Say the phrase “the human face of Ofsted” and many people will laugh at what they view as a contradiction in terms. Others, however, are likely to mention Sean Harford.

“Sean’s continued to make Ofsted more open and approachable,” says James Pembroke, Tes’s Data Doctor. “Schools tie themselves in knots about what Ofsted does and doesn’t want to see. He’s doing myth-busting stuff.”

Harford is Ofsted’s national director of education. He is also, unofficially, the inspectorate’s public face on Twitter: he devotes a significant amount of time and 140-character statements to demystifying and demythifying the inspection process.

“It was a decision we made within the organisation, to be more transparent,” Harford says. “The use of social media made a big difference to that - I think it being two-way was the difference.”

The myth-busting was one part of the two-way process. For example, Harford says, there was a time when a large number of inspection reports complimented schools on their use of deep marking. This led to a mistaken assumption among teachers that Ofsted was actively looking for schools to use deep marking and would downgrade them if they did not.

“We needed to say, ‘Now we need to move on from this because we can see the unintended consequence of what’s happened’,” Harford says.

Warming to his theme, he reels off more examples of Ofsted-related myths. There was the theory that inspectors wanted to see children who received pupil-premium funding sitting together and being given separate work.

More recently, there was the teacher who was asked to photograph pupils working with maths equipment. She had been told that, when the inspectors called, these photos would be necessary proof of equipment use.

“There are some things that we never, ever said,” Harford explains. “But they just gained legs, and people assumed that was what we wanted. So, by tweeting stuff out about it, we can hopefully reassure people that, no, this is another one of those myths.”

The problem, he believes, is that teachers try to read between the lines of inspection reports, misconstruing them entirely: “So, an inspector can go into a school, see that things are working within the context of that school, and reflect that in the writing of their report.

“Other schools then see that and think, ‘Oh, I can see they’ve done X and Y, and they got a good or outstanding. We’ll do those and therefore we’ll get a good or outstanding. There’s an assumption that what works well there will work well somewhere else. And that isn’t always the case. There isn’t a magic bullet.”

Bursting the bubble

The other part of the two-way process is forging links with teacher-bloggers. One of them, Harford says, asked whether Ofsted had done any work to see whether two inspectors, in the same school at the same time, would come up with the same judgements; the result was the recent reliability study of short inspections.

“It’s quite easy to sit in a bubble and think what you’re doing is the right thing,” he says. “But when you talk to people who are experiencing it, they might have - and often do have - a good perspective on what you do and how you might do something else.

“We realise you can’t remove all of the anxiety from inspection. It’s impossible. But it’s about doing it in a way that people understand - that you’re open and transparent about. You try to mitigate the things causing the most anxiety.”

Harford is personable and comes across as a lively conversationalist. Reading back his words, however, it becomes apparent that this is less about what he says and more about how he presents himself.

Born in England, he moved to Australia with his parents when he was five, before returning to England in late primary. He attended six primaries in total across the two countries. Hartford does not say that it was a difficult time, but he uses the distancing tactic of referring to himself in the second person.

“So that inevitably has an impact on you,” he says. “It can make it quite easy for you to get on with people, because you’re moving around a lot and stuff like that. So it’s not all bad.”

Harford attended a Dorset comprehensive, followed by the nearby sixth-form college.

“I think all those experiences shape you,” he says. “It was a very mixed intake in school, and you get to know a lot of different people and learn how to get on with people. I think that always has an impact on you, later in life.”

Today he is known as the person at Ofsted who has moved the inspectorate away from over-reliance on data: poor results one year, he says, does not mean a failing school. “Data is the signpost, not the destination,” he says.

“Data has always been a part of the picture, part of the mix of the evidence we use. And then you look at it in the context of the school. Hence some people saying, ‘Well, how can a school be good if it’s got below-average results?’ Well, because of all the other things that the data doesn’t tell you and all the things that go into making up a school.”

Among the elements that make up a school are the pupils and teachers. But Harford does not think it is inevitable that outstanding schools will be in affluent areas: “We have lots of examples of schools in really tough areas that do fantastic jobs by those children.”

He believes the introduction of grammar schools is likely to have an adverse effect on schools nearby. “If there was a school that people wanted to work in, for whatever reason, and they attracted more applicants, over time they would get a better quality of teacher,” he says. “And the reverse would be true for others. It’s a numbers game.”

Harford was an assistant headteacher when he applied to work for Ofsted, 14 years ago. But despite his progress up the ranks, he laughs - a little awkwardly - when asked if he would like to be chief inspector one day.

“We’ve got an amazing chief inspector,” he says. And if she resigned tomorrow? “I think it’s always good to have a chief inspector from outside the organisation to bring in fresh eyes and a clear view. I wouldn’t be able to bring a fresh look, so absolutely I wouldn’t be the right person for the job.”

@adibloom_tes