Amanda Spielman’s nomination for peerage by Conservatives underlines politicisation of role of chief inspector of schools

Backing by Michael Gove and the Spectator also underscores closeness with Conservative ministers, with report last year also criticising limited impact of Ofsted's board.

 

Amanda Spielman was at the centre of controversy again over the weekend. And with good reason, to judge from the content of the story.

The former chief inspector of schools, who drew widespread criticism for her reaction after headteacher Ruth Perry took her own life following an inspection, has been nominated by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch to join the House of Lords, it was reported.

The groups Headteachers’ Roundtable and Headrest today published a letter in which they warned that “the awarding of a peerage to Amanda Spielman would be inappropriate and insensitive,” given a recent history of Ofsted having been warned about the pressures generated by inspections and how those concerns “were rebuffed by the inspectorate” under Ms Spielman’s tenure. They were far from alone in that view, with Julia Walters, Ruth Perry’s sister, also criticising the move.

Ms Spielman, who served as HMCI from 2017 until the end of 2023, was, however, reportedly defended by the former Education Secretary, Michael Gove, as well as her prospective elevation being described as “richly deserved” by the magazine Mr Gove now edits, the Spectator.

The Conservatives’ move seems to underscore how political the chief inspector’s position became in recent years – and a related weakness in Ofsted’s governance which its current reform seems not to be addressing.

 

 

The detail

The reports of Ms Spielman’s elevation come only weeks after she launched an attack on the Labour government’s Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill which seemed to slide into over-politicisation.

She had said that the changes outlined in the bill, which have included requiring academies to follow the national curriculum and national agreements on teachers’ pay and conditions, “put unions and union members ahead of children,” the Daily Telegraph had reported two weeks ago.

In an interview later that day on the BBC’s World at One, Ms Spielman had also said: “For over 20 years now we’ve had a steady policy of giving schools and academy chains quite significant levels of autonomy, balanced by strong accountability, and over time it’s very clear that the performance of the English system relative to others has been very strong.” 

This had seemed quite close to the Conservative attack line, put out weeks before, that the academies section of the bill was an “act of vandalism” against the party’s reforms. But in reality, the bill will have a limited effect on most academies: most already follow the national curriculum and national pay and conditions arrangements for teachers.

That limited impact was underscored by a survey of 120 academy trust leaders, running about 1,000 schools, published by Schools Week in February. Some 68 per cent said the national curriculum moves would have no impact in their schools, with an additional 12 per cent saying the changes could be positive. And 79 per cent said the bill’s intervention on pay and conditions – “setting a pay floor” - would have no impact, with a further 11 per cent saying it would be positive. 

Given this ground-level evidence, it is hard to see why a former chief inspector, who had headed an organisation supposedly set up to pronounce on on-the-ground findings in schools, would favour what seemed a more ideological interpretation of the reality.

But politics had also seemed sadly to loom far too large during Ms Spielman’s tenure at Ofsted. On a personal level, I find that slightly hard to write: during one or two meetings with Ms Spielman, I found her personable and thoughtful, and there was some merit in her moves to pivot Ofsted away from its former overwhelming focus on exam results, and to tackle some aspects of results gaming.

However, Education Uncovered’s investigations into Ofsted’s publication of a series of “research reviews” for individual national curriculum subjects, carried out during Ms Spielman’s time at Ofsted, vividly underscored just how politicised it had become.

I wrote in 2022 how Ofsted’s “misuse of research” through these reviews “should be seen as a national scandal”. The inspectorate seemed to have misrepresented research findings to back what was a political perspective which lined up with that of the former government, and in particular its traditionalist schools minister, Nick Gibb.

Last year, a paper by the mathematics educators Ashley Compton and Mark Boylan argued that the inspectorate’s research review for maths was an example of “policy-based evidence,” which had come about partly to align Ofsted more closely with the-then government’s “views on education”. 

It was not that individuals within Ofsted could have political views that was so shocking to me, in investigating this. It was that an ideological position seemed to have taken precedence over telling the truth about the evidence base.

The reality seems to be that, after the relationship between the Department for Education and Ms Spielman’s predecessor Sir Michael Wilshaw had broken down, the DfE, which of course makes the appointment, introduced a chief inspector whose views would be closer to ministers. Ms Spielman’s ideological position does not seem to have changed in recent years, with the change of government seemingly now only making it clearer.

Over-centralisation of control at Ofsted

A final aspect that the research review investigations had brought home to me was the centralisation of control of Ofsted, under the chief inspector. As was put to me during those investigations, most outsiders do not appreciate how the inspectorate is shaped its leader, to an extent which modern governance may prevent with respect to other organisations.

This was underlined in the report that Ofsted commissioned from another of its former chief inspectors, Christine Gilbert, last year. 

In it, Dame Christine wrote that Ofsted’s board had only “limited power” over HMCI, “unless HMCI chooses to let it have some control”. She added: “This degree of autonomy and entitlement does not make for effective governance.”

The chief inspector is not appointed by and cannot be dismissed by the board. Dame Christine also wrote: “It cannot be right that every HMCI has the freedom to determine the range of the Board’s decision-making. The common focus for each HMCI should be on demonstrating a sense of responsibility, a willingness to be accountable and an attitude of service.”

Dame Christine’s report concluded: “This review recommends that Ofsted should revise its governance framework to strengthen the role of the Board.”

There is no sign, as yet, though, of that having happened, with the prominent former inspector critics of Ofsted, Frank Norris and Colin Richards, having warned in November that the issues around Ofsted’s governance had not received enough attention. 

All of this is not to attack HMCI’s politics per se. But her looming appointment to the Lords as a Conservative peer, and her endorsement by Mr Gove, does seem to underline that the relationship between the chief inspector and ministers got too close in recent years. The position needs to be far less politicised, and more about pronouncing on the evidence base as objectively as possible. Further checks and balances, to seek to ensure a sense of distance between the government and ministers, seem urgently needed.