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Ofsted - big, bland and bureaucratic?

Posted on | December 13, 2009 |

By Mike Baker

Boys studying

Has Ofsted taken its eye off schools?

Ofsted is the mergers and acquisitions giant of the education sector.

If it were in the commercial sector it might attract the attention of the Monopolies Commission.

But has it grown to the point where it has lost the sharp focus needed to make a real impact in each of the many areas it covers?

It is two and a half years since Ofsted was given a hugely expanded remit.

Now, as well as schools, it inspects childcare, local authority children’s services, colleges, teacher training, adult education, work-based learning, education in prisons, recruitment and training in the Armed Forces, and the Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service.

This extraordinarily wide remit has made it into a much bigger, more bureaucratic organisation.

At the same time its annual commentary on education - once its sole focus - has tended to become a bland recitation of statistical findings.

It may be that Ofsted is now so beset with managing itself and with new problematical areas such as children’s services, that it no longer has the energy to lead the debate about how to organise teaching and learning.

Teachers’ leaders have complained that Ofsted has become too focussed on paperwork and numerical data

It has certainly been beset with problems that lie outside the school system.

Most notably, it came out badly from the Baby Peter case when it emerged that Ofsted inspectors had praised Haringey Council for meeting child protection targets just weeks after the child’s death.

Ofsted also had to admit to making a “serious error” in failing to disclose potential evidence during the legal challenge subsequently mounted by the head of children’s services in Haringey.

Ofsted has also come under fire from the Association of Directors of Children’s Services and from the Local Government Association.

The latter said Ofsted was more interested in “protecting its own reputation” than in providing a “calm, measured voice” on child safety issues.

With Ofsted itself becoming the news story, there is a real danger that any messages it has about teaching and learning will be lost in the hubbub.

Meanwhile teachers’ leaders have complained that Ofsted has become too focussed on paperwork and numerical data and does not give enough attention to observing what is actually happening in schools.

‘Starting debates’

Now Ofsted, of course, has never been popular with teachers or head teachers. Nor should it seek to be loved; no-one is ever going to like being stared at by a watchdog.

But to be effective a watchdog needs to be fast and nimble. It needs to have one clear area of responsibility to guard.

A watchdog for education standards has two roles: to inspect individual schools and to lead the national debate on teaching and learning.

Ofsted may be doing the first, but is it doing the second?

There was a time when the annual Ofsted report was a big event in the education calendar. It provoked headlines and started debates.

It not only held schools to account but it also held governments to account, over issues such as the number and nature of Whitehall initiatives and over funding levels.

Now the schools’ commentary is just a chapter in a much broader document.

It specifically, and pungently, dealt with many key and nitty-gritty issues

And Ofsted seems to have become more passive and its comments rather bland. It rarely questions government policy and practice.

For example, this year’s annual report had little to say about some of the biggest issues in education: the success of the new Diplomas, developments in e-learning, the balance of government funding between different sectors and priorities, and preparation for the raising of the education leaving-age.

To check my memory that earlier annual reports appeared to have more bite, I pulled off my shelf the first of the published annual inspector’s reports from 1989.

It specifically, and pungently, dealt with many key and nitty-gritty issues.

Among the things it highlighted for action were: poor topic work in primary schools, an acute teacher shortage, “shabby” accommodation, weaknesses in assessing pupils, the undervaluing of teachers, the neglect of school libraries, the need for more non-contact time for primary staff, and the lack of funding for the Technical Vocational Education Initiative (the diploma equivalent of its day).

The chief inspector of the time, Eric Bolton, was not afraid to suggest areas where reform was needed, to recommend specific changes in teaching practice, and to say things that governments did not want to hear.

By contrast, this year’s commentary from Christine Gilbert rarely goes beyond statistical analysis of the overall inspection findings.

Schools are generally exhorted to do better but there are few specifics, beyond a general comment about the need to improve the teaching of literacy and numeracy.

For example, there is a single sentence saying that white boys from deprived homes are particularly at risk of underachievement. But that’s it. One sentence. Then it moves on.

There is nothing to make government nervous. The nearest to criticism is a mild concern that the ending of the national strategies for literacy and numeracy must not get in the way of “clarity” at national level about what needs to be done.

Schools neglected?

We gain no idea whether or not the Diplomas should be boosted or scrapped, whether teachers are making the best use of technology, whether the billions that have gone into school buildings is money well spent, or about the balance of spending between nursery, primary and secondary schools.

Of course, Ofsted’s primary role is to monitor and observe. But it is that very foundation which qualifies it to be a strong, independent voice on educational ideas, practice and reform.

Now it may be that Ofsted no longer sees its role as shaping the education debate or rocking the boat of current thinking in schools and in government.

Or is it that, with its enormously wide range of responsibilities, Ofsted has enough trouble just managing itself as an organisation to be able to focus on wider thinking?

In the past, the head of Ofsted was called Her Majesty’s chief inspector of schools for England.

Now, to reflect the wider brief, the word “schools” has been left out of the title and replaced by “education, children’s services, and skills”.

All the other areas covered by Ofsted are vitally important in their own right, but I cannot help feeling that loading so many other things on the educational watchdog means schools have lost an important, influential voice.

Mike Baker is a journalist and broadcaster specialising in education

Jonathan Wells put this onto this site - he specialises in functional skills resources.

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