Teach Secondary Issue 14.2

Twists and turns Adrian Lyons surveys the latest developments in the ongoing saga that is Ofsted’s evolving approach to school inspection... S ome of us are old enough to remember a wonderful comedy that parodied the television soap operas of the time. It was called simply Soap, and ran from 1977 to 1981. Each episode began with a précis of the convoluted story so far, and always ended its introduction with the phrase, “ Confused? You won’t be, after this week’s episode of … Soap. ” I was reminded of this showwhen reading Ofsted’s plans for the future of school inspection from the next academic year. Perhaps the most eye-catching aspect is Ofsted’s example colour chart, which illustrates a school where ‘Achievement’ has a grade of ‘Attention needed’. Everything else – ‘Leadership and Governance’; ‘Curriculum’; ‘Developing Teaching’; ‘Personal Development and Wellbeing’; ‘Sixth Form’; ‘Attendance’; ‘Behaviour and attitudes’; ‘Inclusion’; i.e. the things that result in achievement – are all at least ‘secure’. Inwith the old Youmay remember the days prior to 2012, when a grade 3 was called ‘Satisfactory’. It was the grade belowGood. In everyday English, Satisfactory, of course, means ‘okay’. Sir Michael Wilshawwanted to send the message that ‘less than good’ was not okay, and so the judgement was renamed ‘Requires Improvement’. The old Inadequate grade, meanwhile – indicative of serious weaknesses – will become ‘Requires Significant ABOUT THE AUTHOR Adrian Lyons was one of His Majesty’s Inspectors between 2005 and 2021 and now works with MATs, teacher training providers and LAs to support education; find out more at adrianlyonsconsulting.com Improvement’. Which is perhaps a little confusing. There are some good – or should that be ‘Strong’? – elements within the ‘new’ framework plans. (Because while Ofsted may claim that they’re new, they’re largely drawn from suggestions previously considered in the past.) The return to a focus on inclusion is welcome, though this seems to be limited to pupils with SEND and disadvantaged pupils, rather than a more serious analysis of performance as it relates to different groups. The existing ‘Quality of Education’ judgement will be split and restored to the older judgement areas of ‘Curriculum’, alongside ‘Teaching’ (or ‘Developing Teaching’, to use the new terminology.) ‘Achievement’ also returns, and as in previous frameworks, will be comprise a balance of attainment and progress. The pendulumswings The new framework’s Curriculum judgement will need to be robust. Ofsted has stated that a school’s curriculumwill cause concern if, “ It is narrow, and therefore does not prepare pupils for adult life. ” Though the case could be made that any school diligently following the current National Curriculum and EBacc would, in fact, meet that concern criterion. My worry about the pendulum swinging back to data is that in ‘poor areas’ particularly, the curriculum will indeed narrow. One area in which HMCI Spielman had a positive impact was ensuring a wider and improved curriculum in many (albeit not her most favoured) schools. I’d argue that this was a poor curriculum, lacking inmany key areas and insufficiently broad (especially with respect to oracy, technology and the arts), but I fear these latest curriculum plans could actually take us backwards, forcing schools to focus on English and maths evenmore than they already do. The proposed reintroduction of ‘monitoring visits’ – where Ofsted has arguably had the greatest impact on school improvement – is welcome, assuming they go ahead. Their withdrawal stemmed from a combination of Ofsted’s limited resources and re-brokered schools being considered as new schools. It’s also encouraging that the ‘Personal Development andWellbeing’ judgement talks about impact, which had been prohibited from personal development inspections under the existing framework. As predicted However, this misses the larger point. I predicted that it would soon become apparent how last year’s routine change of Chief Inspector would be followed by a routine change of framework, resulting in widely publicised ‘dramatic changes’ to the Inspectorate’s expectations of schools, when little would actually change in the way schools are inspected. There presently seems to be a real danger of the new scorecard being simply a cosmetic change to the way Ofsted reports, with little fundamental reform to underpin it. And sadly, Ofsted has proved my prediction to be correct. The real issue remains the ‘cliff edge’ nature of judgements. When the overall effectiveness judgements were abolished, I commented at the time that schools may well find themselves swapping one cliff edge judgement for four or five. Now it’s ten. That’s in stark contrast to education inspectorates in other countries – even those as close to home asWales’ Estyn – that seem to manage without any grades at all. 41 teachwire.net/secondary O F S T E D