Professor of Education: Ofsted still requires great improvement
Last month Ofsted issued a Consultation document which aims to improve its performance, particularly after the suicide of the Headteacher whose school was unjustly downgraded from “good” to “inadequate.”
Some of the changes that Ofsted proposes are welcome such as the concern expressed to reduce teachers’ workload and anxiety over inspection.
When one reads the accompanying toolkits, however, the impact of these proposals will be more draconian than in the past. The impression is fostered that Ofsted has had a heart transplant, but the more one reads the clearer it becomes that its basic model remains intact.
There are five toolkits for the different phases of education from early years to initial teacher education. One toolkit covers schools’ leadership, curriculum, teaching, achievement , behaviour, attendance, personal development and inclusion. Schools will be judged on a five point scale from “causing concern” to “exemplary,” one more than the previous four from “inadequate” to “outstanding”. Hardly revolutionary. There are 330 standards in total and for a school to gain the middle level of “secure” it will have to meet 100 of these standards.
One of these standards reads: “The professional development programme enables all staff to effectively implement, where relevant: the school’s reading (including systematic, synthetic phonics), writing and mathematics curriculums; the demands of each subject curriculum; the necessary adaptations for some pupils with SEND and for pupils who speak English as an additional language.”
Plenty of scope there for an inspector to find cause for concern.
Only one method of reading is sanctioned despite the fact that many children need a variety of methods to learn to read. The lack of explicit mention of science downgrades its importance.
The unreasonable demands that these standards impose on teachers have been criticised for years, but Ofsted has consistently turned a deaf ear to such criticisms. This toolkit is a counsel of perfection which no professional could ever reach, but which will be employed to find fault.
The impression from reading 30 pages of one toolkit and 32 pages of the consultation document (consultation is open until April 28) is that no one looked at the sheer size and complexity of them so no discipline was imposed.
Taken together they are overloaded, immoderate in their expectations and beyond the capacity of any human being to fulfil, no matter how “exemplary”.
So what has changed? Ofsted’s language is more emollient, some of the more contentious aspects of its methods have been dropped, but fundamentally teachers will still be faced with a massive battery of requirements.
Ofsted’s shiny new model has had its bodywork washed and polished, but lift the bonnet and the same stuttering engine is in place. Teachers will be confronted not with a Formula 1 racing car, but with a juggernaut.
If Ofsted’s aim was to produce a framework designed to increase the stress and workloads of staff, to frighten off any new graduates from joining the profession, and to accelerate the flight into early retirement of senior management, then its new model will do the trick admirably.
Frank Coffield is Emeritus Professor of Education at University College London (UCL), and was previously professor of education at Durham and Newcastle universities. Now retired, he has lived near Durham for more than 40 years
