An education staffing “crisis” is hampering pupils’ recovery from the pandemic and must be urgently addressed, Ofsted is warning today.
Continued Covid-related staff absences in schools have “slowed the pace of intervention when children need extra help” and delayed the return of enrichment activities, according to the watchdog’s 2021-22 annual report.
Launching the report, Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman said: “Across all age groups in education, careful thought has been given to making up lost learning.
“However, achievement gaps are still wider than before the pandemic, meaning the recovery is far from complete. And it’s clear that in education - and in children’s social care - staffing issues are compounding problems standing in the way of a full recovery.”
The report presents Ofsted’s findings on the state of education in the past academic year.
It says that in 2021-22, Covid-related staff absences in schools left gaps that were not easily filled by the limited number of supply teachers.
High demand made it difficult to recruit supply teachers, leaving schools to use their own staff to cover absences, which increases workloads, the watchdog warned.
Ofsted said: ”Managing with fewer staff slows the pace of intervention when children need extra help.
“And it has delayed the return of sports, drama, music and other enrichment activities that are normally part of the school experience.”
To cope with future challenges, “problems recruiting and retaining staff must be urgently addressed”, it added.
The inspectorate also warned that many schools have found it difficult to access external support services for pupils with mental health issues.
Lengthy waiting lists have placed an extra burden on schools, it said.
SEND: Delays in EHCP assessments
The report warns that there have been delays in assessments for education, health and care plans, and that demand for services has also grown significantly.
Ofsted highlights that nearly 1.5 million school pupils are currently identified as having special educational needs or disabilities (SEND), an increase of almost 77,000 in a year.
The report adds: “With the system under pressure, accurate identification is critical. We know that many children fell behind during the pandemic and need help to catch up, but nonetheless do not have SEND in the normal usage of the term.
“Labelling these children as having SEND is not right for them and also puts an unnecessary burden on the system.”
Rising use of part-time timetables
As reported yesterday by Tes, Ms Spielman has warned that children could “slip out of education” because schools are increasingly using part-time timetables to manage behaviour.
Ofsted has warned that part-time timetabling is “too often” being used in schools unable to manage a child’s additional needs or behavioural problems.
Ms Spielman said using part-time timetables makes sense as a short-term response but that there is a difficulty when it becomes a permanent or semi-permanent arrangement.
Speaking at a press conference this morning, she said: “Obviously at that point, a child is progressively losing more and more of their education, is sliding out of education, and it becomes less and less likely that they can ever reintegrate with that peer group.”
Multi-academy trust inspections
Ms Spielman also said this morning that she is concerned about a “mismatch” whereby Ofsted can inspect only at school level in a multi-academy trust-led system.
The inspectorate has repeated calls to be able to carry out MAT-level inspections in its report today.
While Ofsted does not have the power to inspect at multi-academy trust level, it has been carrying out MAT summary evaluations in which it looks at batches of inspections at schools run by the same trust and uses this as a basis to report on the trust’s support for schools.
Ms Spielman said: “The point we’ve been making for some time now is that the accountability system needs to match the wider education system as it actually operates, not how it operated many years ago.”
She added: “The programme of MAT summary evaluations is a first step in that direction and helps us to build the insight and understanding of the challenges and the ways MATs typically work to help us design our inspection models in the right way…and to create the potential for a broader inspection model that encompasses the higher level of the education system.”
Ms Spielman said DfE discussions about how to regulate MATs were still live and ongoing.
Covid hits inspections
The watchdog’s report raises concern that 64 per cent of all schools have not had a graded inspection in the past five academic years, and 14 per cent have not had one in the past 10 academic years.
The report said this is down to a combination of factors, including that most inspections of “good” schools since 2015 have been ungraded inspections. In addition, “outstanding” schools were exempt from routine inspection between 2012 and 2020.
Schools that become academies are also not reinspected until their third year as an academy, irrespective of the date of their last inspection.
The number of schools that have not faced a full inspection in the past five years has also been affected by routine inspection having been paused for 18 months during the Covid pandemic.
In 2021-22, Ofsted inspections resumed. The watchdog carried out 4,620 school inspections, compared with 5,580 in 2018-19 - the last full year of inspection activity before the pandemic.
Ofsted inspections were halted a week earlier than planned because of rising Covid cases in 2021 as the Omicron wave hit the country.
It restarted in January 2022, but with a limited programme for the first half term that did not draw on contracted inspectors who worked in schools.
The report said that 88 per cent of all state-funded schools are now judged “good” or “outstanding” - up nearly two percentage points from 2021.
This shift was caused by improved outcomes at schools previously graded “requires improvement” or “inadequate”.
Seventy per cent of schools requiring improvement that were inspected last year improved to “good” or “outstanding”. Ofsted inspected 220 previously “inadequate” schools and nearly two-thirds were graded “good” or better; only 5 per cent remained “inadequate”.
