Teaching unions may come to regret Ofsted reforms

Abolishing one-word Ofsted judgements could be a good thing, but not for the reasons the government says, writes David Thomas

The government has abolished single-word Ofsted judgments. For now schools will get grades for each of the four sub-categories currently in use, and from next year they’ll be replaced by a report card.

Unions are “delighted” with this “great start to a new term”. TES, the teachers’ magazine, described it as “a huge victory for the sector”. Those feeling victorious have long argued that single-word judgments are the cause of undue pressure on school leaders and that a more nuanced report card system will reduce that pressure.

I was a state school headteacher – and I’m not convinced. Accountability is tough, no matter how you label it. Whether you told me my school had failed in a word or a sentence, it would still hurt. But moving to report cards could be a  good thing – just not for the reason the government is doing it.

Abolishing single-word judgments isn’t going to make headteachers feel better. What puts headteachers under pressure is accountability – and that accountability is necessary. The government has to intervene if a school provides a poor education to children, or places them at risk of harm. No child should be harmed because we are squeamish about holding adults to account.

To its credit, the government seems to recognise this. Ofsted will still find schools that would have been graded as inadequate. The government will still intervene in them. The difference is that last year a failing school’s report would’ve said “Overall rating: inadequate” at the top of the front page. This year it will say “Regulatory action: This school will be taken over because it has failed to provide an acceptable quality of education” at the bottom. I doubt this will make the headteacher feel much better.

What will make a difference to headteachers is switching from a simple report system to one that exposes more aspects of a school to parental scrutiny. A well-designed report card would highlight more of the details of a school’s performance, including some that might have been obscured in the current system. I wouldn’t be surprised if this becomes a policy the unions later come to regret.

Defenders of school standards may instinctively kick back against Labour’s change. They should pause. There’s nothing wrong with the concept of report cards. Those arguing that these will confuse parents are misguided. We should not build a system on the basis that parents cannot understand more than one piece of data. 

If the government is really committed to transparency, it should go even further

Rather, more transparency is a good thing. It’s a problem that Ofsted reports, designed to be a counterbalance to league tables, don’t always reflect schools’ results. Putting all the data about a school’s performance in one place would help parents. They could show results, attendance, staff turnover and parent views, as well as inspectors’ qualitative assessments. This would make it far easier for parents to make an informed view about a school.

It should be easy for parents to see not just a school’s headline data, but how well a school serves children from all backgrounds. I know of one parent who, in trying to find the right school for her child, collated data from various think thank reports and government sources in order to work out where they were statistically likely to do well given their prior attainment, sex and ethnicity. It’s wrong that only parents who work in policy and know their way around the data can find out which schools their child is likely to succeed in.

If the government is really committed to transparency, it should go even further. As Katharine Birbalsingh has argued, government should “open up the schools”. Prospective parents should not have to rely on inspectors’ second hand experiences. They should be able to visit a school during the day and see any classroom. If the goal is giving parents an accurate view of a school, not mediated by a game-able inspection framework, then surely this is a no-brainer.

Would all this really make the unions happy? I’m not so sure. But would it make for a fairer accountability system? Yes.

David Thomas is CEO of an education charity, former teacher, headteacher and government advisor