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Why Ofsted ditching deep dives is a mistake

We often run the risk in education of allowing the pursuit of perfection to be the enemy of good.
I worry that this is what we are seeing with today’s announcement from Ofsted that subject deep dives are going to be removed from the inspection process.
It worries me both as a former Ofsted inspector and, more importantly, a former head of department. Deep dives may not have been perfect but I’d argue that they are better than the alternative.
The reason why deep dives should have been celebrated, grudgingly, by those in schools is that they provide opportunities for emerging evidence to be triangulated and challenged.
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If a lesson visit revealed a potential weakness, it could be checked against what was typical in students’ books. Something said by a subject lead in a meeting at the start of the day might pose questions about the quality of the curriculum, but this could be checked against what students said later in the day.
Spending several hours within a subject area meant that leaders could give context to things like pupil outcomes or the way that feedback was, or was not, given in books. There were ways that assumptions could be challenged.
Defending Ofsted deep dives
One common misconception about deep dives is that they are subject inspections, with judgements made about each of the areas that have been visited.
However, the idea was always to see what inspectors could learn about the quality of education across the school. What did looking at this range of subjects tell you about ambition or sequencing, or the pedagogy used or the impact it was having on what pupils knew?
This discussion happened in the team meeting with leaders present who could see how the dots were being joined and how conclusions were emerging.
Carrying out the deep dives on day one meant that the day two timetable could be tailored to challenge these emerging conclusions, should leaders wish.
The alternative to this approach is that we return to a fragmented view of education, driven by data and the need to carry out inspections at pace and as cheaply as possible.
Another benefit of the deep dive methodology is the impact it has had on the breadth and quality of education that pupils receive in a wide range of subjects. This is one of the things that several of Ofsted’s subject reports have commented on, especially if you contrast what is happening now with what was happening under previous inspection frameworks, such as the issues highlighted in Key Stage 3: The wasted years.
The current education inspection framework (EIF) and its deep dive methodology gave teachers and subject leaders a clear rationale for why school leaders should help them to develop their subjects.
It meant that geographers could argue for time for fieldwork, science departments for equipment for practical demonstrations and history leads for time in the Year 6 curriculum. There was an incentive to ensure that every subject was strong because any of them might be looked at during a deep dive.
The danger of unintended consequences
Ofsted needs to be careful around the unintended consequences of removing deep dives. Especially when it has the pressure of introducing a new framework, seeking to hold schools responsible for a new array of outcomes.
It is also notable how many subject leads have commented that, despite the stress and worry in the lead-up to inspection, the actual process of going through a deep dive was some of the best CPD they had ever had.
In many cases, the morning or afternoon with an inspector unpicking the curriculum and joining them in quality assurance was the closest thing they’d had to training in how to lead a subject.
Deep dives celebrated the importance of middle leaders in schools. They revealed what should always have been clear: that they are the engine room of the school.
Does this mean that deep dives, and the inspection framework they sat in, was perfect? Of course not.
Deep dives proved particularly challenging for small schools, but this was something that inspectors had already been trained in, with positive feedback from the sector.
There could be issues when deep dives were rushed because time was too short and teams were too small, but it seems unlikely that the proposals to inspect up to 11 different judgement areas are going to ease these time pressures.
Sometimes inspectors may have lacked enough subject- or phase-specific knowledge, but this is a matter of training and something that the now abolished Curriculum Unit was designed to address.
So, no, I don’t think anyone could argue that deep dives were perfect. However, in chasing the impossible dream of a perfect accountability system, we run the risk of creating something that is much worse than what we already have.
Mark Enser is a former HMI and was Ofsted’s geography subject lead
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