MNHQ here - AMA with Ofsted Chief Inspector Sir Martyn Oliver, 8th June, 7-9pm

[RhiannonEMumsnet]

Hi there,

We’re delighted to announce an AMA with Sir Martyn Oliver, His Majesty’s Chief Inspector at the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills, on Monday evening (8th June) between 7 and 9pm.

Sir Martyn has worked in education since 1995 starting as a teacher and joined Outward Grange Academies Trust (OGAT) in 2009 where he became Principal of Outwood Grange Academy and then a National Leader of Education (NLE). In 2016, Sir Martyn was appointed Chief Executive and Accounting Officer for OGAT, a role he held until he started at Ofsted in January 2024.

Please post your questions below and join him on the thread on Monday evening to hear the answers.

As always, please remember our guidelines - one question per user, follow-ups only if there’s time and most questions have been answered, and please keep it civil.

Thanks,
MNHQ

I’ve worked in education for nearly four decades now, through secondary, in FE and now in HE.

Can you explain why, after many years of curriculum change, Ofsted inspections of increasing severity and the self-congratulatory pronouncements of successive governments, the first year undergraduates I encounter today are no more knowledgeable or skilled than those who left school in the 1990s, and are objectively less emotionally and intellectually resilient, less able to think critically and less curious than that previous cohort?

What went wrong?

How can you square the send white paper saying that more
pupils will be educated in mainstream schools with falling support available financially?

Does ofsted plan to tackle the fact that academy trusts have excessively highly paid jobs at the top while at the same time making excessive cuts to teaching and support staff "on the ground". It is quite simply corruption and needs to be challenged so the children are the ones benefitting rather than the "assistant directors of education".

Sorry Hrft but imo schools retention of reliable staff is ultra important..What does Ofsted think about schools who keep having to re-recruit staff.

Do you realise that your organisation is what is driving good teachers out of the profession? The pressure, the judgement, the inflexibility. Bring back the joy of learning, of curriculum flexibility, of trusting relationships witween staff and children. I am a teacher of almost 20 years, trying desperately to leave.

Do you also realise that your attendance drives are fueling the mental health crisis amongst young people? If kids are sick, they're sick. If a family needs a holiday to reconnect, it's none of your business. Please for the sake of our children, back off.

In the 2024 Govt Report entitled ‘Factors influencing secondary school pupils’ educational outcomes‘ it states that in terms of attainment at GCSE “school-level factors may account for between 10 and 30% of variability in attainment outcomes (EEF, 2015; Wilkinson et al., 2018).” (Page 12 of document cited below). If 70 -90% of how well a child achieves at GCSE is due to factors external to the school (home life, socioeconomic factors etc), then how does OFSTED acknowledge these external factors and incorporate them into their judgements when investigating schools? How is the 70-90% influence on a child’s attainment is investigated by OFSTED? What steps do you take when assessing schools to ensure you fully account for these external factors which can determine up to 90% of a child’s attainment?

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66e4006e3f1299ce5d5c3e11/Factors_influencing_secondary_school_pupils__educational_outcomes.pdf

There is a subset of people who believe that men should not be involved in childcare - it's not unusual to see threads posted by people worried because there is a male member of staff at the nursery they're thinking of sending their child to. With recent horrible cases in the news, parents can be understandably worried at times both around men in nurseries and sometimes the behaviour of female staff, like with the unsafe sleep behaviour that resulted in tragic deaths. What can Ofsted do to reassure parents who need to use childcare so they can work?

It seems unfair that a school needs 3 years of "above national average" SATs in order to get the highest marks. If you are in an area with high PPG or have a reputation for being excellent with SEN, you're never going to be able to achieve this.

As a teacher of 25+ years (and 10 as SENCo), I have left education altogether rather than go through another Ofsted, particularly with the focus on Inclusion. It would have finished me off. I have loads of experience and years to go until retirement but I’m not prepared to be part of such a broken system. I know of so many other teachers and particularly sencos who have also left/planning to.

How do you feel about being the figurehead of an organisation that is literally the reason for so many teachers leaving the profession. Why are you ploughing ahead with these genuinely awful reforms?

Hello everyone, great to be here. Thanks for all your questions so far. I will try to get through as many of these as possible over the next couple of hours!

Martyn

@MrsFaustus Please be assured that we still offer schools feedback! All reports have a 'next steps' section on how to improve and, of course, during the inspection itself, there is a feedback session for the school's senior leaders where there's a much more detailed conversation, because obviously the reports are primarily for parents. But it's true that our job is limited in this regard. Ofsted is the inspectorate, then the DfE has teams of people whose job it is to work with schools to help them improve. But one big difference now is that if a particular area of a school is graded 'needs attention' we will go back within 2 years and look again at just that area. If it's improved, we will update the report to say so. We want to help schools improve and show their parents when they have.

@ThroughTheRedDoor I agree that many schools are facing significant challenges. And while I have no oversight of school funding, I can make sure that inspection always takes a school’s individual context into account and that inspectors use their professional judgement to recognise the hard work of leaders and staff in schools that are making a real difference despite the challenges they face. It’s also why our inspection report cards contain a detailed narrative, to provide context for each grade, which is better for parents and better for schools. All of our inspectors (His Majesty’s Inspectors – HMIs) were senior leaders in schools themselves and inspection teams have Ofsted Inspectors (OIs) on them, typically made up of serving headteachers and senior leaders who understand what it is like to run schools.

Our inspection toolkit gives clear guidance on how we consider different contexts for each of the evaluation areas - School inspection: toolkit, operating guides and information - GOV.UK

@bangingmyheadonabrickwall Inclusion is both a standalone evaluation area and a golden thread throughout the entirety of our renewed framework. We definitely don’t just look at achievement rates – national examination outcomes - alone. In the inclusion evaluation area itself, we focus on leaders’ ambitions for, and identification of those who need support. And then across every other evaluation area – from leadership to teaching to behaviour – we look at what leaders are doing to make sure they are supporting children who are disadvantaged, have SEND, or are known to children’s social care. I can also assure you that all of my inspectors have completed a thorough training programme on all aspects of the inspection framework and they will continue to complete refresher sessions throughout their career. Once the DfE responds to their SEND consultation and sets out what they will do next, we will retrain our inspectors against those new expectations.

You might find it helpful to read our inspection toolkit to see what we look for when we inspect support for children with SEND. School inspection: toolkit, operating guides and information - GOV.UK

@CookingNonna I came to Ofsted after nearly 30 years in schools. I was an art teacher, a head of sixth form, a headteacher and then chief executive of a very large multi-Academy trust. Teaching has been my life – and I loved it. Now that I run Ofsted, some people want to make out that I’ve somehow morphed into ‘the enemy’ of teachers. But that’s not true. I still believe teaching is a brilliant and noble profession that has the power to transform young lives. I also think that all children deserve the best possible start in life. They are this country’s greatest resource. They should be safe, properly cared-for and well educated. Ofsted’s job is checking that happens. We work for children and their parents and carers, but that doesn’t mean we work against teachers – far from it. All my inspectors are ex-senior teachers, if they inspect education - or ex senior social workers if they inspect children’s homes etc. We’re all in it for children – just the same as teachers, and most inspections have serving headteachers and senior leaders in the teams. Under our new inspection model, we check that schools are doing what they are funded to do – we check how schools are meeting the standards required in law and those where the DfE is clear about what it expects a school to do.

@IlovePond This is something I get asked a lot. Some people think we should give less notice, or no notice – others think we should give more, some think we should give much more notice.

We definitely don’t want school staff to do lots of preparation and we don’t want them worrying for days. While we technically can show up at a school unannounced, there are practical issues - eg inspectors arrive at the school and the Head Teacher and senior leaders, and large groups of pupils are off on a trip, or tied up in other important meetings and events all day.

Currently we notify schools on a Monday morning and inspections begin the next day – on a Monday afternoon we have a Teams video call with the school to do introductions, brief on the arrangements of the inspection and begin to understand the context of the school through a structured conversation with senior leaders. We think this strikes the right balance between giving schools the shortest possible notice, while also allowing all the necessary practical arrangements to be made.

@partystress I’m proud of the work my team does to keep millions of children safe and ensure high standards in nurseries, schools, FE providers and children’s homes. Whilst the vast, vast majority of providers do excellent work, my sleepless nights are from the awful cases we uncover and the harms that rarely, but sometimes nonetheless, do happen. I wake up every day striving to do more for them.

@Buscobel If Ofsted were still inspecting education and care providers the same way we did 30 years ago, then I think we would have real problems. The education and care landscapes have changed dramatically in that time, so it’s been crucial that the way Ofsted inspects, and the things we focus on, have evolved too.

I’m not sure what you mean by different incarnations, but the post of Chief Inspector is usually a fixed five-year appointment, so of course there have been many HMCIs before me. And in terms of experience, all of my inspectors are either former or current education and care professionals themselves, with a great deal of experience and expertise across the areas they inspect. So no, I don’t think Ofsted is past it sell-by date. Our mission statement is ‘raising standards, improving lives’, and that’s every bit as important now as it was 30-odd years ago. Under my leadership, I have moved Ofsted to inspect against the standards expected by the Government. That is why we now use the phrase, ‘Expected Standard’ to indicate that a provider is doing everything expected of it.

As a governor who has recently witnessed an inspection under the new framework I’d like to say that if your mission was to decrease the number of head teachers and SLT who are driven to the edge then you have utterly failed.
The system is barbaric.

@Nickyknackered First of all, on the point about inspectors making mistakes or personal judgements, I can assure you that, before we publish a final report, all inspection findings are subject to a thorough quality assurance process – involving senior inspectors who were not on the inspection.

When providers have a complaint about the conduct of an inspection, they can contact our helpline and speak with a senior inspector independent of the inspection. This offers an opportunity to resolve matters quickly and informally. Where their concern is about the outcome of the inspection, or the report itself, providers can submit a formal complaint, which will be properly investigated. If the provider is unhappy with our formal response to this complaint, they can refer it to the Independent Complaints Adjudication Service for Ofsted (ICASO), which is an external organisation.

We also provide a regular sample of complaints to an independent panel for review. The panel includes external representatives from the sectors we inspect, and they give feedback and challenge on how we have handled complaints about our work. We recently held one of these panels specifically for childminders.

I have introduced a number of new steps to help resolve complaints and we are looking at what more we can do - we hope we report back on this very soon.

You can find out more in our published guidance about what we do now: Complain about Ofsted - GOV.UK

@LlynTegid If a parent has a genuine concern about their child’s school, they should always go through their school’s internal processes first. Problems are always better solved this way. But if they cannot reach a resolution directly, then some parents may have a legitimate need to complain to Ofsted. We take complaints seriously because a particularly worrying complaint, or a pattern of complaints can lead to us bringing an inspection forward, but that is actually quite rare, in comparison to the large numbers of complaints that are sent to us.

If parents bypass the school’s complaint system before approaching us directly, we encourage them to follow the school’s complaints process first. And we always stress to parents that we can’t investigate individual complaints – the sort of things that might trigger an inspection are serious issues affecting the whole school, for example, a complaint about a child being bullied might lead to us looking at how a school responds to bullying, how they record concerns and how they work with parents.

@noblegiraffe @partystress Ruth Perry’s death was a terrible tragedy that led to massive soul searching at Ofsted and real change. The way we grade schools and the reports that parents receive have changed totally – we’ve moved away from one overall grade to better reflect the strengths and areas for improvement in all schools. I honestly believe that’s fairer for schools, but also much more useful for parents. We also introduced many other steps which you can read about here: Ofsted Big Listen - GOV.UK

I’m not sure where your chart is from, but you might want to read this commentary we recently published, which contains the most recent data on attainment versus inspection outcomes - The ‘achievement’ grade, attainment data and schools in challenging circumstances - GOV.UK

We absolutely do take the context of schools into account, and we do not rely on only external examination data or national data to determine our grades – many schools in challenging circumstances have received excellent Ofsted reports. However, we rightly have high expectations for all children everywhere. It is also important to recognise that the DfE, the regulator of schools, has introduced a new way to help schools in difficulties – RISE teams. Schools being identified as needing help and getting that help is what really matters most.

I’ve spoken about my long career in education. I don’t want to see teachers leaving the profession – it’s a great profession. Recruitment and retention is definitely an issue and there are lots of things that contribute to the problem. For my part, I’m always very mindful of the impact of inspection and we’ve made lots of changes to try and reduce stress. I’m also very aware that, for most schools, we only inspect once every four years, so it’s important we do a proper and rigorous job for the children that go to the school.

You didnt actually answer my question.

Are the criteria for for purpose?

@MrsHamlet We have vast experience of inspecting mainstream schools and special schools, all of Ofsted’s inspectors are experienced school leaders. We use this experience on every inspection and carefully go through our framework – how we inspect schools – to check that all children have their needs correctly identified and met. I am really clear, if schools get it right for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children, they will get it right for every child, this is why Inclusion is, for the first time, a standalone area we inspect and a golden thread which runs through every area on inspection.

@elsaandanna Yes I am concerned. Childminders offer a unique type of provision that many parents value - they are an important part of the early years provider landscape. That’s why I worked closely with sector representatives - including childminding UK and Coram Pacey - when I was developing our renewed inspection framework. I wanted to make sure that the early years toolkit was fair and worked properly for different types of early years provision. I also recently hosted a childminder roundtable so that I could hear honest feedback from childminders who had been inspected under the renewed inspection framework. Listening and acting on that feedback really matters to me.

@Ilovemychocolate the early years toolkit is based around the requirements of the DfE’s early years foundation stage statutory framework – in other words the standards that providers already have to meet. I wanted to ensure that Ofsted wasn’t asking childminders to do anything just for inspection. When we developed this toolkit, I worked closely with childminder organisations including Coram Pacey and Childminding UK because I wanted to make sure it was fair and workable for childminders, as well as other providers. I will continue to listen to your feedback.