What should be the top priority for the new HMCI? Here, ASCL members share their views…

Time to reset

Reinvention is required 

Ofsted needs to reinvent itself. To too many teachers and leaders it means stress, pressure and stakes that are too high. Ofsted has become counterproductive and part of the problem not a solution. 

We need external eyes on schools that we’re able to welcome in and have honest conversations with without fear of the consequences. We should be able to trust inspectors as experts and look forward to the benefits they’ll bring our schools. We shouldn’t have to worry that a few anecdotes could downgrade our schools and see our careers end, recruitment of staff get even harder, and families voting with their feet bringing school rolls and budgets down. How did we create such a system? It can and must be fixed by the new His Majesty’s Chief Inspector (HMCI) and appropriate framework. 

Paul Haigh 
Headteacher, King Ecgbert School, Sheffield 

Review the evidence used 

The new HMCI must review what evidence should be used, how that evidence is collected, used and weighted for inspection, and ensure this is consistent, open and transparent to all stakeholders in the process. Too often we hear of one or two pieces of evidence being used as the basis for further detailed inspection activities, skewing a judgement, or lending too much weight or credence to a small or anecdotal evidence sample. Hard data seems not to play as big a part as anecdotal observations and discussions. We don’t want a results or outcomes only approach, but the balance doesn’t seem to be quite right at the moment. 

Mark Grady
Headteacher, Rugby High School 

Tackle systemic issues first 

What happened to Ruth Perry was truly awful, but I believe that it’s an oversimplification to say that her death was caused by Ofsted. The wider system including Ofsted is likely to have been a significant, rather than the single, factor leading to the very sad circumstances of her death. 

The pressures on headteachers and school staff is greater than ever before due to a number of things including significantly reduced funding in real terms; falling morale and lower social standing (viz very low numbers applying to train to be a teacher); and less external support available for the rising tide of young people’s additional needs and mental health concerns. 

So, before we get to what HMCI should (or shouldn’t) do, we have the systemic issues to tackle first. Raise real-terms funding, lift morale and provide the infrastructure to support young people’s wider needs and school life becomes more manageable. Then let’s have a conversation about what inspection is really for and therefore what the system needs it to do as a result. Without this happening, any conversation about Ofsted’s purpose is a version of the analogy about deckchairs and the Titanic. 

David Boyle
CBE CEO, Dunraven Educational Trust 

Recruit the right people 

Recruit a workforce with the skill set and experience. Not a workforce judging heads made up of inexperienced heads of small departments. 

Appoint an HMCI who understands schools and education, not an accountant. 

Dame Joan McVittie
ASCL past president 

Focus on the core issues 

Amidst all the controversy surrounding the inspection system, there is a desperate need to focus on the core issues that lie at the heart of the current problems. To my mind, there are two such issues. First, the inspection process has become completely unbalanced. Schools with very substantial strengths are being downgraded (sometimes very significantly) because of a single issue of concern. This is leaving many school staff feeling that their inspection judgement is appallingly harsh and unfair. Second, the inspection process has become more oppressive than ever. Inspection windows are longer; notice periods are shorter; expectations are substantially higher; workload is ferocious; discussions with inspectors are more combative; and the stakes are higher than ever. Amanda Spielman’s deafness to these legitimate concerns has been disgraceful. If her successor is to regain the trust of our profession, work on these two priority areas needs to begin immediately. 

Francis Power
Headteacher, The Fallibroome Academy 

Reform and re-establish credibility 

Quite simple really, reform and re-establish credibility. The education sector accepts the need for a ‘supervisory body’ and school leaders welcome accountability. However, it must be done in a fair, reasonable and proportionate manner. I’ve been through seven Ofsted inspections in my career, and most have been good experiences. That changed in 2019 when I experienced the dreaded ‘rogue team’. I know too many friends and colleagues who have left the profession or lost their jobs due to Ofsted. Nobody should be given an arbitrary label. It ruins people’s lives. 

Sadly, there are too many inspectors who are poorly qualified to do the job and lack professional credibility. The current system can’t go on. We all know that your grade is determined by which team you get, and this is what causes the most angst. 

Stephen Gray
Headteacher, Calday Grange Grammar School 

Deal with the after-effects 

Ofsted must understand that children have been affected by the pandemic far more than we ever anticipated. The effects run through the age groups and are long lasting. Children struggle to socialise, they don’t know what normal is, they’ve spent a lot of time in homes where boundaries may have been relaxed and they’ve spent too much time growing up in an electronic, social media world. In short, they are immature, suffering from anxiety and resent being expected to be the version of themselves that they would have been if there hadn’t been a pandemic. 

Schools all report the bizarre, difficult and challenging behaviour of children and these are not things that are quick nor easy to fix. We have a new national network of behaviour hubs being led by schools that, themselves, are struggling with behaviour. This further emphasises the scale of the problem and the likelihood that it will take a while to resolve. Schools are devoting a disproportionate amount of resources to supporting children to ‘return to normal’ but it’s a slow process. The negative impact on learning and progress is great and we need to see that schools are commended for their work in trying to repair the damage to society that national lockdowns have caused, rather than being criticised for failing to create a climate for learning. 

Too much of society sees the pandemic as being over and things being back to normal. This simply isn’t true. After 28 years in the profession, I’ve never experienced anything like this. Managing the current situation is harder than it was during the pandemic. 

All these things cannot be distilled down to simple numbers or single words. Please credit the adults who read your reports with enough intelligence that they can report details that describe, more accurately, the work of a school. 

Jo Rowley
Acting Headteacher, Walton High School 

Change the culture 

The previous HMCI has admitted there is a culture of fear around Ofsted. If the inspectorate is truly going to make accountability a ‘done with’ process, not a ‘done to’, then the culture of fear needs dismantling. 

A good place to start would be the understanding that an organisation as complex as a school can never be boiled down to a single or two-word judgement; the new HMCI should not hide behind the excuse that ‘the rest of the system depends on it’ to persist with something that is self-evidently wrong. 

From that base, the new HMCI can begin to tackle the problem that the outcome of an inspection depends almost as much on the inspector you get as the school that is being inspected. I wish them the best of luck. 

Chris Hildrew
Headteacher, Churchill Academy & Sixth Form 

Remove grades 

Ofsted should remove grades from all its inspection reports. Schools should submit an online self-evaluation form (SEF), which is word limited and completed annually on the same date (like a tax return). 

These SEFs should be verified by the School Improvement Plan (SIP) or similar and include details of annual safeguarding reviews carried out by local authorities. They should also record peer review activity demonstrating collaboration across schools for challenge and support. 

New frameworks need to be written for each phase and produced collaboratively with a range of stakeholders. Frameworks should not align with any political agendas. Ofsted should disengage from research activities, publish thematic review outcomes and case studies, leaving research to educational researchers. Reports to parents should reflect the school’s strengths and priorities and actions taken to support these. 

Tracey O’Brien
Headteacher, London Welsh School 

Work with us 

The incoming HMCI must work constructively with school leaders to progress the improvement in education standards. New frameworks should support government policy, with input from professionals in the field, but the inspectorate itself should not decide education policy. Inspections could be more akin to peer review, avoiding highly public reductionist judgements. The inspectorate could split urgent reviews involving safety or financial probity away from more general inspections of educational standards. 

School leaders need to feel that they are a proper part of the process. They need to know when conversations will take place so they can plan for them collaboratively and avoid unexpected outcomes or having to be in a mode of constant ‘inspection readiness’. 

Finally, Ofsted needs to adjust to the reality of MATs and ensure that leadership in MATs is fully reflected in the accountability framework. 

Martin Blain
Principal, Canary Wharf College Glenworth

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