Concerns have been raised after Ofsted admitted that it does not have a central record of the “deep dives” that inspectors have carried out into different subjects this year.
Ofsted carries out deep dives into individual subjects - not always the same ones - as part of school inspections.
Concerns have been raised in the past that certain subjects, such as music and art, have received less scrutiny by inspectors than other subjects.
A former senior Ofsted official requested figures under the Freedom of Information Act on how many deep dives were carried out into individual subjects by inspectors in the spring term of this year.
However, the inspectorate has said it does not have this data collected systematically.
Adrian Gray, a former divisional manager for Ofsted, who submitted the freedom of information (FOI) request, said: “I find this quite astonishing. Unless Ofsted has this information, how can they be sure that they are making a balanced survey of schools’ curriculum?”
He added: “I am not interested in knocking Ofsted but I am interested in helping schools, and I submitted this request to understand which subjects Ofsted chooses to carry out deep dives into, how often and how that process works.”
James Bowen, director of policy at the NAHT school leaders’ union, has also raised concerns about Ofsted’s response.
He said: ”It seems strange and rather surprising that Ofsted wouldn’t be keeping track of the number of deep dives it has been carrying out in each subject.
“Given the important role that deep dives play in inspections, you would have thought Ofsted would be carefully monitoring how often each subject is being looked at and whether some are being scrutinised more often than others.”
As reported by Tes, Mr Gray was previously able to obtain data on the number of times subjects were selected for inspection.
An FOI request he submitted in 2020 revealed major variations in how often different subjects are chosen for deep dives.
Primary school inspectors were more than twice as likely to look at history than geography.
And at secondary schools, 90 per cent of inspections involved deep dives into English compared with 78 per cent in maths and 68 per cent in science.
The figures also revealed that in both primary and secondary inspections, neither arts nor music feature prominently in the deep dives.
In its response to Mr Gray’s latest FOI, Ofsted said that it had been able to provide the data for that request in 2020 “because we had recently carried out some internal analysis and therefore held a complete list of deep dives for the relevant period you requested”.
However, he has been told the inspectorate does not have the same data centrally collected for deep dives carried out on inspections in the spring term of this year.
The response letter says: “In this case, I can confirm that we do not hold collated data in relation to the number and subjects of deep dives that were undertaken during school inspections in the spring term of 2022.
“Although inspectors do record which deep dives they carry out, the information is not recorded systematically in a way that can be easily extracted and collated into a comprehensive list.
“We have considered whether or not there are other ways for us to extract the information you have requested. At present, we do not believe there is a way to do that without a high level of manual intervention; with either a review of published reports or the individual evidence bases for each inspection. This exercise may not be definitive and we consider it likely to exceed the appropriate limits provided by the Act.”
An Ofsted spokesperson said: “We do not need to aggregate information on the number of deep dives undertaken per subject in order to make a balanced assessment of an individual school’s curriculum.
“We inspect all schools against the same criteria, set out in the Education Inspection Framework, and deep dives are just one part of the process. The deep dive methodology uses a sampling approach to subjects at an individual school level.
“The range of subjects sampled allows inspectors to consider relative strengths and weaknesses, with a view to identifying any systemic issues related to the quality of education overall. This robust approach allows us to reach fair and accurate judgements for each individual school.
Ofsted to produce reports on how subjects are being taught
“Over the last two years, we have developed the role of subject lead for each subject across the national curriculum and created a curriculum unit who are currently publishing research reviews on each subject.
“Our aim is that the reviews will support and inform those leading the thinking on subject education. Once we have published all the research reviews, we will gather additional evidence to publish a series of reports looking at how each subject is taught in England’s schools.”
You need a Tes subscription to read this article
Subscribe now to read this article and get other subscriber-only content:
