Have you tried switching it off and on again? It’s the tech expert’s preferred solution. And it’s the approach being taken by new Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman.
Sir Michael Wilshaw’s stinging analyses of FE’s “alarming rate of underperformance” were repeated often enough. This left his successor with a dilemma ahead of her first big FE speech last week. Talk tough or hold out the olive branch?
As it turned out, Ms Spielman made it appear all too easy. It was time, she ventured, for a “much more positive and purposeful relationship between Ofsted and the FE sector”.
“And so I want to use today to reset that relationship,” she told the Association of Colleges’ conference, adding: “I will not be using my position at Ofsted to impose my personal views, or to make unevidenced claims about the sector”.
From many, it would have seemed catty; delivered in Ms Spielman’s level tones, it sounded like common sense. “What I am interested in,” she continued, “is collecting inspection evidence, analysing it rigorously and reporting it objectively.”
And that was that. Five years of simmering tension was taken off the heat. But this was no capitulation. Acknowledgements of issues resulting from funding pressures and GCSE resits were balanced with a firm reminder that inspection grades “have been in decline for at least two years” - a “trend that needs to be reversed”. This conclusion was difficult to find fault with.
It’s early days, but the Ofsted reset appears to have sorted out the glitch in the system.
@stephenexley
