My thought on the Ofsted consultation

I know I am not exactly 'hot off the press' but this week I have been taking some 'me' time away from blogging and editing my manuscript. Anyway, here are my thoughts about the proposed changes to the way that Ofsted is going to inspect our schools.

• Sir Martyn Oliver's forward to the document starts with some positive words about teachers, which makes me wonder what's going to come next. Perhaps that is just me being old and cynical though, so let's wait and see.
• Ugh, it doesn't take long for the word tool kit to appear, doesn't it? I hate that word.
• Early years, inspections will have a different approach to school inspections. What does that mean for schools with a preschool attached? Will they send an extra inspector, will they get somebody who's trained for both or will they get option C?
• It reads like they don't think headteachers have been doing self-evaluation forms over the last few years!
• "Take concepts into better account, understanding the community that it's being served, and the circumstances of the provider". What does this actually mean? It sounds good in principle, as somebody who's worked in a small rural school that operated under very challenging circumstances.
• "inspectors can use this contextual information to help their discussions with leaders". I think they do that already, don't they?
• "Raise outcomes of disadvantaged children", wow it's not like we haven't already been trying to do that! It seems that their plan to do this is simply based on increased accountability.
• How is a 5-point scale an improvement over what we have already? Why do we need 'exemplary', it's just outstanding rebranded?
• "making a clean break with this model" is a telling comment. They've changed the 4-point model into the 5-point model just for the sake of change.
• It's good that there's no grade for overall effectiveness, but we've got that already.
• So they will be returning to schools with areas that need attention more frequently. That's fine, again, in principle.
• If any areas are causing concern, then the DfE will step in to address the issues - that sounds a bit sinister.
• I bet the information on the report card isn't going to be written specifically for each school. It's going to be some cut-and-paste statements.
• Having a separate judgment for attendance isn't fair because attendance is down to the parents, or at least it should be.
• They are not returning to formal last observations or to grading individual lessons. That's a good thing.
• Having a separate evaluation area for inclusion is worrying. We all know what's needed, but we don't have the money to do it.
• "as the report cards are mainly for parents and carers" is an interesting comment. Remind me why they need more detail?
• As far as I can see, the tool kit isn't really a tool kit. It's just really the SEF again. It's very detailed and prescriptive, and it's going to lead everybody to make very long documents like they used to do. There's no real guidance that you would expect from a tool kit. It's just an outline of expectations.
• "We will not expect leaders to produce evidence to support each standard within each evaluation area of the tool kit." But they will though, won't they?
• In proposal, 3 (inspection methodology), there is a quote. "We will instill our core values of professionalism, courtesy empathy, and respect" is an acknowledgment that they weren't already there!
• No more deep dives, that's a good thing.
• It seems like there's a leadership section in every judgment, and if the leadership is not secure, then the judgment will not be secure. Whilst in principle, you can't disagree with that it does feel like it's going to be putting more pressure on her teachers nonetheless.
• "In some cases, the emerging grade for an evaluation area may be at odds with leader's views. Inspectors will ask leaders to suggest who else they should speak to and what other evidence they should consider to make sure they have gathered a broad enough range of evidence within the time available. ", this is going to put a lot of pressure on heads, LAs and MATs and definitely mean that a detailed SEF will be produced.
• They do mention special measures, but it's not till nearly at the end of the document.
• Schools with serious weaknesses/significant improvement required will get 5 monitoring inspections within 18 months. Special measures 6 monitoring within 24 months. So that's what "DfE stepping in" means.
• The DfE are holding a separate consultation on education accountability reform
• Proposals mean that a school judged to require special measures will become an Academy.
• RISE (regional improvement for standards and excellence) teams and structural intervention. Definitely seems more rigorous but not sure that is what we need, we just need 'better'.
• They're getting rid of NLEs, which is a shame, as my experience of them has been good.
• They want to make a change so that schools requiring significant improvement can be done within their current structure and not have an academy order. That's good.
• 'Stuck Schools' would get rise support for 2 years, and if they hadn't improved, they would have structural intervention.
• DFE consultation wants a one-stop shop where parents and professionals can go to see the broad range of information about a school. What is this needed? Why do that? We have to have one thing that works for both. It just means we're giving more information to parents than they need and stressing out schools.

These are my initial thoughts. I think summing up I would say 'change for change's sake' and 'more bad than good'. I will revisit these in the coming weeks as we are obviously only at a consultation stage, so things may change.