Ofsted will end the transition period it granted schools to enable staff to develop curriculum plans in line with its latest education inspection framework (EIF) but it has said this will not result in a “cliff edge” for achieving a “good” judgement.
The move came as part of a series of tweaks to Ofsted’s school inspection handbook. Below are the most important changes.
1. Transition period on curriculum will come to an end
The transition period was initially created to acknowledge that schools might need time to adjust to the new curriculum focus in Ofsted inspections when the EIF launched in 2019. It was originally intended to last for a year but was extended by two more years because of the Covid pandemic.
Ofsted put in place temporary arrangements that applied to how it assessed the curriculum intent of a school. These arrangements applied where inspectors were considering whether to award a “good” judgement for a school’s quality of education.
The 2019 framework introduced the quality of education grade and Ofsted assesses this, in part, through looking at the intent, implementation and impact of the curriculum.
Ofsted criteria for being good on curriculum intent include:
- Leaders adopt or construct a curriculum that is ambitious and designed to give all pupils, particularly disadvantaged pupils and including pupils with SEND (special educational needs and disabilities), the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life. This is either the national curriculum or a curriculum of comparable breadth and ambition.
- The school’s curriculum is coherently planned and sequenced towards cumulatively sufficient knowledge and skills for future learning and employment.
During the extended transition period, Ofsted inspectors have been able to rate a school as “good” for curriculum intent if, on the above points, “this is not yet fully the case, it is clear from leaders’ actions that they are in the process of bringing this about and are making any necessary amendments in response to the pandemic”.
This transition period will come to an end in September.
Chris Russell, Ofsted’s national director for education, said in a blog that the changes do not mean the inspectorate is introducing a “cliff edge” for achieving a judgement of “good”.
He added: “We recognise that you are likely to always be revising elements of your curriculum. We will not suddenly expect you to meet every single criterion to remain ‘good’. Inspectors will continue to use the best-fit approach that is set out in the handbooks to reach a judgement of ‘good’.”
2. New grade descriptors
Ofsted has said that the transitional arrangements will be replaced with a new grade descriptor that has been added to the quality of education judgement from September.
It says this acknowledges that settings are no longer facing emergency measures connected with Covid and are taking longer-term approaches to return pupils and learners to the curriculum.
The wording of this grade descriptor for “good” in the school inspection handbook from this September is as follows: “The curriculum may undergo necessary changes (for example, following a review by senior leaders or to take account of Covid-19) and certain aspects may be more developed than others.
“Where this is the case, these changes do not prevent all pupils having access to an appropriately broad and ambitious curriculum. Where adaptations to curriculum breadth are made for particular pupils, there is a clear rationale for why this is in those pupils’ interests, and, where appropriate, there is a clear plan for returning all pupils to studying the full curriculum.”
3. School inspections renamed
Another key change to the inspection handbook is the renaming of two of the main types of school inspection.
From the start of the new academic year, the updated school inspection handbook will see Section 5 inspections now referred to as “graded inspections” and Section 8 inspections of good and outstanding schools called “ungraded inspections”.
Ofsted has said the purpose of each inspection type and how they are carried out remains unchanged. The inspectorate said the change in name is “simply aimed at promoting a better understanding of the types of inspection Ofsted conducts and why, especially among parents”.
4. Moving beyond an emergency response to Covid
The inspectorate has said that it is aware that Covid continues to have an “impact on early years settings, schools and further education providers, and is likely to affect how they make decisions for some time”.
However, it said that education providers are moving on from an emergency response to the pandemic and returning to more usual ways of working.
To reflect this, Ofsted has said that paragraphs regarding temporary Covid-19 measures have now been incorporated into the main sections of each of its handbooks. This is to make it clear that inspectors will continue to take account of issues that providers may be facing.
In his blog, Mr Russell adds: “For example, we have placed a clear expectation that conversations between leaders and the lead inspector will continue to include a discussion on the impact of Covid-19.”
5. Predecessor schools’ inspection judgements
Ofsted’s updated schools inspection handbook has been amended to include a section on “new schools”, which clarifies that if a school changes its unique reference number (URN), which can happen if a maintained school becomes an academy, it “legally becomes a new school and judgements of the predecessor school are not those of the new school”.
The new handbook goes on to say that academy schools account for most new schools. It says these include “free schools, former maintained schools that have voluntarily converted to become academies (academy converters), and former maintained schools that were judged as “inadequate” by Ofsted and were directed by the secretary of state to become academies”.
The handbook adds: “Judgements made about a predecessor school with a different URN are not judgements about the new school, even if the new school is, or seems to be, substantially the same provision. Inspectors may look at the performance of any predecessor school as part of pre-inspection planning.
“They can look at this data to consider whether the new academy has improved on, or declined from, its predecessor’s performance and whether it has tackled any areas of weakness or built on strengths from the predecessor school. However, inspectors will take care not to give undue weight to any progress or attainment compared with those of the predecessor.”
This clarification is particularly significant as the Department for Education is pushing ahead with plans to be able to academise schools on the basis of two consecutive “requires improvement” judgements - even in cases where one of the judgements relates to a predecessor school.
6. Switching inspection types
The inspection handbook has been updated to show how Ofsted’s regional directors can change the type of inspection a “good” school can receive if it no longer believes it is likely to improve to achieve an “outstanding” grade.
It says that where a “good and improving” school no longer believes that they are “outstanding”, a regional director may decide to cancel a graded inspection of the school (previously known as section 5) - which would have allowed it to become “outstanding” - and hold an ungraded inspection instead, meaning it would remain graded as “good”.
