Headteachers do not automatically lose their job because of poor Ofsted grades, the chief inspector told leaders today.

Sir Martyn Oliver said there was a “persistent, yet flawed story of a poor set of inspection grades automatically leading to headteachers being removed”.

“I stand here now and say this is not true,” he told delegates in a speech at the Confederation of School Trusts annual conference in Birmingham.

The Ofsted chief also rejected any suggestion that the watchdog has not considered headteachers’ stress when developing its new inspection framework, which he said “couldn’t be further from the truth”.

Ofsted changes ‘will never be enough for some’

Sir Martyn said: “This is the biggest change to how Ofsted grades in 30 years. But for some, it will never be enough because we won’t lessen accountability or remove grading altogether.”

The chief inspector’s comments come after education unions expressed “grave concerns” about the impact of the new inspection system on teachers’ and school leaders’ wellbeing, as the inspectorate prepares to roll out its report card inspections next month.

Ofsted’s overall single-word grades for schools were scrapped last year and will not be part of the new framework. The watchdog is moving to a system of evaluating schools across at least six areas using a new five-point grading scale.

The NAHT school leaders’ union is seeking a judicial review against the plans.

‘Unintended consequence’ of MAT inspection

In a on-stage chat at the conference following his speech, Sir Martyn said that introducing multi-academy trust inspection - one of the Labour government’s manifesto promises - was “complicated”. But he sought to assure delegates that he did not want to undermine the role of trusts in seeking to support struggling schools.

He told the event that he was pleased to be the chief inspector at the time when trust inspection was being looked at, having been involved in the trust system since 2009.

Sir Martyn said: “I go back to what happened in 2009 - a school which was ‘outstanding’ sponsored a school in special measures. That was the original concept behind a trust’s work.

“There is no way that I would ever sit in this chair and allow something which would damage that ability or that encouragement to go and do it.”

The Ofsted chief also warned against the “unintended consequence” of comparing trusts’ data without looking at the context.

For instance, Sir Martyn said, you could see that one trust was outperforming another but have “absolutely zero knowledge” that one sponsors only special measures schools while the other only sponsors “good” and “outstanding” schools.

He also said that too many trust leaders had told him previously, when he was CEO of Outwood Grange Academies Trust, that they were thinking of stopping sponsoring schools in difficult circumstances

“My first desire would be to remove that because that’s just crazy. We want the best people to go to help those schools who need it the most,” Sir Martyn said.

Last week Tes revealed that a former academies minister was calling on the government to set out its thinking on MAT inspections and warned against them being used to impose a particular model for trusts to follow.

And writing for Tes today, CST’s deputy chief executive, Steve Rollett, raised a concern that “it is not yet clear what purpose the additional layer of inspection of school groups might serve”.

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