Digging around in my files recently, I came across a 1985 report for HM Inspectorate (the precursor to Ofsted), to which I was at the time seconded. It has never before been published and was marked “for the use of the office and the inspectorate only”.

While it may be more than 30 years old, I believe it makes a useful contribution to the current debate about Ofsted and school inspection outlined in the recent Tes piece, “What’s the point of Ofsted?”

The paper, Judging Quality and Effectiveness (JQF), was a brave, though not entirely successful, attempt to meet the growing interest in the criteria used by HMI in reaching its judgements. The points it makes about the nature of inspection are just as relevant today and need to be taken into account by current critics of Ofsted, as well as by the leaders of that organisation.

‘Disciplined’ subjectivity

Supporters of the current inspection regime claim that it provides “an objective view on the quality of education in a school”. JQF contests that assertion. It acknowledges the subjectivity of inspection judgement and even admits that it “will also often be, however slightly, impressionistic and intuitive”.

It goes on to argue that “HMI’s subjectivity is of a disciplined kind. It is tempered by long experience of observation and evaluation and by the fact that most judgements are collective rather than individual and draw on a knowledge of national as well as regional and local standards.”

Today, Ofsted needs to ask itself whether its inevitable subjectivity is sufficiently “disciplined” given the limited tenure and breadth of national experience of many of its inspectors.

As John Roberts pointed out in Tes a week or two ago, questions are being raised by researchers as to the reliability and validity of Ofsted’s judgements, as if inspection was a kind of applied social science where those criteria can straightforwardly and unproblematically be applied. They cannot. The 1985 paper is clear: “HMI are concerned with the quality of teaching and learning and with the factors which affect it. They are not researchers.” 

Ofsted needs to be wary of claiming far too much for its purported research-informed approach.

‘No magic formula’

Most recently, Ofsted has been criticised for being “systematically biased against schools in poor areas”, for failing to take sufficient account of socioeconomic context when making judgements of overall effectiveness, and for imposing a uniform set of standards of effectiveness on all schools.

The authors of JQF are emphatic on the need to take into account local conditions: ”…it is essential that the effectiveness of an institution should be measured against what it is capable of achieving in the light of ability levels and socioeconomic factors. In evaluating what students have achieved, whether in learning or personal and social development, HMI have in mind their starting points, the strengths and weaknesses, the advantages and disadvantages with which they embarked on a particular phase of their education.” 

JQF stresses that “this is not to advocate sentimentalism or sloppiness”. How far is this context-sensitive approach constrained by Ofsted’s current set of requirements and by the pressured conditions in which their employees have to work?

The paper concludes that “there is no magic formula for judging the quality and effectiveness of educational provision since most judgements are likely to be based on more than the sum of the arguments adduced to support them. It is therefore clear that HMI’s judgements cannot be without an element of subjectivity.”

In developing a revised inspection framework operative from autumn 2019, Ofsted would do well to heed the wise words - I nearly said “eternal verities” - of its predecessors. I found the paper in my files this weekend. Ofsted is more than welcome to my copy if they can’t find the paper in theirs. 

Colin Richards is a former senior HMI