After the Government’s announcement that Ofsted will inspect all schools by summer 2025, Schools North East received correspondence from Ofsted’s National Director for Education, Chris Russell this week, regarding feedback from our Autumn term stakeholder briefings.
Schools North East hold regular virtual roundtables with school leaders and the Autumn term stakeholder briefings was dominated by covid-related issues and increasing concerns around Ofsted inspections. A briefing document summarising the key issues was created and shared with a range of strategic stakeholders including the region’s MPs, the Secretary of State for Education, the DfE, media and Ofsted. You can read the briefing document here.
One of the main concerns of NE school leaders was the education inspection framework itself and how the current system places very significant workload pressures on middle leaders. This is especially the case in primary schools where, additionally, one practitioner can be leading on several subjects, and that expertise outside of the core subjects, as well as staff capacity, is not readily available to meet Ofsted’s raised expectations in regard to curriculum.
Following the release of the briefing document, Chris Russell responded to Schools North East claiming that Ofsted ‘are confident that the education inspection framework remains the right approach’ and that ‘the EIF directly considers how school leaders manage workload for staff’.
However, this appeared to directly contradict what our school leaders have said in meeting after meeting, with some saying that the framework appears to be designed more for secondary schools, and not applicable to all settings. Nursery school Head Teachers also strongly felt that the framework did not properly account for the reality of their settings.
Mr Russell also wrote that Ofsted ‘do not have a fixed model of subject leadership and we will take the lead from the school in terms of the best person to talk to about a subject’, but this will do little to ease the anxieties school staff will be feeling with regards to being approached by inspectors, particularly after such a long and interrupted period within education. As schools continue to find their feet after the pandemic, they – and especially individual departments – will need time to reorganise following such a difficult and disrupted period to ensure they are doing what is best for their pupils, before they should be considering the impact of Ofsted inspection.
In our stakeholder briefing, it was very clear that school staff are, without a doubt, ‘utterly exhausted’, having faced unprecedented disruption during the pandemic, which has now continued into this academic year. As well as working remotely, school staff have had to deal with high levels of student absence, as well as rising staff absences. This, in turn, has led to increased pressures on delivering the curriculum effectively. This is predominantly the case in smaller schools and primary schools, but with a number of secondaries particularly hard hit as well.
As pointed out by many of our school leaders, the return of regular inspections has done nothing but exacerbate serious, pre-existing concerns over staff workload and wellbeing. Mr Russell’s response to concerns over staff wellbeing were worryingly vague, with nods to ‘the huge efforts being made by education providers to give pupils and learners the education and support they need through the pandemic’, but no real solutions as to how school staff can be adequately supported in this moving forward.
With regards to the stress of impending inspections, Mr Russell stated that ‘we do not expect or require schools to do anything specific to ‘get ready’ for inspection’. Despite this, school staff will always naturally feel undue strain from Ofsted – unless they can provide schools with greater clarity on what the focus of their inspections will be.
Schools in our region are also concerned that inspectors expect the curriculum to be delivered in a certain way, with subject review papers – not to mention the research behind them – perhaps signalling that Ofsted are moving towards promoting preferred styles of teaching and certain curricula. In his response, Chris Russell reiterated what he said at the Schools North East Summit in October, stating that Ofsted does not promote preferred teaching styles, before going on to declare that the aforementioned research reviews have been developed solely to ‘support and inform subject leaders’. He stated that Ofsted hope that the curriculum research reviews and curriculum unit subject briefings will be of ‘genuine assistance’ to schools.
A major concern from schools in the North East is that the impact of Covid does not seem to be taken into account when they are being inspected. This is despite Ofsted explicitly stating the opposite. Schools feel they are already working at full capacity, to deliver catch-up, and cope with the effects of a crisis that has clearly not yet ended. Mr Russell pointed to the Ofsted handbook in his response to this, claiming that they have updated their training package to ‘ensure that inspectors are able to separate out the impact of Covid-19’, but – alarmingly – no further details on this have been disclosed. Additionally, Mr Russell said nothing with regards to the regional variation in the impact of the pandemic, simply stating that the current framework is ‘the best way for Ofsted to support the sector, and children and young people’.
After Amanda Spielman received similar criticisms at the Schools and Academies Conference in Birmingham this week, a one-size-fits-all approach appears to be the mantra with which Ofsted are operating, with ‘back to normal’ being the go-to phrase at the moment. However, when it comes to the concerns expressed by school leaders in the north east, it’s clear that actions, rather than words, are what is needed from Ofsted at the moment.
