Ofsted boss rejects calls to pause school inspections

The chief inspector of Ofsted, Amanda Spielman, has argued that stopping or pausing school inspections in England would not be in the best interests of children. 

She stressed that inspections play an important role for both schools and parents, despite recent calls from unions for them to be suspended after a head teacher took her own life while awaiting an inspection report. 

Spielman suggested that while a debate on the reform of inspections to remove grades is “legitimate,” any changes to the current system must meet the needs of parents and the government. 

The current system in England sees schools graded as outstanding, good, requires improvement, or inadequate after inspection. 

The ratings offer parents a simple summary of a school’s strengths and weaknesses, which can guide government decisions about when to intervene. 

However, the President of the National Association of Head Teachers, Paul Gosling, has called for the “cliff-edge” grades to be scrapped and replaced with a list of a school’s strengths and weaknesses. 

He claimed that one-word assessments do not provide sufficient information for parents due to the complexity of schools. 

Though he stopped short of calling for inspections to be paused, Gosling called for an immediate review of Ofsted’s “one-size-fits-all” strategy. 

Other factors including recruitment struggles, funding pressures, and pandemic legacy issues are reportedly putting school leaders under extra strain.