “We had a quality framework we would inspect against, and there were no grades published. Instead, we published ‘effectiveness statements’, which previously had been ‘confidence statements’.
“But we didn’t feel that let us engage well enough with the learner journey. So we developed a new framework and, as part of that, collaborated with the Scottish Funding Council and colleges themselves.
“We want to empower institutions. We want a self-improvement-focused approach that is focusing on what is working well and identifying action for improvement.”
You could be forgiven for thinking that this system would lower the level of public accountability, but college leaders believe the opposite has been the case. While the reports are written by the colleges, they are subject to “moderation arrangements” involving HMI from Education Scotland and SFC staff.
They are also part of the wider outcome-agreement process - the contracts between colleges and the SFC that set out what colleges have to deliver in return for their funding. Inspectors also regularly visit colleges and scrutinise the evidence they supply. “This is moving from an exam every four years to something more like continuous assessment,” says SFC director John Kemp.
“Instead of seeing quality as something [colleges] worry about every four or five years, we want them to see it as something they think about constantly as part of their activity. It is about enhancement and self-reflection, but with a rigorous input from Education Scotland. It is not a traditional inspection.
“We have worked closely with colleges on this. The feedback has been positive from the sector as a whole.”
Beyond this, colleges have also found themselves accountable to other stakeholders in a much more public way. In addition to preparing an annual report on the state of the sector as a whole, Audit Scotland now also investigates the challenges faced by individual colleges. And the Scottish Parliament’s Public Audit Committee has called a number of principals to appear in front of MSPs to explain their colleges’ financial troubles.
One of those who has found themselves in front of politicians in recent years is Annette Bruton, at the time principal of Edinburgh College. Bruton had previously been one of Scotland’s chief inspectors, so has a unique perspective on inspections and accountability in Scottish FE.
The previous inspection regime, she says, was not sufficiently nuanced. “The prevailing principles are that, in terms of improvement, self-assessment is best, but external support and challenge strengthens that,” she adds.
Bruton explains that the problem with a system of self-improvement is that it can only work while leaders have the necessary resources and control - otherwise there is too little “room for manoeuvre”. Where control over what a college can offer (and how) lies outside that institution, “the captain of the ship ceases to be the captain of the ship and becomes a member of the crew like everyone else”.
Bruton explains that Scottish college leaders are now accountable not only to inspectors but also to the SFC. Audit Scotland is also increasingly showing an interest in individual colleges, and the Public Accounts Committee is reaching out to hold individuals to account.
“There is a danger that the landscape could become a little muddled,” she warns. “But I also don’t look south of the border and wish that had been me. It looks like [colleges in England] are putting their focus on passing an inspection, rather than their students. I don’t think I ever felt more held to account in my entire life than when I was principal of Edinburgh College.”
Bruton argues that the new system of self-assessment is not “harder or easier” for colleges, but simply “different”. She explains: “When [inspectors] came in every four years, you could plan your defence. This way, you are being held to account for your own judgement. It shifted the balance of proof.
“Of course, people can put a spin on what they present, but inspectors will look at performance indicators. You can’t run away from the outcomes. This system is less disruptive and stressful than putting all your eggs in that one basket every four years, but it certainly didn’t feel easy.”
On this, McManus is in full agreement: there may not be routine inspections, but Scottish colleges are by no means being let off the hook. “Inspectors are going into colleges on a regular and ongoing basis,” she says. “They are having evaluative conversations throughout the year.
“When the plans come to us, we have teams that look at those along with the SFC to say, ‘We can endorse what you are saying about your college going forward.’ It has developed over the past two years, but the emphasis we have put on it is on colleges working with their stakeholders. It is about our approaches to scrutiny focusing on improvement, and colleges being really responsible for improvement. It is ongoing scrutiny activity.”
And while removing routine inspections might take away that sense of dread experienced in the run-up to an Ofsted visit, this doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a watering down of public accountability - or that anyone gets an easy ride.
So, could a similar system work in colleges in England? And (whisper it), could it lead to a new approach to accountability without Ofsted?
Coffield says he can imagine a world without the inspectorate “very easily”. He stresses that he supports some sort of external evaluation, but would favour, for example, leaders from different parts of the country challenging each other’s self-assessment. “In some ways that is more rigorous than Ofsted, because those are people who really know how to run schools,” he adds. “Some people talk about it like it is Ofsted or nothing, but there are lots of systems out there.”
Julia Belgutay is deputy FE editor for Tes.
She tweets @JBelgutay
This article originally appeared in the 5 April 2019 issue under the headline “Imagine a world without Ofsted”
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