Ofsted has admitted that its inspectors found it more challenging to carry out deep dives into individual subjects in small primary schools.
The watchdog’s comments follow complaints that Ofsted’s curriculum-focused inspections - in which individual subjects were scrutinised in detail - have been more challenging for smaller schools, where one member of staff can be the subject lead in more than one area.
A new Ofsted report into the watchdog’s current inspection framework says inspectors were able to “apply the deep dive and learning walk methodologies, mostly in straightforward and effective ways”.
It adds: “However, there were some contexts where it was harder. Deep dives were more challenging in small schools, for example.”
Ofsted scrapping deep dives
A Tes investigation previously revealed that England’s smallest primary schools were five times more likely to be rated “inadequate” than the largest ones.
Last year Sir Martyn Oliver, Ofsted’s chief inspector, announced that deep dives were being dropped from ungraded inspections and would only be used for graded inspections.
At the time he told the NAHT school leaders’ union’s conference that the decision to stop deep dives in ungraded inspections followed feedback from small primary schools.
This week Ofsted announced that it would stop subject deep dives altogether.
However, Mark Enser, a former Ofsted HMI and subject lead for geography, warned against this decision.
Writing for Tes, he said that deep dives allowed for emerging evidence during inspection “to be triangulated and challenged”.
Concerns about ungraded inspections
Ofsted’s review findings also reveal that inspectors were less confident about the evidence base for ungraded inspections, compared with graded inspections. The watchdog has now said that ungraded inspections will no longer take place.
And judging the impact of a school’s curriculum was more complicated in special schools and alternative provision because of the wide range of pupils’ needs, the review finds.
“For instance, fewer published outcome measures are available in these providers; those that are available are not necessarily representative of all the children who have passed through that provision,” it says.
Ofsted’s current education inspection framework (EIF) has been used to inspect schools since September 2019, having been introduced by Sir Martyn’s predecessor, Amanda Spielman.
It increased inspectors’ focus on the curriculum, which formed a key part of a new quality of education judgement. Inspectors were tasked with looking at the intent, implementation and impact of a school’s curriculum.
As part of this work, Ofsted assessed the school curriculum through a series of deep dives into individual subjects.
Ofsted said it carried out a large-scale review of the EIF in 2023 “to understand whether we were carrying out inspections as we intended”.
It also subsequently evaluated the impact of the EIF on curriculum practice in schools.
The review on curriculum practice will be published in due course, the inspectorate said.
The findings have been published after the watchdog started a consultation on a new framework due to be launched later this year as it moves towards introducing school report cards.
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