Sector leaders have criticised Ofsted’s refusal to publish the training materials inspectors use to help them make “crucial” decisions about school performance.
Ofsted has refused to publish documents, which are designed to support inspectors’ work in schools, after widespread calls for them to do so from sector leaders, including the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) and the Confederation of School Trusts (CST).
The pressure on the watchdog comes after a series of aide memoire sheets for Ofsted inspectors were circulated on social media.
Concerns have been raised that any school or trust with a serving Ofsted inspector as a member of staff, who has had access to this training, will have more insight than those schools who have not seen these materials, which would be unfair and undermine the watchdog’s credibility.
An Ofsted spokesperson said: “Inspectors assess schools using the education inspection framework and the school inspection handbook, and we would always encourage schools to read those.
“We do not publish inspector training materials as they are specifically designed to support inspection activity.
“And, without the context of our wider training programme, they are incomplete and do not work as guidance for schools. However, the information they contain is already available in our published research, videos, blogs and curriculum roadshow materials.”
‘We cannot understand why Ofsted would refuse’
However, this response has been criticised by ASCL’s general secretary Geoff Barton.
He said: “We have written to Ofsted about this matter, but we haven’t yet received a response. As a matter of good practice, we think that all materials used by inspectors should be publicly available because of the importance of ensuring that all schools have access to the resources that inspectors are using to make judgements that are crucial to them.
“This seems so obvious, and it is such a simple matter to publish these materials that we cannot understand why Ofsted would refuse to do so. And given that these materials are now in the public domain, having been published on social media, the horse has surely bolted.”
CST deputy chief executive Steve Rollett said earlier this week that he had written to the inspectorate to call for these documents to be published after concerns were raised by members.
