Only 5 per cent of state school teachers believe Ofsted is improving the education system, according to survey findings published today.
The findings have been released by the NEU teaching union at its annual conference in Bournemouth.
Asked whether they agreed with the statement that Ofsted is contributing to improvement in the education system, 5 per cent of union members surveyed agreed, 17 per cent neither agreed nor disagreed, 74 per cent disagreed and 4 per cent said they “don’t know”.
In the survey of 1,788 NEU members, just 4 per cent said Ofsted was independent of government and 5 per cent said it was a reliable judge of standards.
Nearly three-quarters of respondents (74 per cent) said they associated Ofsted with “a huge amount” of “unnecessary” extra work, rising to 81 per cent among nursery and primary teachers.
The findings have been released as the NEU four-day conference in Bournemouth opens today.
The survey also found that 39 per cent of those surveyed who are in leadership roles complained of insufficient opportunities to feed into their own school’s inspection.
And a further one in five (21 per cent) complained they have no opportunity to do so.
One respondent said inspections could be “a great opportunity” to have “professional dialogue about progress and how to move students on”.
However, the individual said the “accountability element” meant “we do things in school because that is what Ofsted want, not necessarily because it is in the best interest of the child”.
More than two-thirds (68 per cent) also felt inspections undermine school leaders’ ability to focus on pupil outcomes and 86 per cent felt inspections create harmful burdens within the system.
The NEU also voted today to establish an independent, NEU-backed commission on Ofsted to report on the “reliability of its inspection judgments and to campaign for a new accountability system of ‘collaborative support’ to replace the inspectorate”.
Commenting on the passing of the motion, the NEU’s joint general secretary Mary Bousted said Ofsted had been a ”thorn in the side of both teachers and education for decades”.
She said that, while “no school expects to not have an accountability system in place”, Ofsted represents “all that is wrong about the tick-box approach to education that successive governments have pursued”.
Dr Bousted added that the “unfair and unreliable” inspectorate had ”driven up unnecessary workload and stress for education professionals” for “too long” and was contributing to the number of teachers leaving the profession.
She said: “This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of Ofsted’s establishment, but the National Audit Office has recently concluded that even Ofsted itself doesn’t know if its measures are having the intended impact.
“It’s not right that teachers and school leaders live in dread of the current toxic inspectorate. It needs to go, and we urge government to work with us to create a new approach that is supportive, effective and fair.”
NEU president Daniel Kebede also today criticised Ofsted and called for it to be replaced in his opening speech at the conference.
An Ofsted spokesperson said: “Parents and carers know that Ofsted acts in the best interests of children - and they value the work we do. Over the last 30 years, our work has helped raise standards across all the sectors we inspect. And, following the disruption and distress caused by the pandemic, that work is now more important than ever.”
