Education

Time Running Out For School Watchdog To Prove Its Worth


A controversial schools watchdog faces having to prove its worth in the face of plans to consign it to the history books.

School inspectors have been blamed for wrecking careers and closing schools, but now they need to show that they are also responsible for raising standards in the classroom.

Meeting for its annual conference this week, the U.K.’s opposition Labour Party pledged to abolish the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), the watchdog that carries out school inspections in England.

Its creation more than a quarter of a century ago was spurred by the desire to create a national inspection regime that would hold all schools to the same standard, at the same time as providing valuable information to parents.

But it has also proved to be a bugbear for many teachers and school leaders, and the list of grievances is long. Its terse judgements – schools are put into one of four categories, from “Outstanding” to “Inadequate” – inevitably become the headline, but have themselves been branded inadequate to reflect the complexity of a school’s performance.

There are also questions over whether such categories can be usefully used to compare schools, given that the quality of teaching varies as much within a school as it does between schools.

The emphasis on Ofsted’s role means its verdicts are high-stakes. A poor report can be career-ending for school leaders, while schools have closed when an adverse verdict leads to an exodus of students.

Teachers have long complained of having to jump through hoops to satisfy Ofsted’s requirements, and having to second-guess what inspectors want to see, increasing their workload into the bargain, instead of focusing on what’s best for their students.

Ofsted has also proved vulnerable to political pressure, responding to the wishes and whims of ministers, such as its
decision

to make behaviour a key focus in inspections from this month.

The government claims that Ofsted’s judgements provides invaluable help for parents in deciding which schools to choose for their children.

But this ignores the fact that in many areas of the country, unless they want to consign their children to long and arduous journeys to and from school every day, parents have little choice of school.

And it is undermined by the government’s decision in 2012 to exempt schools rated outstanding from further inspections. Although this has now been reversed, it means some schools have gone 10 years or more without an inspection, meaning that in many cases the most recent judgement on a school is of little use to parents.

Ofsted has been accused of following exam results too closely, to the benefit of schools serving affluent areas where results are often higher, regardless of how good a job the school is doing. These schools then attract the best staff – working in an “Inadequate” school can be bad for the resume – perpetuating the division.

This also helps fuel covert selection, as houses near “Outstanding” schools become more desirable, and so more expensive, forcing out less affluent families.

Former chief schools inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw claims parents value the information Ofsted provides, although, but the use of exam data threatens to make Ofsted’s role as a school comparator redundant. Parents can now easily compare schools not just according to results, but on a range of indicators from how much progress students have made to rates of student absence.

Ofsted has its defenders, although it was interesting that the best schools minister Nick Gibb could do was
suggest

that it was “key to tackling the scourge of bullying in schools,” which came as a surprise to the school leaders and teachers who have been doing just this for years.

For her part, Labour’s education spokeswoman Angela Rayner accuses Ofsted of measuring deprivation rather than excellence, but even this misses the point.

We already have exams to measure excellence. Perhaps what we need is not another way of measuring, but a way of improving.

Judgement on Ofsted’s performance should really only have one criterion: does it improve teaching and learning?, and on this the evidence is sadly lacking. It may satisfy a need for accountability -and put the fear of God into teachers – but there is scant evidence that it leads to better schools.

Labour wants local government to do the job of holding schools to account, supplemented by inspectors where problems have been flagged.

Critics claim this will recreate the too-cosy relationship that predated Ofsted, with failing schools protected from scrutiny by favoritism and nothing to halt their decline.

But if Ofsted is to have a future it may have to move away from punitive judgements, and instead towards a system that has improving standards in the classroom as its goal.

A more constructive Ofsted could even take a leaf out of a performance management approach: instead of a one-line verdict, it could look at what a school is doing right and areas for improvement.

If the aim is to give students a better education – rather than pass a headline-grabbing judgement on a school – then there may be a place for Ofsted after all.





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