The workload for headteachers and Sendcos caused by Ofsted’s new inspections is an emerging concern from the first wave of these school visits, leaders have been told.
Andy Jordan, inspection and accountability specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said the feedback from some of its members was that the new inspections were “brutal” for senior leaders.
He said that Ofsted had been made aware of the union’s concerns during discussions with the inspectorate.
Speaking at the Schools North East Academies Conference, in Newcastle, Mr Jordan also urged leaders to “put their arm around their Sendcos” as heads have reported that they are facing increasing workload from inspections, too.
Ofsted began inspecting under its new framework in November last year. It is using a new five-grade scale and assessing schools across six to eight evaluation areas. Ofsted has introduced inclusion as a new evaluation area in this framework, while inspections no longer give schools an overall single-word effectiveness grade after these were scrapped by Labour in 2024.
Inspections spark wellbeing concerns
During a panel discussion about the new inspections at the conference, Mr Jordan said the main concern being raised by ASCL members was “senior leader wellbeing”.
“That is the first thing that people say. They say it’s a really intense process. It’s really hard for your senior leadership team. Words like ‘brutal’ have been used to me. People have phoned me up and said, ‘I’m not going through that again. That’s it, I’m done, I’ve done it once’...And you think that shouldn’t be what an Ofsted framework is doing,” Mr Jordan said.
Under Ofsted’s previous inspection framework, which operated from 2019 to 2025, the watchdog had an increased focus on the curriculum and carried out deep dives into subject teaching.
However, deep dives are not part of the new approach. Mr Jordan said that whereas subject deep dives used to put more focus on middle leaders, now “it is all coming up to SLT”.
He added: “Please, please, please, put your arm around your Sendco, or whoever is in charge of inclusion, because they will be flat out for two days with so many meetings, or their colleagues are asking them questions because they’ve had a question in a meeting that they can’t answer and the Sendco has that knowledge. That, I think, is coming back as a real concern for us as an organisation.”
However, Mr Jordan acknowledged that as a trade union official he was more likely to hear about members’ negatives experiences of inspection.
During the panel discussion last week, headteachers who had been inspected under the new framework at the end of last year gave details of their experiences.
One issue raised during the discussion was the impact of Ofsted using a “secure fit” approach to grading.
This means that in order for a school to be awarded an “expected standard” or “strong standard” grade in an evaluation area, inspectors have to decide that the school has met every single grade descriptor in the Ofsted inspection toolkit. Under its previous framework, Ofsted used a “best fit” approach, which did not require all descriptors to be met for a particular grade to be awarded.
The impact of ‘secure fit’
Unions have previously raised concerns about the impact of moving to a secure fit approach and how it will affect grading of school achievement.
Kate Reid, headteacher of Polam Hall, an all-through school in Darlington, said the requirement for every grade descriptor to be met meant part of the inspection “did come down to arguments about words, and that was a really tricky thing”.
She said: “We judge ourselves to be a really inclusive school [but] they wouldn’t give a strong conclusion because they said that we were not rapidly improving the outcomes of disadvantaged students.
“It was not that we weren’t improving them, but we weren’t improving them rapidly enough - there was a definition of ‘rapidly’ that we didn’t meet.”
The panel discussion also raised concerns about the volume of work expected of Ofsted inspectors.
Colin Lofthouse, the CEO of Smart Multi Academy Trust, which runs 11 primary schools in Newcastle, said: “I’ve spoken to colleagues who have been inspecting this term - it’s very intense for inspectors at the moment.”
Mr Lofthouse, who is also the chair of trustees for Schools North East, said: “I think having increased the numbers of areas where they will have to make judgement, and increased direction on the amount of time that inspectors have to spend in in early years - following inclusion lines of inquiry - it will leave little room for reflection.
“And I really worry about that, because you need to be able to apply common sense and experience to be able to judge properly.”
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