The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) has today
submitted responses to consultations from Ofsted on improving the
way it inspects education and from the Department for Education
on school accountability reform.
Commenting following ASCL's submissions, Julie McCulloch, Senior
Director of Strategy and Policy, said: “As ASCL has made clear,
we fully support strong accountability, reform of the inspection
system, and the principle of report cards. However, having
carefully considered these proposals in consultation with
members, it is our belief that school and college leaders – and
the system as a whole – will be worse off if they are implemented
in their current form.
“Our biggest concern is that the proposed move to a 5-point
grading scale fails to address concerns about school and college
leaders' wellbeing and the impact of this on the current leader
and teacher recruitment and retention crisis, and will undermine
the reliability of inspections. We do not think that inspectors
can reliably make nuanced graded judgements across eight to ten
evaluation areas on a 5-point scale, and believe that this will
undermine trust in the inspection process and ultimately lead to
more complaints and challenges. In our consultation we have set
out alternative grading approaches that we would urge Ofsted to
consider adopting.
“We do not think that Ofsted can continue with these proposals in
their current form and carry the trust of the sector. They must
commit to listening to the responses to their consultation and
rethinking aspects of the proposals. If this requires the current
interim approach to inspection to continue for longer than
planned, to give DfE and Ofsted the time they need to get this
right, this would be far preferable to pushing ahead with
proposals that are fundamentally flawed.”
You can read ASCL's full consultation response to Ofsted here, and the DfE
here.
