Ofsted doesn’t seem to get the picture on competition versus inclusion in England’s schools system

The inspectorate's approach to inclusion seems to lack the teeth that are required, in the face of strong incentives in England's competitive schools system to do the "wrong" thing by children who are unlikely to get good results for the institution.

When plans for Ofsted’s new regime were revealed in outline in February, the notion that the inspectorate would introduce “a new focus on inclusion” drew attention.

Ofsted’s announcement of its consultation on the new framework said: “Inspectors will look at how well providers support vulnerable and disadvantaged children and learners, including those with SEND [special educational needs and disabilities], making sure these children are always at the centre of inspection.”

This will have drawn cheers from those who worry that England’s quasi-market system has incentivised in places what can look like morally highly dubious practice. With schools facing pressure to out-compete their local rivals in terms of exam grades, which can drive parental choice and thus funding, and with the inspectorate having hitherto backed this up with its own focus on results, the notion that institutions might want to remove pupils from their rolls who do not look likely to secure good grades for the school, or find ways not to accept them in the first place, has been a concern.

So, when Ofsted said that “Inspectors will look at how well providers support vulnerable and disadvantaged children and learners,” the public might have expected that this would have been taken in the round.

In other words, the inspectors would take a dim view of institutions which found ways, in the memorable words of one academy trust chief executive, Jonny Uttley, to “curate” their rolls, in the chase for good results for the institution. That is, they would manage not to have some “vulnerable and disadvantaged children” on their books.

However, the chief inspector of schools, Sir Martyn Oliver, made it clear this week that such a scenario would not be a matter for Ofsted. He told MPs on the House of Commons Education Select Committee: “Some people have been calling for Ofsted to look at admissions. Ofsted does have the power, I don’t want the power [my italics] to look at admissions. That rests with the ombudsman, that is not for Ofsted to do.”

It is interesting that Sir Martyn said that not only did Ofsted not have this ability, but it actively did not want it.

The obvious response to that is: how can the inspectorate be taking inclusion seriously, if it does not want to look at the possibility schools might be managing their intake in this way.

As Mr Uttley put it in response, Ofsted could “leave the legal implementation of admissions policy with the [Schools] Adjudicator but still look at impact, who attends the school, who leaves and why. Not doing so is a choice.”

Ofsted’s new approach does foreground inclusion, which is one of six main evaluation areas. Inspectors, its toolkit makes clear, will have to check that leaders and staff “identify and support” children eligible for pupil premium, those with SEND, those who are in or have been in social care, and those with protected characteristics.  

This is important. Schools, clearly, will need to do their best with those children in these categories which they have on their rolls. But this, significant again as it is, is as far as Ofsted’s drive for inclusion seems to go.

In the evidence session, two Labour MPs, including the committee chair Helen Hayes, put it to Sir Martyn, that parents of children with SEND were not being offered placements at schools because of those additional needs.

The chief inspector’s response seemed to imply that this would be a matter for the inspection of local authorities, rather than information to feed back into individual school inspection verdicts.

Coming to mind behind all of this is the case of a headteacher who told me not so long ago that their school was surrounded by institutions run by academy trusts which took an aggressive approach towards managing their rolls. The result, they said, was that their school ended up educating many children, who were not being educated in these other institutions, who through their characteristics were less likely to get good results.  

The logic of a genuinely all-embracing drive on inclusion by Ofsted is that, if this anecdote is true, those schools would have found themselves penalised in the inspectorate’s new set-up. That is, they would be judged not only on how they did for vulnerable children who were on their rolls when the inspectors arrived, but those who might have been there but were not. But, given what we heard during this evidence session, there seems little sign of this happening.

Some will read this and reflect that it would be a very difficult time for anyone to be advocating tough consequences for any schools via the inspection system. After all, Ofsted has been under a new level of criticism for the pressure it puts on headteachers since the death of Ruth Perry nearly two years ago. There are widespread concerns that its new set-up will only ramp up such pressures, with the Association of School and College Leaders saying this week that it was considering legal action against the new framework.

I would certainly rather not be in a world where we needed some tough mechanism to counteract the system incentives which might be encouraging schools not to have on their rolls vulnerable learners.

But we are where we are: as Mr Uttley put it in another intervention in the national debate last week: “’hyper-competition’ between schools weakens inclusion”. He said: “Whether that’s through the accountability system, whether it’s Ofsted and the school down the road flying an ‘outstanding’ Ofsted flag outside their building when you know that they have not behaved as inclusively as you – it makes our lives harder, and that needs to change.” 

Will Ofsted’s new “report card” inspection framework improve practice in schools by tackling what could be seen as some of the side-effects of the way England’s schools system has been set up?

It seems fair to say that public service remains a powerful driver for many, probably the overwhelming majority, of those working in education. Most will continue to try to do the best for all of the children coming a school’s way. But those leading institutions are acting in the face of competitive forces which also push them in a different direction.

Given the reality of how the incentives of institutional success have operated, as Mr Uttley suggested probably since the advent of England’s quasi-market in schools was set up in 1988, any genuine attempt to prioritise inclusion would need to take on these downsides explicitly, and aggressively.

Sir Martyn’s stance seems to suggest that Ofsted either does not get this, or does understand it but is not prepared to take the logic of its within-school focus on inclusion to a more realistic end-point.

As a result, the inspectorate’s approach will be seen as lacking teeth.

Will schools doing the “wrong” thing in the scenarios outlined by Mr Uttley, and my headteacher source, still end up getting rewarded for it, in Ofsted’s system? Sadly, I would not bet against it.