Labour to scrap Ofsted

[noblegiraffe]

Labour have announced that they want to scrap Ofsted inspections, get rid of school gradings and replace it with a system of ‘health checks’ done by local authorities, with inspectors only being sent in if problems are found.

www.bbc.com/news/education-49785130

Given that calls for years to scrap the extremely damaging ‘outstanding’ grade have been persistently ignored because parents like it, what will parents think about all grades going?

Do we trust standards will be maintained under a much lighter system of inspections?

@adulthumanfemale I agree, ofsted controls and dictates school policy now. Compliance and accountability come before everything else as a result of ofsted's power and control. It's ridiculous how much fear of ofsted dictates school life.

It is no exaggeration to say education is in crisis and ofsted is a key factor in teachers leaving the profession in droves. Therefore it is a good policy for labour to put forward. There is more to governing than Brexit.

I have an almost weekly engagement with Ofsted and HMI at schools across the country.

I think Ofsted lack a clear remit. Who decided that they own the curriculum? or EYFS? Ofsted are to blame for a significant amount of teacher workload (which to be fair Sean Harford has acknowledged). I imagine in 5 years time they will be saying that the focus on curriculum came from schools, not from them and it was the fault of school leaders that additional workload was generated,

The Ofsted inspection system is broken, Overall the quality of individual inspectors has improved (from a real low about 4 years ago). Whilst the frameworks stayed the are from 2015 to 2019 the interpretation of that framework varied with Ofsted bringing in different aspects that were important to them. As a result the outcomes of an inspection were too variable as depending when you were inspected something new would be in vogue and if you didn't meet that it pulled your judgement down.

Too much is based on the quirk of an individual inspector.

I don't support having school leaders and MAT CEOs leading inspections. Have them as part of a team but not leading.

I have reflected on this overnight and I honestly think education would be better without Ofsted.

Ofsted isn't perfect but it is part of the mechanisms for protection of the most vulnerable. I can see why the Labour party wouldn't like that, they don't seem particularly focussed on vulnerable groups at the moment.

Ofsted don't look at the most vulnerable in anything other than a very brief snapshot (and in some schools not at all). Safeguarding is a local authority statutory duty in all schools.

ofsted is a key factor in teachers leaving the profession in droves. Therefore it is a good policy for labour to put forward.

No, it would be a good policy for Labour to say that the role of Ofsted will be reviewed properly and changed. It is not a good policy to say that the independent monitoring body will be scrapped and replaced with the judgement of 147 not-independent monitoring bodies.

Have just seen on twitter - how will we know what is considered sufficient to trigger an inspection in Bristol will be the same as in Cumbria? How will there be any consistency?

I'd like to complain to ofsted about our school but I don't know how. I think it should be easier for parents to access ofsted and raise concerns.

You have go through the schools complaint process. Have you done that?

I would be very happy with a policy that announced scrapping the Outstanding grade. That’s what has schools chasing their tails.

Good and a ‘requires support’ grade that actually triggers support instead of simply more inspections.

SEN parents on twitter pointing out that as LAs are responsible for SEN provision, they’d essentially be marking their own homework.

‘Yes, SEN provision is marvellous, well done us’.

Very worrying.

@noblegiraffe I couldn't disagree more. Ofsted's very construction is flawed. There is no floating body that could ever zoom into a school and make a fair judgement. It's a political football and has constantly been shown to not be independent over the years, frequently capitulating to government whims due to fear of losing its funding.

HMI inspections used to be based on actual relationships with schools, local knowledge and creating change by working collaboratively as professionals. Just because Ofsted is all many people have ever known, doesn't make it the right option.

I wouldn't trust our local authority to be remotely 'impartial' in carrying out health checks, especially when looking at SEND. I think there needs to be some sort of external agency. Also, if Ofsted is scrapped, who would carry out local area inspections of LA's themselves? They need to be held to account too.

I don’t think anyone can argue that inspections of some kind are necessary - but the whole grading system is ridiculous. ‘Outstanding’ is more often than not dependent on parents than the school i.e. well behaved children, high achievers, children than get support and help with their homework, children who are encouraged to take school seriously and have good attendance will give a school a massive boost in helping a it get an outstanding grade. Whereas a school with a challenging intake of pupils where the home environment is not supportive - and is therefore having to work a lot harder to help its pupils achieve well and are giving lots of emotional support on the side, have very little chance of achieving outstanding despite doing so much more than the other. Also, a few years ago I did a few months of supply teaching - the worst school I worked in by far was an ‘outstanding’ one that hadn’t been reinspected for about 9 or 10 years.

How old often do " Outstanding schools " get inspected? My nephews school ( my old school) has just gone into special measures,it was rated outstanding in 2009 and had an Ofsted about 6 months ago now obviously it must have been in decline for some years but until 6 months ago it was on paper an " Outstanding school" .A local school.to.me is apparently outstanding but has,nt had an Ofsted inspection since 2011 so wether it's still outstanding who knows, !

Throwing the baby out with the bath water.

It used to be really interesting reading full ofsted reports, it was incredible what you could find out.

Now they are rarely detailed and are too infrequent to be of any use to anyone

The problem is the grading and the infrequency of inspections. Getting rid altogether is a very bad plan. And entrusting it to the local authorities is downright stupid in terms of support for children with SEN.

Wtf are labour thinking?

There is no floating body that could ever zoom into a school and make a fair judgement.

They don’t just make the judgement on the back of what they saw in the couple of days though - there’s reams of data, the school SEF, parent and staff questionnaires (although from experience they seem to totally ignore the opinion of staff). I would love for them to take into account staff turnover.

I don’t think that they’re capable of finely grading a school to good/outstanding. There should be enough indicators to decide whether a school is struggling that don’t rely on the personality of the inspector.

As many faults as it has, education wouldn’t be improved by scrapping ofsted. IME a lighter touch inspection system can lead to a lot of schools in the area underperforming for years.

noble’s proposed gradings along with regular inspections regardless of grade seems like a better idea.

How old often do " Outstanding schools " get inspected?

The legislation as changed in 2012 to make outstanding schools exempt from routine inspection. They can be inspected if there is a drop in outcomes and a sample are inspected each year. Between 1 September 2018 and 31 March 2019, Ofsted inspected 305 outstanding primary and secondary schools. This represents 8% of all exempt schools and is more than double the number inspected during the 2017 to 2018 academic year.

The Dfe have indicated that they intend to pass legislation (Brexit haha) to remove the exemption.

How old often do " Outstanding schools " get inspected?

They don’t, or at least until very recently they weren’t, they were outside the Ofsted inspection cycle unless serious concerns were triggered.

That was a massive error on the part of the Conservatives, which has been admitted.

So would this mean that all the piles of paperwork needed to fulfil ofsted would he scrapped too and more time available for teaching?

How as another poster said would it work without the impartiality of Ofsted?

I agree it needs an overhaul as not being inspected for 10 years is ridiculous. So.much would have changed .

But ultimately any result is useless isnt it? Schools need support and funding which they arent getting. I'm.sure they dont need ofsted to tell them what they already know ..

Is there any evidence that the quality of education has improved across the country as a result of routine Ofsted inspection?

Wtf are labour thinking?
It’s a vote grabbing headline.
The whole system undoubtedly needs reviewing and changing but just to say it should be scrapped altogether with no plans to reform or replace it is just an easy way to gather momentum for the Labour Party imo.

You can't rely on local authorities to make impartial judgments on schools. Dear god. Yes none of its detailed enough and the outstanding grade and the lack of re inspection is ridiculous but local authorities? Do Labour have the same plan for the inspection of care homes, if not why not?

Ofsted seems pretty poor but subjecting state schools to even less oversight is a bad idea.

The big issue is OFSTED does not just inspect schools. Who would inspect Childminders at one end, and even more crucially LAs themselves at the other?

I think OFSTED is a load of crap but all schools should have complete inspections every three years. This idea of schools that meet outstanding criteria not having a full inspection means that schools slowly deteriorate behind the scenes until their exam results fall enough to warrant a full inspection. With clever reorganizing of students,that doesn't happen for years.

I think this argument is complicated by ofsted's broad remit. Safeguarding at public institutions and LA SEN provision are separate concerns to the inspection of schools.

I truly believe that all schools should be under an umbrella system of monitoring and development with overseers who know them. I have yet to see a convincing argument for the ofsted system serving schools in any genuinely helpful way. These random judgements serve no one apart from those who love statistics. The current system does look at long term data etc, but still comes down to the subjective opinion of an individual and is therefore never impartial.

In theory ofsted is independent. In reality it has never been so and cannot be because it is government funded. It has become more extreme over time with an ever-narrowing focus (removing the separate criteria for Alternative Provision was a particular low point for me). Issuing a new framework almost every year is a total nonsense.

Put it in the bin!

I don't think Ofsted should be scrapped (that is just a blatant desperate vote winning policy) I think it just needs a massive overhaul.

Yes, get rid of the 'outstanding' grade, too much pressure on everyone, parents read too much into it and it doesn't necessarily mean it's a great environment for a child to be in.