Gillian Keegan has said she is serious about improving Ofsted inspection after a meeting this week with Julia Waters, the sister of headteacher Ruth Perry.
The education secretary has revealed she had met with Ms Perry’s family and was looking at what could now be done to improve inspection.
There has been major controversy surrounding Ofsted inspections since the death of Ms Perry earlier this year.
Her family said that she took her own life after a negative Ofsted inspection; a report published after her death downgraded the school from “outstanding” to “inadequate”.
Ms Keegan was asked about Ofsted during an interview with Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts, who was putting questions from the website’s users to the education secretary.
One parent questioned the use of single-word inspection judgements and Ms Roberts said that “very often” Ofsted are judging things that parents “don’t think are quite so important”.
Ms Keegan defended the use of single-word grades as a means of providing simplicity and points of comparison.
But on the latter point, she added: “Now that is a different question. Are we getting everything right in terms of how we do the report and particularly safeguarding has been questioned, particularly after the tragic death of Ruth Perry?”
Ms Keegan said she met Ms Perry’s sister and a teacher friend this week to “understand all the parts of the journey that she went through and to understand what we can do to make the system better - how we can learn from it and improve it”.
She added: “Genuinely, I am serious about seeing what it is that we can do.”
Ms Perry’s sister Julia Waters has urged headteachers who also work as Ofsted inspectors to hand in their badges.
During a speech at the NAHT school leaders’ union conference last month, Professor Waters also called for an urgent independent review of the watchdog’s culture, systems and framework, adding that she would not stop calling for reform.
Schools minister Nick Gibb has said that the government and Ofsted will be considering whether limiting judgements is the right approach to inspection, after concerns that otherwise strongly performing schools are being downgraded over safeguarding. This concern follows from the report into Caversham Primary School where Ms Perry was head.
Speaking to Times Radio last month, Mr Gibb said: “It’s called a limiting judgement. If a school fails on safeguarding then the whole school fails regardless of the academic standards of the school because of the importance of safeguarding children.”
Ofsted inspectors check whether safeguarding is effective at a school. If it is found to be ineffective, the watchdog is likely to rate the school’s leadership and management and its overall inspection grade as “inadequate”.
Former education secretary Michael Gove raised concerns about the use of limiting judgements in this way following the death of Ms Perry, as her school was downgraded to “inadequate” in a report that found safeguarding was ineffective but rated the school as good for the quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development and early years provision.
