OFSTED: Hidden Agendas and No Way to Complain

Note: this blog was edited on 24th October 2021 after an inaccuracy was drawn to my attention.

“I will not be writing this in the report,” the lead inspector paused in his feedback to governors and looked round the table. “But governors may wish to consider whether inclusion in the school has gone too far.”

And there we had it, on the table in the open. Or rather, not in the open because this wasn’t going in the report. Our school “Requires Improvement” (RI) because we are too inclusive. At the time of that inspection 14% of our pupils had EHCPs. An EHCP (Education Health and Care Plan) is a recognition that a child has Special Educational Needs (SEND) which require resourcing significantly above that normally available to schools. This figure of 14% was by far the highest in our Local Authority and 10 times the national average. Several other pupils then in the school would also go on to be given EHCPs in the future.

These children were no kind of burden. They enhanced our school. They helped all pupils to become tolerant, patient and caring; they allowed our teachers and support staff to gain skills and experience which made them better teachers. The inspectors looked hard at whether the presence of so many pupils with SEND harmed the progress and achievement of others. They concluded that it did not.

But the one thing inclusion rarely enhances is academic results. One year our two highest performers at Key Stage 2 SATs both had EHCPs but they were exceptions. Many children with EHCPs have barriers to learning and in our school pupils with the greatest need were disproportionately represented in the older age groups, having joined us in years 4, 5 and 6. These had a noticeable impact on our published results. In addition, the more abstract reasoning required at KS2 SATs means some who succeed at Key Stage 1 are unable to achieve age related expectations at 11. This is the case, for example, for children who decode text extremely well but are totally lost when it comes to inference and deduction. So being inclusive skews data for both achievement and progress. Which is the point the lead inspector was making to Governors. We could not be rated “good” because the numbers in our data could never be good enough. Inclusion, had ”gone too far” for that.

When I complained, Ofsted told me I had “misinterpreted” the inspector’s remarks to Governors but did not offer an alternative interpretation. They pointed to the praise for inclusion in the report which said our “very inclusive approach” ensured: “pupils are nurtured and cared for well”; “pupils respect and value the faiths and cultures of others”; and “pupils enjoy being in classrooms”. It also highlighted that parents really liked our inclusive approach: “Many bring their children from outside the local community because they value the school’s caring, inclusive culture.” The view that inclusion had “gone too far” was not just absent from the report; it was contradicted.

This seems the very definition of a hidden agenda. In public the report praises inclusion; in private the lead inspector tells governors inclusion has “gone too far”.

That Ofsted report was strong in its praise for many other things: our work with children with special needs; behaviour, which at the first team meeting was described as “outstanding”; a “rich, varied curriculum” which “meets the needs of pupils well”; the “strong” extra-curricular and enrichment activities… Over the two days the inspectors found more and more about the school they liked. I fed back to staff that things were going well.

Then I was blindsided.

Note: in the latest edition of the Inspection Handbook, the word “should” becomes “will”.

The handbook for inspection stated that if there were a possibility of a school being graded as “Requires Improvement” the head should be told on Day 1 or during Day 2. (The latest 2021 handbook replaces “should” with “will”.) Thus alerted, a head may provide further evidence. Instead, at the final team meeting where the head is an observer not a participant, out of nowhere I was told the school would be declared RI and the issue was progress.

Stage 1 of Ofsted’s complaint process is to address your concerns to the lead inspector. I wrote him a 3 page letter. His reply was 4 sentences long and translated as “tough”.

At Stage 2, Ofsted appoints an “investigator”. Any implication that there would be something approaching an investigation is misleading. I was not asked for any evidence; no witnesses were spoken to. My complaint was put to the lead inspector and his word was taken. The response evaded some of the issues I raised; addressed others I hadn’t mentioned and included one downright and easily disprovable lie.

For Stage 3 I reiterated many of the points made at Stages 1 and 2. I pointed out the direct lie; this was ignored. I asked again about the inspector’s words at feedback to Governors; I was told again I had “misinterpreted” the meaning. The reason I was not told of the possibility of an RI judgement until the final meeting was because the evidence “was not clear”. I was asked to believe that by the afternoon of the second day there was no clear evidence until it suddenly emerged at the final team meeting.

Stage 3 is the end of the process but I wrote twice more to Ofsted, copying my letters to Amanda Spielman and Sean Harford. I got two brief, dismissive replies.

Ofsted carries out more than 5,000 school inspections every year: in 2017-18 there were more than 6,000. Yet from 2014 – 15 onwards, despite hundreds of complaints, in more than 20,000 inspections Ofsted did not once admit to a mistaken judgement. No organisation could ever genuinely be infallible like this, but the cavalier, disingenuous and mendacious dismissal of my complaint at every stage illustrates very clearly why judgements are rarely successfully challenged. In early 2020 a school in the Advantage Schools MAT successfully persuaded Ofsted to change its rating from good to outstanding: the CEO of this MAT was a frequent adviser to the DfE in 2019. I am still unaware of any successful challenge to an RI or inadequate judgement.

Ofsted judgements have huge consequences. If we had been judged inadequate heads would have rolled, including mine, and we would have lost our autonomy and been forced into a MAT. But a judgement of RI was bad enough. We had to give up leading our highly successful School Direct teacher training consortium; we no longer had access to funds and opportunities available to good or outstanding schools, their staff and pupils; staff were placed under huge pressure… and other schools were discouraged from being inclusive. The praise for inclusion in the report was irrelevant: few read a report. Only the judgement is noticed. Our school was well known to heads and chairs of governors across the Borough for its ethos, and again and again over the next few months I was asked if the judgement of RI was because we had so many children with special needs. One school withdrew its bid for a specialist resource as a result of our inspection judgement.

For myself, I would scrap Ofsted completely and move to a system of support for schools without grades. But while it exists, and with so much riding on the judgements, the very least we deserve is a proper system of complaints and no hidden agendas.

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