Ofsted: a learning organisation?

Colin Richards

The chief inspector, Amanda Spielman, has announced plans for schools’ “middle leaders” to be offered the chance to do a year’s secondment as an inspector. Here Colin Richards, the former senior Her Majesty’s Inspector and commentator on all-things Ofsted, offers his thoughts.

If it is be effective, a learning organisation needs a long memory. The chief inspector’s announcement of a plan for one-year secondments for middle leaders requires Ofsted to learn from the past. Its track record in this respect is far from good.

Ofsted has been here before. In 1992 it was set up to inspect all schools in England over four years but midway through that period  it was clear that that commitment could not be met by existing inspection agencies and procedures. The result was a hasty, cobbled-together management initiative to recruit large numbers of head teachers to act as additional inspectors (AIs) for a limited period. This was bitterly resented by rank-and-file HMI, especially when it became clear that AIs would not be given the necessary training and support to do the job properly. In the event the four-year commitment was met but at a severe cost to the many schools who were badly served and to the credibility of the Ofsted inspection process. It also proved highly problematic for the many  individuals treated as so much “inspection fodder”.  Neither Ofsted or the system as a whole ever fully recovered from that botched initiative. Its scars still remain etched in the collective memory and in the personal memory of heads and others at the receiving end of poorly conducted inspections.