Ofsted on schools – and experts on Ofsted

Anastasia De Waal, 21 November 2008

This week saw the release of Ofsted’s Annual Report – and a book from Civitas, Inspecting the Inspectorate, which cast some doubt over Ofsted’s authority to judge the quality of the nation’s schools.

Inspecting the Inspectorate is a nine-author report which includes a foreword by the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee chairman, Barry Sheerman and contributions from a practising inspector, two head teachers, a parent, an academic expert on systems of inspection and a former chief inspector.
Since the introduction of the current ‘short, sharp’ ‘section 5’ school inspections in 2005, Ofsted has reduced the time inspectors spend in schools, the number of inspectors per inspection and the experience and training inspectors require.
Underlying these cuts is Ofsted’s bid to reduce its annual budget by 30 per cent from 2003/04 figures. According to the inspectorate lower cost inspection is providing greater value for money. However the cursory nature of too many inspections and the reliance on performance data, call the inspectorate’s true value for money into question.
To judge school quality Ofsted now heavily depends on a single source of highly questionable evidence: test and exam performance. The shortened and short-staffed nature of today’s inspections has in turn left inspectors unable to properly investigate whether this performance data is reliable.
Ofsted denies its reliance on exam scores, yet research in Times Educational Supplement reporter Warwick Mansell’s contribution to the report, reveals the almost inextricable relation between exam results and inspection judgements:
‘Ofsted visited 6,331 primaries in 2006-07, the last academic year for which results are available. Of these, 98 per cent had the same inspection verdict overall as they had for ‘achievement and standards’. This latter judgement is based on pupils’ test scores… Among secondary schools, the apparent link between exam results and the overall verdict was almost as strong, with 96 per cent gaining the same summing-up judgement as they were awarded on ‘achievement and standards’.’
There are several fundamental flaws in this inspection approach.
Firstly, it’s a waste of money. If Ofsted doesn’t look much further than performance data to determine school quality, there is little point in them going into schools at all. As one head is quoted in the report as saying, inspectors might as well ‘…short-cut the inspection process by looking at the [test/exam] data and then either writing to schools to tell them that they [are] outstanding, or starting proceedings to close them down’.
Secondly, performance data covers only part of the curriculum. Results only tell inspectors about the subjects tested. In primary schools this is only English, maths and science.
As contributor and inspector Sarah Drake notes: ‘Because the section 5 regime is not a ‘subject standards’ inspection it means that other subjects can slip unnoticed.’
Non-academic areas of a school are neglected even more. Contributor Tim Benson is head teacher in a challenging East Ham primary school:
‘Last year during our inspection I forced our [inspection] team to attend my school orchestra; 60 children all playing orchestral instruments. The children told of how they were to sing – we have a splendid choir too at Nelson Primary School – at the Festival Hall and the Excel Centre. Other children reported coming top of Newham’s school football league. Not one word on sport or music was included in our final inspection report.’
Thirdly, the performance data used by inspectors can be long out of date. This is a problem inspector Sarah Drake has encountered:
‘Validated exam and test data are central to the inspection team’s information gathering. Delays in getting validated statistical data about Sats, GCSE and other test results mean that what we are using can be up to 12 to 18 months out of date.’
Finally, test and exam results may not indicate true standards but rather cramming or ‘teaching to the test’. As Warwick Mansell points out, this is a critical weakness which Ofsted itself has identified, several times:
‘Ironically, some of the best evidence of [teaching to the test]… comes from Ofsted itself, in annual reports published before the introduction of the latest inspection regime. David Bell’s chief inspector’s report for 2004-05 said, of Key Stage 3 English, for example: ‘In many schools, too much time is devoted to test revision, with not enough regard to how pupils’ skills could be developed in more meaningful ways.’ For maths, Ofsted concluded for the same year: ‘National test results continue to improve but this is as much due to better test technique as it is to a rise in standards of mathematical understanding’.’
As well as high test and exam results being no guarantee of high standards of teaching and learning, contributor and parent Graham Lester George illustrates the way in which lower test and exam results do not necessarily reflect low standards.
His son’s very popular and over-subscribed primary school was put into ‘special measures’ by Ofsted predominantly on the basis of ‘unacceptable’ Sats performance. Lester George describes the parents’ shock at Ofsted’s damning verdict:
‘How could we have got it so wrong: we parents, many of whom were well-educated, well-informed professional people who believed in the school, its standards and ethos? How had the head, staff and children conspired to hide such gross mismanagement and incompetence from us? Well of course they hadn’t.’
Lester George goes on to explain how parents at the school then set up an ‘action group’ to protest against an inspection verdict. The group wrote to Ofsted outlining their grievance with the inspectorate’s judgement:
‘The [Ofsted] report’s almost unremittingly harsh and damning conclusions and its consequent opinion that the school requires ‘special measures’ bear little or no relation to ours and our children’s experiences of the school, its staff and the excellent education and care which we believe they have been providing.’ [p.80]
The complaint was not upheld by Ofsted.
Inspecting the Inspectorate is available from the Civitas book shop.