Getting rid of school inspection grades would “significantly” diminish Ofsted’s ability to provide an overview of the school system, chief inspector Amanda Spielman has warned today.
Ofsted published its latest annual report on Thursday, providing an overview of the sectors that the watchdog inspects for 2022-23.
At a briefing launching the new report, Tes asked Ms Spielman whether ditching single-word school inspection grade judgements - a move that many are calling for - would make it more difficult for Ofsted to report on the state of the country’s education system.
In response, she said: “Yes, I think system visibility would diminish significantly without overall effectiveness judgments.”
Ms Spielman also warned that there are around 20 or 30 government policies “that are currently hung around” Ofsted’s school effectiveness judgements - including academy orders, whereby the Department for Education intervenes at schools deemed to be underperforming.
Ms Spielman also stressed that Ofsted’s grading system was “entirely in line” with the models used by other public sector inspectorates.
Speaking during the briefing, she said: “First of all, what we do is entirely in line with the model that’s operated by pretty much every other inspectorate. Hospitals are inspected using the same grade structure, and police forces are inspected using the same grade structure.”
Pressure to get rid of Ofsted grades
Ms Spielman added that “both the concept of an overall grade and the specific set of grades, down to the word, are used right across the system”, saying that “there is a national framework of public accountability for public services”.
”One of the things that’s confusing in all this is whether people are saying schools should get a special opt-out; they should be the only public service to which this framework doesn’t apply. Or is it there shouldn’t be any national framework of public accountability?” she said.
There has been a major debate on the future of single-word school inspection judgements this year, with Labour pledging to consult on scrapping them and replacing them with a scorecard if elected.
The Association of School and College Leaders also called for these one-word judgements to be dropped earlier this year. And this week two reports suggesting widespread Ofsted reform have recommended that graded school judgements should be scrapped.
Ms Spielman said today ”that it’s absolutely legitimate for people to have those debates” but stressed that it is not up to Ofsted to make the decision.
“It’s very clearly a matter for government to decide that it wants to run the regulatory system in a different way,” she said.
Former schools minister Nick Gibb spoke in defence of the current grading system when giving evidence to the Commons Education Select Committee inquiry into school inspection earlier this month. He warned that an inspection report without the single grade would be “opaque”, and raised concern that people might then pick certain phrases out of reports like a “theatre review”.
Earlier today the findings of a survey by the NAHT school leaders’ union were published, showing that four in five school leaders lack confidence in Ofsted inspections.
It also revealed that heads are left feeling “sick, stressed and terrified” at the prospect of inspections.
