It has long been a core claim by Ofsted that all its inspection judgements have very high inter-rater reliability; that is, an outcome would be the same no matter which inspection team pitched up to a school (or wherever) on the day. Another, is that inspectors do not pre-judge outcomes based on a pre-reading of available data. If you, doting parent or committed governor, have been sleeping soundly safe in the knowledge of all this, best to wake up to a more realistic truth – one that many professionals (including me) have known for years: 35+ in my case.
A recent headguruteacher.com blog post by Tom Sherrington, Head of Highbury Grove school in North London, questioned these Ofsted truths in a rawly honest way, and the post is worth a close read for the insight it provides into school life. In one sense there is nothing remarkable in the post, save the welcome openness and clarity.
What is remarkable, however, is what happened next: a response (the link is in the posting) from Sean Hartford, Ofsted's National Director (schools), in which he said this:
"I agree that Ofsted has not done enough in the past to test the reliability of inspection; we have concentrated on quality assurance. This provides assurance that the process is carried out consistently as we would wish, but not directly that different inspectors in the school on the same day would give the same judgement."
and:
"I agree that some inspectors and some schools focus too much on a narrow range of data. I say some inspectors and some schools because this cuts both ways: some schools focus on single outcome measures and ignore the bigger picture, as have some weak inspectors. Published data should only ever be a ‘signpost’ for the school/inspectors to consider what they may be telling us, not the pre-determined ‘destination’. This is how we train inspectors and how the vast majority use data, but the weakest ones have been guilty of using the published data as a safety net for not making fully-rounded, professional judgements based on the school’s own information, work in books/folders over time, progress seen across year groups/classes, the attitudes to learning of pupils, improvements to teaching following focused CPD etc."
There you are, then. The great Ofsted foundational myth that they reliably report what they find is without foundation. See this for an earlier comment on the university context with a basketball framing.
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