Ofsted’s refusal to publish inspection training materials could be down to a lack of “confidence” and fear of a negative “reaction”, a school trust sector leader has said.
Steve Rollett, the deputy chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, has called the watchdog’s decision “disappointing” and said that many in the sector were “expecting a more collegiate response”.
His comments, in a blog, follow last week’s controversy over training materials for inspectors that Ofsted is refusing to publish.
The blog also discusses the prospect of future inspection reform and says events of recent years, including the Covid-19 pandemic, have made this more likely.
Both the CST and the Association of School and College Leaders had called on Ofsted to publish the aide memoires it uses to train its inspectors after these began circulating on social media.
Ofsted said, in response, that it does not publish training materials because “without the context of our wider training programme, they are incomplete and do not work as guidance for schools”.
Mr Rollett has now expressed his disappointment about this decision in a new CST blog on the subject of Ofsted and its potential future direction.
Ofsted controversy over inspection materials
He wrote: “Ofsted has, of course, rightly pointed out that what is in the aide memoires is already reflected in its lengthier research reviews, but as we have been reminded, selection of content matters! What Ofsted has chosen to include in these summaries is, arguably, significant because of its inclusion.”
Mr Rollett acknowledges that publishing these materials is not without risk and says that “nobody wants to open the door to a new wave of aide memoire-fuelled ‘mocksteds’ or superficial compliance, which circumvents the development of high-quality curriculum thinking”.
But, he added: “The cat is already out of the bag - the resources are already circulating widely and leaders will need to treat them with the caution they demand. We must trust schools to do this.”
He said the decision not to publish the materials was disappointing on a “purely practical level...because it means they will continue to circulate on some sort of inequitable dark net of accountability (coming to a Dropbox near you soon, I would imagine).”
Mr Rollett added: “On a more emblematic level it is disappointing because I think many in the sector were hoping for, and expecting, a more collegiate response from the inspectorate...
”...One wonders if a more confident inspectorate would be less anxious about publishing these documents.
“I’m sure that part of Ofsted’s rationale is that it genuinely doesn’t want to drive adverse consequences in the system, but given these documents are already out there, could it also be because Ofsted feels some understandable anxiety about the reaction it might receive if they were to be published officially?”
In his blog, Mr Rollett highlights some of the criticism Ofsted’s inspection materials have received and questions what this might reveal about the future direction of the inspectorate.
He said that a discussion on the future of Ofsted should have the starting point of “What purpose(s) do we need inspection to fulfil?”, closely followed by “What actions do we want to occur as a result of inspection?”
He also touches on the prospects of multi-academy trusts being inspected by Ofsted - something that has been debated since the publication of the Schools White Paper, which outlined plans for a new regulatory system for trusts.
His blog said: “For example, it opens up the space for us to think about whether and how inspection of trusts should become a more significant part of the system.
“And we can test thinking about the role, benefits and risks of graded judgements because their value is surely dependent on the purposes we expect them to fulfil.”
He also raised the prospect of Ofsted reform - something that Labour has committed to.
Mr Rollett said: “It feels like the experiences of the past couple of years, including Covid-19 and the current political landscape, make it more likely that inspection reform might re-emerge as a big-ticket policy debate in the system over the next year or two.
“It seems likely that at least one of the main political parties would seek reform of some kind.
“My hope is that if there is to be a debate about inspection, we seek first to ask the right questions instead of leaping to piecemeal policy proposals.
“And to be clear, this isn’t an unambitious position. We’ve seen many frameworks come and go since Ofsted’s inception, but how often do policymakers really think deeply about its purposes and coherence?”
Ofsted has been contacted for comment.
