The government’s failure to address the damage caused by Ofsted inspection judgements is “reckless”, the general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union will warn today.
Speaking at the union’s annual conference this afternoon, Paul Whiteman is also expected to say that schools are being treated as a “sideline” by the government.
Mr Whiteman will strongly criticise the government’s response to calls - including from the Commons Education Select Committee - to reform inspection and replace single-world judgements.
“I am afraid the government response to the Education Select Committee has left a chill in the air,” he will tell delegates in Newport. ”Their complete failure to really address the damage being done is reckless.”
MPs had called on the Department for Education to work with Ofsted to come up with an alternative to single-word grades as a priority.
Demand to replace Ofsted inspection grades
In its response to the committee’s review of Ofsted, the DfE said that while it would “continue to look at alternative systems” to single-word judgements, it believed that “there are significant benefits from having an Ofsted overall effectiveness grade for schools”.
Mr Whiteman will tell school leaders today that the current accountability system is a “diseased root which creates further havoc across the school ecosystem”.
He will warn that it leads to “monumental increases in workload, to never-ending cycles of monitoring and accountability, and, most importantly, to the detriment of our members and their teams’ wellbeing and mental health”.
Mr Whitehouse is expected to call for a reimagining of accountability and inspection. His comments come after Ofsted announced its Big Listen consultation to seek the views of the sector on the future of inspection.
Ofsted chief inspector Sir Martyn Oliver will be speaking at the NAHT conference tomorrow.
Schools ‘starved of funding’
The NAHT general secretary is also set to use his speech to appeal for more school funding, after the union’s latest survey of members showed nearly all schools were relying on donations for classroom essentials.
Rishi Sunak has failed to provide enough funding, Mr Whiteman will say, after the prime minister described education as a “silver bullet” in his speech at the Conservative Party conference last year.
“Too many schools have fallen into disrepair for no other reason than they’ve been starved of funding,” Mr Whiteman is set to tell delegates.
According to the NAHT poll, only 1 per cent of school leaders say they get enough funding to meet all their pupils’ needs.
“The condition of much of the school estate is shameful. What message do we send to young people when we seek to educate them in crumbling buildings?” Mr Whiteman will ask.
He will also query the high turnover of education secretaries.
“I was first elected to be general secretary in 2017. I have met eight different secretaries of state for education over that seven years.”
He will call on the government to provide a “champion [of education] around the Cabinet table”, so that it is not left to unions to convince government to invest in education.
Mr Whiteman will end his speech calling on delegates to take action to ensure that “education is the investment priority” ahead of the upcoming general election.
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “Headteachers across the country are doing an excellent job - day in, day out - ensuring pupils have a world-class education, and on average they are rightly among the highest 10 per cent of earners in the country. At secondary school, heads can receive a total package of well over £130,000, including pension contributions.
“Thanks to our reforms, 90 per cent of schools are now rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’, up from just 68 per cent in 2010. We will continue to work with Ofsted to further improve the inspections system - informed by [chief inspector] Sir Martyn Oliver’s Big Listen exercise.”
DfE workforce data for 2022-23 shows that the median pay of a state school headteacher was £70,831 .
In state schools, the median salary of nursery and primary heads was £67,668 and for secondary heads it was £97,255.
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