A senior Ofsted official has said he wants to put the “voodoo consultants” who peddle “vampiric” “mocksted” inspections out of business.

Luke Tryl, the inspectorate’s director of corporate strategy, said paying consultants to give schools a dry-run of an Ofsted visit was an “obscene waste of time and money”, which added “zero value”.

Mr Tryl was speaking at a Westminster Education Forum event on school accountability in London this morning.

“Paying an external consultant to perform a ‘mocksted’, purely to rehearse or refine for an inspection, is an obscene waste of time and money,” he said. “It adds zero value to the work for children and young people.”

Schools ‘putting on a performance’

He added: “If I can achieve one thing during my time at Ofsted, it will be to end what I describe as the ‘vampiric’ practice of mocksteds and put the voodoo consultants that peddle them out of business.”

Mr Tryl said that Ofsted was “determined to get more savvy at noticing when schools are putting on a performance for inspection”, and that it was looking at whether this information could be included in inspection reports. 

“I would want us to get better at finding where schools are doing this and, if possible, be able to reflect it in our reporting as well,” he said.

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