Introduction

In England, most teaching professionals describe our school accountability as ‘high stakes’. For some, thinking of Ruth Perry and others whose family and friends have attributed their deaths to inspection, the stakes could not have been higher, and now the trust in the school inspection system could not be lower.

Many colleagues understand that schools should be held directly accountable to their students and parents. Ofsted conducts inspections for the government and provides information they think parents want to know. Schools are also accountable to the local authorities or multi-academy trusts that manage them, as well as the government. Because Ofsted determines and changes its criteria for accountability by regularly updating, adjusting and sometimes hiding these criteria, tensions arise and are exacerbated.  All this happens within an environment where school effectiveness arguments are distorted because there are myriad opinions about what schools should be accountable for, as there are no nationally agreed purposes for schooling.

The #LearningFirst model for inspection is born from a desire to find a better way; to put learning (for all) where it deserves to be - at the centre of school evaluation. It is an appreciative model where schools can show their strengths and vulnerabilities and put trustworthiness back into the system; as one of our colleagues said, “A ‘show & tell’ rather than a ‘hide & seek’ experience in a supportive and responsive environment, not a coercive one.”

O'Neill argues that trustworthiness is essential for schools, teachers, and educational institutions, including official bodies such as Ofsted. She stresses they must be transparent and accountable and demonstrate a commitment to the well-being and development of those in their care. This involves being willing to listen to feedback, being open to criticism, and admitting when mistakes have been made and rectifying these as soon as possible.

Baroness Onora O’Neil - A Question of Trust: The BBC Reith Lectures 2002 

Proposal 1

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.

In 2016, the #LearningFirst community mobilised and spent three years and thirteen conferences promoting change in assessment practice @BeyondLevels.webite The  arguments made then equally apply to the grading of schools - just substitute 'school' for 'student': 

1. Richer feedback: A narrative description allows for more detailed feedback to better understand a student's performance. This can help identify areas of strength and weakness and provide specific suggestions for improvement.

2. Personalised feedback: Narrative descriptions can be tailored to individual students and their unique strengths and challenges. This can help students feel more seen and understood and provide them with feedback that is more relevant to their needs.

3. Encourages growth mindset: A narrative description can encourage a growth mindset, which is the belief that intelligence and abilities can be developed through hard work and perseverance. This type of feedback can motivate students to continue working towards their goals rather than feeling discouraged by a low grade.

4. Less emphasis on competition: When grades are the primary form of evaluation, it can create a competitive atmosphere where students are focused on outperforming their peers. Narrative descriptions can shift the focus away from competition and towards individual growth and progress.

5. More holistic view of student performance: A narrative description can provide a more holistic view of a student's performance by taking into account factors beyond academic achievement, such as effort, creativity, and collaboration. This can help educators provide more comprehensive feedback and support to students.

'Avoid replacing judgement with numerical indicators. The argument for metrics is that by reducing complex information to points on a scale or numerical values, comparisons within and between schools are easier, they are more easily understood and are therefore useful to hold leaders to account.  Such metrics have been a staple in schools for years through GCSE grades, SATs scaled scores, progress measures, teacher assessments or Ofsted grades.  Although this simplification of information makes it comparable, what is lost is history, context and meaning.’  The Tyranny of school metrics - Mr Nick Hart

In her speech to launch Ofsted's Annual Report 2018/19, Amanda Spielman used the phrase, “We speak truth to power”. Stephen Tierney uses his think-piece to question whether or not Ofsted actually “speaks the truth” when issuing grades through its inspection programme.  'The primary focus of any discussion about whether to grade or what to grade must be whether Ofsted’s grades can be trusted; do they “speak truth” to the various audiences for which these grades are intended?  To be willing to trust the Ofsted grading system in our current high-stakes accountability system, we must be assured that Ofsted’s inspection: methodology, reliability and the validity of the conclusions it draws in the grading process are fit for purpose, secure and appropriate.  None of them are.'  Stephen Tierney - Are Ofsted grades trustworthy?

To his credit, former HMCI (2012-2016), Sir Michael Wilshaw, who interestingly during his tenure advocated for Ofsted to have a school improvement role, in a conversation with Sir Tim Brighouse and Mick Waters for their book (About our schools, Improving on previous best: Crown House Publishing, 2022) admitted, “Deep down, I knew they (critics) were right… about the inconsistency of judgements… the problem was (in moving away from data) you have to rely on the personal judgements of inspectors who may lack the personal experience or wisdom to come to the right conclusions.”

Ofsted grades create an illusion of certainty that Tom Sherrington, an experienced headteacher who has worked in schools for 30 years, asserts will be viewed as a ‘major educational failure in history’. He suggests ‘serious educationalists and policymakers will look back in disbelief at the flawed inspection regime that involved a small team of people evaluating schools they had never visited before, based on a long list of criteria, and giving them a one-word judgement’. And ‘that there was a national illusion that these judgements were fair, accurate, reliable and consistent across time and the nation, while also creating a delusion that this system was improving education’. If inspection is this high-stakes, the inspectorate must produce evidence to prove their inspection outcomes are valid and consistent. As far as we know, this evidence does not exist to date.  Tom Sherrington - Ofsted has to change for all our sakes

Many headteachers and others in the profession have bravely shared their experiences of this high-stakes inspection system online and in the national press.

BUT IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY!

For example, the Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI) and the statutory Inspection of Anglican and Methodist Schools (SIAMS)do not give overall grades in their reports of the schools they inspect and research into the inspection of schools in the other countries in the UK has shown that the English approach is very much the outlier in culture and approach. SI - Framework SIAMS is ditching grades from its inspections

The inspectorate in Scotland is an executive agency of the Scottish government, and it inspects both state and independent schools. In Scotland, the focus is on equity, which is the same in Wales and Northern Ireland. Scottish inspectors and headteachers argue that the emphasis on equity has a profound effect on the culture of the system. The devolved inspectorates seem better at acting in concert with schools and stakeholders to promote improvements. Scotland - Arrangements for inspecting schools Wales - What we inspect

Scottish inspections are less about high-stakes accountability and compliance and more about a shared approach, including more debate and discussion about areas such as the curriculum. The Scottish system also permits a degree of choice by allowing schools to decide which areas to focus on in discussions with inspectors. As a result, schools feel less done unto. The framework for inspection uses quality indicators contained within sector-specific frameworks. Inspectors let schools know in advance which theme from the framework they will be looking at; schools get two and a half weeks of inspection notice. Schools receive an email at this point requesting their SEF. For safeguarding, there is a separate pro forma. A pre-inspection questionnaire is sent to parents, staff and all students except those below Year 4. As in England, the results are shared with the headteacher on the last day. Interestingly unlike in England, heads are advised to share high-level messages - key strengths and areas for development with all staff after the visit. But it is important to stress that no overall one- or two-word grades are given in published reports.

Inspectors in Northern Ireland actively work to promote professional dialogue and encourage self-reflection by school leaders. They report the result of a full (or follow-up) inspection as one of four overall effectiveness conclusions: - two of the conclusions relate to the level of the school’s capacity to identify and bring about improvement and lead to a sustaining improvement inspection three years later; and - two of the conclusions refer to important areas for improvement in varying degrees, and lead to a follow-up inspection within 12 to 24 months. They report the outcome of a sustaining improvement inspection as the extent to which the school is demonstrating the capacity to sustain improvement - this informs the next inspection activity, which may be a full or further sustaining improvement inspection in up to three years. Inspectors report the outcome of a (baseline) monitoring inspection as the extent to which the school identifies and brings about improvement. Again, this informs when a full inspection will occur in up to three years. In Northern Ireland, there is a greater openness around the process of inspection.  Northern Ireland - Key information about inspection

When we looked at the Isle of Man, we discovered that the island stopped using Ofsted in the early 2000s.  The current system has been reviewed; however, it comes down to a self-assessment document that the school completes and maintains.  The document covers all areas of school and requires the schools to say whether each is doing well, really well or is in need of some help.  Schools are visited every three years on paper – however, there are so few schools on the island – 35 – their Department of Education knows the schools and the staff, so sometimes schools are left longer.  The visit looks at the self-assessment document – they do some observations - the school chooses who is to be observed, but the overall experience is more of a 'conversation’ about the school and areas for development, looking at how well the leaders know their schools.  

One of the interesting considerations is that children on the Isle of Man are required to go to their closest school.

Interestingly, Guernsey schools (where Ofsted has a contract to inspect) are given four grades (5 if they have EY or 6th form) but no overall grade. Spiked profiles across these four grades are very common. For example, a particular school's grade profile was: 

RI for Quality of Education

Good for Behaviour

Good for leadership

Outstanding for Personal development.

And there doesn’t seem to be a separate grade for safeguarding. The time between the inspection date and the publication of the report is three weeks.

States of Mind, an organisation that collaborates with London schools and community organisations, asked young people, ‘What they thought about how their schools were assessed’. The Breaking the Silence project aims ‘to challenge the educational status quo and present actionable alternatives that meet the needs of young people and support them to flourish’. 

As a result of the findings of Phase I of the project, the students wrote a letter to Amanda Spielman. In particular, they highlighted 'major flaws around how education is measured and how this leads to ‘memorisation’ instead of learning, negatively impacting students' mental health and wellbeing and the lack of real-world value of much of their schooling.’

One of their key suggestions for Ofsted is that schools, teachers and students should not only be defined by the grades they receive or whether they conform to strict guidelines about what is considered ‘normal’ but their personal development over time.  Now in Phase 5 of this important project - read more.

‘Feedback should be more like a recipe than a verdict. A recipe describes how to make something better; it is an ideal to be aimed for, but the results depend on many factors, including individual differences among students and the complexity of the task. A verdict is a judgment about the worth of a product; it is final and leaves no room for improvement."  Why Don’t Students Like School? - Daniel T Willingham

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. The pressure felt by leaders currently and, in turn, conveyed to teachers as a result of the high-stakes grading is likely to lessen.

Proposal 2

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.

We agree with Ian Frost’s assertion that

‘Attaching safeguarding to an inspection report is the very definition of building high stakes into the life of a school leader (the clue is in the title of the role - it’s headteacher – not lead safeguarding officer).’ Ian Frost - Whose Yardstick?

The safeguarding judgement is a ticking time bomb in every inspection, which has shown that it has the potential to damage or even destroy the lives of the headteacher involved. But, as our colleagues have demonstrated, not even this high-stakes limiting judgement is consistently applied in each inspection. Anon - What a difference a team makes  Anon - It could have been me  Julie Grimshaw Price blog - This time, it's personal!

We agree with school leaders and other organisations who 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. In 2016, the Headteachers’ Roundtable proposed the formation of an Institute of Chartered Safeguarding Officers (ICSO). Our colleague, Stephen Tierney, former Chair of The Headteachers Roundtable, shares his thoughts on the current inspection of safeguarding and how this might be improved, leaving school evaluation to focus on the engagement of pupils and the outcomes of their learning. Stephen Tierney - Safeguarding is an audit, not an inspection issue

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. Rae Snape - Should safeguarding be inspected separately, and how often?

Proposal 3

We appeal to the Chief Inspector to ensure that all inspectors have sufficient knowledge and direct experience of the phase and context they are inspecting.

We have heard many horror stories of what happens when some secondary/post-16 inspectors make judgements in the early years, especially if the crib sheets have guided them! In these examples, it is obvious that there is a lack of understanding about how very young children learn. 

Similarly, there have been a number of accounts of inspectors making judgements about special schools/AP/PRUs with little or no experience in or of these settings. Our colleague, Nicola Jones, is the headteacher of Orchard Manor School - a Special School with an outstanding residential provision that caters for nearly 200 students aged 3-19.  They provide education and care for pupils with communication and interaction difficulties, Autistic spectrum conditions and learning needs. In her contribution to our body of work, she maintains that training and development for inspectors are key to achieving a more effective inspection process. 'Inspectors need a deep understanding of the unique needs of SEND students and the challenges that special schools face in meeting those needs. They should be trained to assess the effectiveness of provision, including support that is in place for students as well as the quality of teaching and learning.' Nicola Jones - Inspecting special schools

It is our understanding that Ofsted will try to select inspectors with experience in AP/Special if they are available. But patently, there are not many inspectors with this sort of experience, so these schools can end up being inspected by mainstream inspectors without special training for these contexts, effectively being given the instruction to use the EIF and make it fit!

When we think of context, we often think of phases, small schools etc., but there are other aspects of context, e.g. level of deprivation and local societal challenge. Gill Rowland - One size does not fit all

One of our colleagues recently experienced an inspection of a small school in a tough inner city area during a period of grief and severe challenge for the school. On the first day, the lead inspector (LI) raised needless concerns about safeguarding procedures, demonstrating their lack of knowledge of the statutory guidance. This set hares running across the school and MAT,  increased work for the staff and made an already incredibly stressful situation worse as the staff knew that a safeguarding issue could result in an inadequate judgement, even though the school (and the MAT) knew that their policies and processes were correct and that the LI was wrong. This LI also appeared to have no appreciation of the high-risk social context of the school and that certain areas of the curriculum had been designed to address those local needs. Much of the questioning of the staff was appropriate only for a secondary curriculum - requesting evidence of approaches that did not fit the school's phase or context and suggesting they should have certain curriculum documents that would only be appropriate for large secondary schools.

Colleagues also describe the latest framework with its emphasis on curriculum ‘deep dives’ as largely unsuitable for primary schools and 'curriculum sequencing' as they are especially difficult to achieve in small schools or schools with mixed-age classes and leads to practice that follows methodology rather than developing appropriate strategies for their students.

Anon - Inspection of small schools 

Apart from the curriculum, small schools are facing an increasingly challenging situation due to many issues, including long-term sickness and decreasing budgets. Teachers often lead 4-5 subjects, including the Head, who very often is also the Business Manager, SENDCO and Uncle Tom Cobley and all.

In February of this year, two reports were published that raised serious questions about whether we can trust the judgements of Ofsted inspectors when they visit schools, which for many former and serving HMI will be deeply disappointing. As Julie Price Grimshaw, former HMI recalls, 'The specialist advisory role of HMI, especially pre-2005, was greatly appreciated by many. Some describe a ‘very supportive process’ that helped to bring about improvement.' Julie Price Grimshaw - Changing roles to change the model

Dr Sam Sims found that there appears to be a difference in outcomes depending on whether the lead inspector is a man or a woman or if the lead inspector is an OI or an HMI, exposing the smoke and mirrors of inspection - the illusion of certainty of the current high-stakes system, whose metrics serve no useful purpose in increasing the engagement of pupils and the outcomes of their learning. The reality being, that any inspection can only be a snapshot of a moment in time - schools and parts of schools get dramatically better or worse with staff changes over the course of a few weeks or terms. This is particularly the case with school leadership, where the climate can change enormously with a change of personnel, whether a department, phase or whole school. Dr Sam Sims et al. - The impact of Ofsted inspectors on the outcome of an Ofsted inspection

Recognising the growing disquiet around the current Ofsted framework, in January 2023, the Confederation of School Trusts (CST) published a discussion paper, ‘Navigating uncertainty: a future direction for Ofsted’. They set out key concepts that inspection must navigate, including autonomy and control, validity and reliability, and inference and consistency. In February, they published another discussion paper with ten proposals they have devised for reforming inspections. Confederation of School Trusts - Reforming inspections: 10 proposals

The mission creep of successive frameworks is in plain sight. Inspectors, working to the framework with the support of their subject crib sheets, are seen to be directly projecting ‘accepted’ methods, principles and theory onto the settings they inspect. Prof Richards, in a letter to the Guardian newspaper (1 May 2023), stresses that when Ofsted was set up in 1992:

'It aimed to provide impartial, independent,  professionally subjective judgments to assist leaders, governors and teachers in evaluating their policies and provision, so as to help determine priorities for development including sustaining good elements and working towards improvement in others.  It was for schools to consider the inspection findings and recommendations, not for schools necessarily to slavishly accept them all. 

That original limited but valuable purpose has been forgotten, corrupted, and overtaken by more grandiose claims.  Ofsted is now viewed by its leaders and supporters as providing authoritative, “objective”, incontestable findings and recommendations which have to be acted upon. Its detractors contest these claims as unwarranted and overblown. Any reform of the current system would do well to recognise the value of the more limited purposes set out in the original legislation.' 

Prof Richards' - Letter to the Guardian (1 May 2023)

The Guardian's view on Ofsted inspections; not fulfilling their purpose

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.

Proposal 4

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.

There is no doubt that Ruth Perry’s death has been the catalyst for the majority of colleagues' demands for change. However, anger and mistrust at mission creep over a number of years means that many colleagues would agree with Onora O'Neill's works on accountability, trust, and education.

‘Hyper-accountability can be a real problem in education. It can create a culture of blame, where individuals are punished for failing to meet targets or standards that may be unrealistic or overly prescriptive. It can also erode trust, as people become more concerned with covering their backs than with working collaboratively towards shared goals. And it can lead to a focus on meeting targets at the expense of the broader goals of education, such as fostering creativity, critical thinking, and a love of learning.'

Baroness Onora O’Neil - A Question of Trust: The BBC Reith Lectures 2002

Colleagues in MATs and LA schools across the country are sharing their personal experiences via the channels available to them - some feeling that they can only do so anonymously.  Wayne Norrie, CEO of Greenwood Academies Trust, claiming to speak for the many who have contacted him personally, argues that a pre-pandemic framework is being applied to a post-pandemic world. John Camp, CEO of The Compass Partnership of Schools and The CHANGE Schools Partnership and ASCL Vice-President 2022 - 2023 calls for change to promote sustained improvement. His Tweets criticise the current framework, which changes with each new inspection and distracts schools from long-term improvement - the Ofsted framework has changed five times in nine years! He contends that Ofsted acts as a policy maker and increasingly takes the ‘curator of research’ role; that the current grading system is opaque and unhelpful for school improvement, that judgements skew resources away from those that need them most, and that evidence used to form judgments can be isolated and misleading. 

One of our colleagues makes a similar point when thinking about the language of inspection - the Ofsted framework and its use threaten education's sustainable, healthy, collaborative development. When Ofsted says there is one fixed way of doing things, any other way becomes unacceptable, and pupils that would benefit from an alternative approach lose out.   Anon - Language of Inspection

So what next?

Measuring learning...

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.  Larry Bernstein - What is student engagement?

Here we also draw on Chris Watkins’ work around learning and performance and agree that it is not possible to observe learning and that our school system has fallen into observing narrow versions of performance as poor proxies for learning, but as Chris asserts, it is possible to monitor the processes we know promote effective learning in a classroom environment. Chris Watkins  Chris Watkins - Monitoring classroom learning

...performance tests, performance tables, performance management … these inventions have influenced the culture of schools in a way which often creates pressure to perform. But this does not get the best performance: learners with a learning orientation do better than those with a performance orientation, and the biggest single variable underlying current patterns of school performance is whether students are self-regulating learners.

Chris Watkins - Research Matters, Learning, Performance and Improvement handouts

One of our colleagues, Beth Budden, an assistant head at a large London primary and a PhD candidate researching primary science, has developed a scale of evaluative criteria based on the idea of what certain school aspects might look like under a full learning or performance orientation and references Prof. Robert Bjork's work. He finds that it is very easy to mistake the two and that education has mixed up learning and performance in all sorts of ways for a long time and with negative consequences for learners and learning.. Beth Budden - Learning or performance? Where are you?

The principles and approaches of the model we call for are not new in education. Many organisations already have expertise in this approach, e.g. Challenge Partners

‘Challenge Partners is an education charity led by practitioners, through which schools collaborate to improve each other and the education system as a whole so all children benefit. Our programmes are grounded in evidence of what works, regular quality assurance, and sharing the collective wisdom in our schools.’

Their flagship programme is a three-day rigorous peer evaluation of teaching and learning, curriculum and outcomes, and leadership at all levels in an atmosphere of what we have referred to before as 'show & tell rather than  'hide & seek'. Led by an expert lead reviewer, reviews are conducted by a team of headteachers and senior leaders from schools within the Challenge Partners network. In a collaborative process, all review activities are joint, and all outputs are agreed upon with the school - ‘one team, two parts’. Each school hosts an annual review and reciprocates by sending their headteacher and senior leaders to review other schools in the network, providing continuous professional development for all leaders involved.

‘I thoroughly enjoyed the review process. It was the best CPD I have ever had. The experience from start to finish was rigorous and challenging, and it developed my leadership skills in many ways, such as data analysis, challenging conversations, formal observations and leadership of Pupil Premium/SEND.’ - Jasmine French, a reviewer at Edenthorpe Hall Primary, Doncaster.

'Our philosophy of collaboration, accountability, openness and trust guides everything we do.' Dame Sue John, Executive Director, Challenge Partners

As do the Teaching School Hubs Council (TSHC) - the sector body supporting the national network of teaching school hubs in England. The TSHC has two specific functions: an advisory function – representing the network of teaching school hubs, engaging with and advising the Department for Education (DfE) on national policy, and a capacity building function – supporting the creation and growth of teaching school hubs, ensuring capacity for all areas of the teaching school hub remit. 

These hubs provide professional development to teachers at all career stages and deliver various programs such as school-based initial teacher training, the Early Career Framework, the National Professional Qualifications for specialists and leaders, appropriate body services for early career teachers, and other evidence-based professional development opportunities for school leaders and teachers. 

The 87 Teaching School Hubs are school-led centres run by schools and trusts. Each Hub serves a designated area of the country, ensuring every school has easy access to support, bridging the gap between local needs and national policy and is, therefore, ideally suited to be central to the model we propose.

Finally, and importantly, we see a significant role for governors, parents and pupils in this model to ensure that evaluations are holistic and consider all stakeholders’ perspectives. The Breaking the Silence project, referred to earlier, demonstrates the power of young people’s ideas. Our colleague, Ros Wilson, suggests how school governance might look within a collaborative school evaluation model.

This could be considered a gargantuan task. We would agree if we were at a standing start, but we have demonstrated that the essential infrastructure and expertise already exist across the system. We believe in the art of the possible and know that, given agency, the profession can make this model a reality and put learning where it needs to be - central to any school evaluation system. #LearningFirst always!