Describe a school's effectiveness! We appeal to the Chief Inspector to remove all one or two-word grades from school inspection reports and replace them with a rich narrative report focusing on pupils' engagement and learning outcomes.

1. • If grades are removed from inspection reports, the information will need to be more illustrative, with more examples of what is working well and what the school needs to do to improve. This is likely to be more helpful for parents, the primary audience. In addition, a well-constructed commentary will provide more precise pointers for schools to improve.

   • The removal of grades will also let the system ‘breathe’ – the current high stakes related to numerical gradings create an incentive for some schools to mask or hide poor performance. Open conversations are needed about what is working well as a cause of celebration and what might need improving. This will likely reduce the pressure felt by leaders currently and, in turn, conveyed to teachers as a result of the high-stakes grading.

Inspect Safeguarding separately! We appeal to the Chief Inspector to remove Safeguarding as a determining factor from school inspections and work towards a system of annual safeguarding audits.

1. • We consider safeguarding, including attendance (and other compliance issues), too important to be left to every three, five or even ten years. An important strand for this is leaders knowing how well pupils learning off-site are learning and thriving. 

   • Local authority children services have the expertise and experience in safeguarding to provide appropriate guidance, training, and support to schools. It seems sensible that safeguarding audit should sit alongside children's services in the local authority, which would enable more joined-up working, as these services typically include social work, family support, fostering and adoption, and residential care for children who cannot live at home, this will provide more robust quality assurance if carried out on a regular basis, rather than as part of the school inspection. 

Inspectors fit for purpose! We appeal to the Chief Inspector to ensure that all inspectors have sufficient knowledge and direct experience of the phase/context they are inspecting.

1. • With so much at stake for individual schools, it should follow that inspection teams should have relevant experience and training for the phase and context they are inspecting. There are also adjustments to be made to the language of the framework, which has a secondary ‘flavour’ which does not meet the different curriculum arrangements, for instance, in small schools or in the early years.

Work with the profession to develop a peer-to-peer quality assurance model for schools that puts #LearningFirst! We call upon the Government to immediately instruct the Secretary of State for Education to initiate a review of the inspection of schools and to work with the profession to develop a peer-to-peer quality assurance model for schools that focuses on the engagement of pupils and the outcomes of their learning.

1. • It is important to be clear about what we mean by the engagement of pupils and the outcomes of their learning. Patently, measuring engagement in learning is a complex process that requires a combination of objective and subjective measures to provide a comprehensive understanding of the pupil’s level of involvement and interest in learning activities. There is a school of thought that considers a strong focus on engagement could lead to an over-reliance on entertaining pupils rather than challenging them intellectually. They argue that education should prioritise rigorous content and intellectual development over constantly striving for high levels of engagement. We believe pupils should be taught and encouraged to develop responsibility for their engagement so that they become self-motivated learners for learning in the rest of this century - much of which will not be done in a classroom.

   • We believe that a peer-to-peer quality assurance model for evaluation that involves or evolves from existing professional organisations like the Chartered College of Teaching, Teaching Schools, Challenge Partners, and HMIs, and which includes the essential involvement of governors, parents and pupils, is a compelling solution to the profession’s calls for reform or even the abolition of Ofsted. By working together and being more collaborative, objective and effective, this model would change existing 'inspection' cultures, promote system-wide development and ensure all schools are 'good' and that pupils receive the best possible education to support continuous improvement in pupil engagement and learning outcomes. 

   • There may be concerns about the objectivity of the evaluators in this model. While trained educators and subject experts may be more familiar with local contexts and challenges than external inspectors, they may also have existing relationships or biases that could impact their evaluations. This could potentially undermine the credibility of the evaluation process and create conflicts of interest. HMIs, largely respected by the profession for their knowledge and experience, would have a role in the quality assurance and oversight of the evaluation process and bring impartiality and depth of experiences across a broader geographical context. They would also provide bespoke support to schools needing additional support, who, for reasons that may be within or beyond the school’s control, mean they cannot yet effectively benefit from this model. We may want to look at some successful approaches in the London Challenge when working alongside such schools.

Read the research, opinion and individual testimony used to formulate our proposals here.