Headteachers’ leaders will produce a report next year exploring how a scorecard or dashboard could be introduced to replace single-word Ofsted grades.
As part of this, the Association of School and College leaders (ASCL) is considering whether the watchdog should produce scorecards for both schools and multi-academy trusts (MATs).
The move follows Labour’s announcement that it plans to ditch single-word inspection judgements if it is elected.
Shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson announced at ASCL’s conference earlier this year that a Labour government would consult on replacing Ofsted inspection grades with a school scorecard.
Her speech followed earlier calls to scrap or review Ofsted’s overall inspection grades by ASCL and the Confederation of School Trusts (CST) respectively.
With Labour enjoying an established lead in the polls, there is now an increased focus on the party’s policy agenda ahead of next year’s general election.
Replacing Ofsted school inspection grades
Julie McCulloch, ASCL director of policy, told Tes that school leaders were now considering what a replacement for Ofsted inspection grades might look like.
She said: “We have been working with our council on what a school scorecard or accountability dashboard could include.
“There are a number of questions we are discussing. Should there be a school-level scorecard that sits alongside a trust scorecard?
“We have a system that is already creaking and what we don’t want is to put in another layer of accountability on top of this.
“One of the issues is that we have a system that looks different in different places. There are schools in MATs, there are MATs, single-academy trusts and maintained schools, and within multi-academy trusts there are different approaches taken to delegation and decision making. There is a question of where accountability should sit in this system.”
She told Tes that ASCL was also looking at whether the DfE’s new descriptors of trust quality could be used as part of a trust-level scorecard.
These descriptors were published earlier this year by the DfE as it set out how it makes decisions about academy trust growth and which trusts take on schools.
Ms McCulloch said ASCL would consider if there could be any unintended consequences of these quality descriptors being used for trust-level scorecards.
ASCL is expected to publish a report with its findings in 2024, which will be shared with Labour, the government and Ofsted.
Announcing Labour’s plans earlier this year, Ms Phillipson said that families and schools “deserve better than a system that is high-stakes for staff but low-information for parents”.
She also announced that Labour would introduce an annual review of safeguarding for every state school in England. And Labour has committed to introducing inspection of MATs if elected.
Giving evidence to the Commons Education Select Committee this week, schools minister Nick Gibb said he supported single-word Ofsted inspection judgements.
He said scrapping single-word Ofsted judgements would make the system more opaque and lead to people picking out phrases from school inspection reports “like a theatre review”, which might not accurately reflect the whole report.
At present, Ofsted does not have the power to inspect MATs, despite both the current chief inspector, Amanda Spielman, and her predecessor, Sir Michael Wilshaw, both calling for this.
It does undertake voluntary summary evaluations of MATs - where it produces trust-level findings and recommendations - after carrying out a batch of inspections at schools run by the same MAT.
Tes revealed last month that these evaluations are currently on hold until the end of the current financial year.
