Education secretary Lucy Powell has said she wants school accountability to become “much more supportive and understanding”. More significantly, she has recognised the need to get not only the Ofsted framework right, but also the culture and the whole regime.
She is asking the right questions. But the problems facing Ofsted cannot be resolved through another change of framework.
Having spent around 20 years inspecting schools, including 16 as one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors, I remain convinced of the importance of independent external inspection.
Parents deserve reliable information about their children’s schools, and Parliament needs independent evidence about the state of education.
Yet Ofsted’s latest framework illustrates the problem. Four grades have become five standards, a new toolkit has appeared and reports have acquired a different format.
But the fundamental architecture of high-stakes accountability remains largely untouched. Everything has changed. Yet remarkably little has changed.
What changed in 2005 Ofsted reforms?
We have forgotten what happened in 2005.
The last truly fundamental reorganisation of school inspection took place in September 2005, coincidentally the month I joined as an HMI.
Until then, schools experienced Section 10 inspections, typically involving substantial teams spending a week examining the school’s work. In 2005, these were replaced by Section 5 inspections, with small teams typically spending just two days in a school.
This was not simply a shorter, cheaper version of the previous model. It represented a fundamentally different philosophy.
Then chief inspector, Sir David Bell, argued that schools had become increasingly effective at evaluating their own performance. Inspectors therefore no longer needed to investigate everything afresh. Instead, they should examine the school’s “central nervous system”.
Inspectors would test the accuracy of the school’s self-evaluation, gather sufficient evidence to establish whether leaders understood its strengths and weaknesses, and move on. We were trained to close down lines of enquiry once sufficient evidence had been gathered.
The underlying philosophy was to work with schools rather than do things to them.
More hurried, procedural and adversarial inspections
For a time, it worked. Those early years of Section 5 inspection were among the most constructive I experienced. But what moved on was the chief inspector himself.
Sir David Bell departed, and successive chief inspectors brought their own priorities and expectations. Under Michael Gove, the requirement for schools to complete Ofsted’s self-evaluation form was removed.
What remained was the short inspection model, increasingly expected to deliver something approaching the comprehensive evaluation previously undertaken by much larger teams over a full week.
That is the fundamental contradiction at the heart of modern Ofsted: successive frameworks have demanded ever more from an inspection model deliberately designed to do less.
Inspectors are expected to reach increasingly wide-ranging and consequential judgements in inadequate time. Inevitably, this makes inspection more hurried, procedural and adversarial.
The pressure falls on both sides. School leaders and teachers experience the anxiety of being judged against extensive expectations, while inspectors struggle to gather sufficient evidence to justify potentially life-changing judgements.
Changing the toolkit cannot resolve this mismatch between ambition, methodology and available time.
Disproportionate consequences
The “emperor’s new clothes” analogy is that a single inspection continues to carry consequences disproportionate to the evidence that can reasonably be collected during a short visit.
Inspection judgements are necessarily professional judgements, not scientific measurements. Experienced inspectors can legitimately interpret the same evidence differently. This does not invalidate inspection.
But it places limits on the certainty with which conclusions should be presented and, crucially, the consequences attached to them. The tragic death of headteacher Ruth Perry brought the human consequences into sharp focus. Yet inspection-related anxiety extends far beyond the most extreme cases.
Ofsted has also lost too much corporate memory. When I joined Ofsted, experienced colleagues passed on not simply inspection methodology but professional values and traditions.
One lesson has stayed with me: while an inspection may be another working day for an inspector, it is a major event in the lives of those being inspected. Professional expertise and judgement must matter more than compliance with an ever-expanding toolkit.
Two possible ways forward for inspection
Lucy Powell has an opportunity to do something more fundamental than redesign the inspection framework. I see two possible approaches:
1. Inspect more frequently, but with substantially lower stakes
Regular, proportionate visits would enable inspectors to understand schools over time, identify emerging weaknesses and recognise improvement. Inspection would become a routine part of professional life rather than an occasional existential threat.
Major structural interventions should not normally follow automatically from one brief inspection. This could be achieved through Ofsted monitoring peer assessment by school leaders.
2. Return the principles of the 2005 reforms
School leaders and governors would be responsible for rigorous, honest evaluation of their provision. Inspectors would test its accuracy, challenge weaknesses and report independently on whether leaders really understand their schools.
This would restore professional dialogue without sacrificing accountability.
The purpose of inspection should be straightforward: to inform parents about their children’s schools and Parliament about the effectiveness of the education system.
The choice is not between Ofsted and no Ofsted. It is between high-stakes judgement imposed upon schools and intelligent external accountability carried out with schools.
If Lucy Powell genuinely wants to change the culture of inspection, she must first decide what inspection is for - and then ensure that the system is designed to achieve it.
Adrian Lyon is a former HMI and Ofsted lead HMI for economics, business and enterprise
