Ofsted’s proposals for school inspection report cards will be a “sledgehammer” to the government’s efforts to improve teacher recruitment, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) warns.
Pepe Di’Iasio spoke to Tes this week ahead of ASCL’s annual conference, which starts today, and shortly before he completes his first year at the helm of the 25,000-strong union, having taken over from previous leader Geoff Barton in April 2024.
His first 12 months have involved a change of government, a new schools bill and the scrapping of Ofsted’s single-word judgements. But what is Di’Iasio’s proudest achievement of his first year in post?
“Being able to work closely with the government from their first few weeks of office. There was a period of uncertainty, but we have established really positive relationships with the government and are co-constructing policy,” he says.
ASCL and the Labour government
It is a striking change of tone after his predecessor Barton used his final speech at last year’s ASCL conference to tell the previous Conservative government to “do better” on making schools fit for learning.
Di’Iasio also points to the 5.5 per cent teacher pay award, securing post-16 curriculum changes and “obviously, the end of single-phrase judgements” as positives from the past year. But he recognises that there is still plenty more work to do.
This time next year, he hopes to have secured the “prerequisite level of funding” for the sector and a guarantee that future pay awards will be fully funded.
“If it’s not fully funded, then headteachers are to going to have to make difficult decisions about what they take out of schools. And that will hit young people the most,” Di’Iasio says.
Another significant figure in the sector who has taken up post in the past year is education secretary Bridget Phillipson. How does Di’Iasio rate her performance?
“She’s done really well at being a more positive voice for education,” he says diplomatically.
However, he says she will face challenges in delivering change in a “very tight fiscal framework”, which will “potentially handcuff whatever she was aspiring to do”.
For Di’Iasio, Phillipson’s low point as secretary of state so far was the recommendation of an unfunded 2.8 per cent teacher pay award for 2025-26.
“[The pay recommendation] does not recognise the impact that would have on our members in particular, and on young people,” he says.
“Everything that was on the table [for pay negotiations] had already been taken off. To then say we need to go further is only going to impact young people. And that’s just unfair.”
The recommendation met with widespread disappointment in the sector, with the NEU teaching union balloting members on strike action.
‘Heat’ over the schools bill
When Tes interviewed Di’Iasio, as the incoming general secretary, last March, he warned about the sector getting “bogged down with school structures”.
Fast forward a year, and the Labour government has ruffled feathers with the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which some within the multi-academy trust sector fear will limit academy freedoms.
“Some of the heat that’s come out of the schools bill was unintended,” Di’Iasio says. “For me, it was all about the quality of the communication and not some sort of Machiavellian plan to try to make it harder for academies.”
The government has since amended the bill to clarify that teacher pay will have a “floor” rather than a “ceiling”.
“The [Department for Education] didn’t think through what their messaging looked like,” Di’Iasio says. “So you could understand why certain groups within the sector will go, ‘Hang on a minute, what will this mean for me?’”
Ofsted plans risk ‘unintended consequences’
A bigger concern for Di’Iasio now is Ofsted’s proposal for school inspection report cards, which he tells Tes will feature prominently in his speech at ASCL’s conference today.
Specifically, he is worried that Ofsted’s plan to judge schools on a five-point scale of grades - ranging from “causing concern” to “exemplary” - could drive “unintended consequences” within the sector.
“Schools are either good enough or not good enough. Now we have two grades above ‘secure’ [the middle grade], which will drive leaders to go above and beyond to be good enough,” says Di’Iasio.
“That is how we got to the problems with the last system.”
Di’Iasio also voices concern that the top grade of “exemplary” will be decided by an expert panel “that have never even gone to the school” and are “basically just reading the recommendations of somebody else”.
‘Not an incentive for inclusion’
Out of the nine different areas that schools will be graded on under Ofsted’s proposals, Di’Iasio picks out the “achievement” criterion as the one that raises the biggest red flag.
This judgement has “national averages baked into it”, he warns, explaining that school leaders fear inspectors will “look at school outcomes and make an assessment before they even arrive, and it becomes a self-confirming process during the inspection”.
How well a school has performed in tests and examinations, compared with the rest of the country, will be considered by Ofsted inspectors when they visit schools under the new framework.
The proposals for achievement are “not an incentive for inclusion”, Di’Iasio argues. Children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and disadvantaged pupils are more likely to perform lower in national testing than their peers, he points out.
“The whole philosophy behind the new framework was to encourage headteachers to be more inclusive in the way that they admit students, but that achievement judgment would counter all of that,” he says.
So, how would the union leader feel if Ofsted does not heed calls for changes to its plans?
Although industrial action is not currently on the cards for the union (“ASCL don’t drop a ballot for [just] anything - it’s not our style”), Di’Iasio agrees that it would put ASCL ”in a really tenuous position”.
“We would be wanting to talk to Bridget about it and ask her, ‘How is that fair? How is that reasonable?’
“Ofsted will put a sledgehammer on all of the other government’s recruitment efforts because the level of accountability is just inappropriate,” Di’Iasio warns.
DfE must ‘show the money’ on 6,500 teachers pledge
On the topic of recruitment, Di’Iasio wants the DfE to “show the money” for Labour’s pledge to recruit 6,500 teachers. The department has since said that this target will be achieved across the course of this parliament.
“All of the messaging coming out of government in the first few months was that there isn’t enough money and almost a negative messaging of the situation,” he says.
“If we’re going to attract 6,500 teachers, they need to think that they’re coming into a profession to make a positive difference. To do that, we need to be optimistic and not down-selling what we’ve got.”
And most importantly, Di’Iasio says, this recruitment needs to be funded: “If the government sits around thinking, ‘How are we going to make this workforce strategy work without money?’, they’re going to get laughed at.”
EHCPs ‘used as weapons against schools’
Another challenge for school leaders that remains at the front of Di’Iasio‘s mind is SEND.
Since he took the role of general secretary, the government has committed to spending £740 million on creating specialist places in mainstream schools and named a number of inclusion advisers. Meanwhile, the Commons Education Select Committee has launched an inquiry into the “SEND crisis”.
Di’Iasio emphasises that significant, sector-wide change is needed. “Because [the challenges] are so deep and so wide, there may well have to be legislation. I think there will be difficult messaging with parents,” he predicts.
“I don’t know if the system going forward can continue to invest in education, health and care plans [EHCPs] in the way they are now. Not that we don’t need plans, but for them to be statutory and used as weapons against schools is frankly inappropriate.”
But what else can the government do to tackle the SEND support crisis? This is perhaps where Di’Iasio is clearest of all.
It can provide training and CPD for the school workforce, tackle the problem of “incredibly expensive private institutions” and “recalibrate what happens to local authorities as the [high-needs] money goes to service a debt”.
In summary? “We need to draw a line under it all,” Di’Iasio says.
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