Ofsted inspectors are less likely to judge a primary school as “inadequate” if they have awarded the watchdog’s lowest grade to another school in the previous inspection they carried out, research suggests.
A study has found that inspectors are 40 per cent less likely to grade a primary as “inadequate” if they reached the same judgement in the inspection they undertook immediately before.
Researchers say the decreasing likelihood in awarding the lowest grade could be due to the “consequences of the decision”, experts have said, “given that such a judgement often results in headteachers losing their job”.
“Inspectors might just not be able to stomach doing it twice in succession,” the report states.
While the study uncovered evidence of this pattern for primary schools, there was no evidence of such a pattern for secondaries.
The findings come from a study of “sequence effects”, looking at whether the judgement an inspection team reaches about a school is affected by the judgement they reached about the school they inspected immediately beforehand.
Calls for more transparency
The joint study between the University of Southampton and University College London used data from more than 25,000 school inspections conducted in England between 2012 and 2019.
The study, which was funded by the Nuffield Foundation, comes amid increasing concerns about the impact of a negative Ofsted grade after a coroner concluded that an Ofsted inspection contributed to the death of the headteacher Ruth Perry.
However, the study warns that until “greater clarity” is provided about how inspectors are assigned to schools and there is more complete data on the inspection process, “we have to remain somewhat cautious about these findings”.
The study also warns that it is possible that Ofsted could ”choose the sequence of schools that they assign to an inspector in ways that would generate such patterns even in the absence of sequential bias”.
‘Still much to learn about inspections’ validity’
UCL’s Professor John Jerrim, co-author of the study and a former special adviser on research at Ofsted, said: “Although we have now provided some evidence on the issues of potential biases, there still is much to learn about inspections’ validity, consistency and reliability. It’s therefore pleasing to see Ofsted having a renewed focus on such issues.”
Co-authors Christian Bokhove and Sam Sims said: “While we have provided the first large-scale investigation of sequential bias in school inspections, our efforts have, to some extent, been hampered by challenges with obtaining some of the data we need. Moving forward, it is imperative that Ofsted becomes more transparent, and opens up details about its inspection processes and outcomes to greater external scrutiny.”
Last week, the the chief inspector Sir Martyn Oliver revealed that Ofsted inspectors would stop conducting subject deep dives during ungraded inspections from September.
It comes after some primary leaders warned that they are expected to have a deeper knowledge of subject areas than their setting allows them to.
The sector has previously expressed concern about how primary schools are inspected after a Tes investigation revealed that small primaries are five times more likely to be graded “inadequate” by the watchdog.
For the latest education news and analysis delivered directly to your inbox every weekday morning, sign up to the Tes Daily newsletter
