Outline of new “report card” structure for schools set out by England’s chief inspector

England’s chief inspector of schools today set out the outline of a new “report card” structure for inspection reports, which will go out to consultation later this month and is expected to go live by September.

Appearing before MPs on the Commons Education Select Committee, Sir Martyn Oliver spoke of “building” the new report cards in front of them, by essentially breaking down Ofsted’s current four judgement areas for each institution into a higher number of more detailed aspects.

The proposed new report cards, he suggested, would feature indicators on:

-The curriculum;

-Teaching/ how well teachers are being developed to deliver the curriculum;

-Pupil outcomes;

-Leadership and governance (though it was not clear whether these would be treated separately);

-Behaviour, both inside lessons and in and around the institutional environment outside of them;

-Attendance;

-Personal development;

-Provision for disadvantaged children/inclusion

-Safeguarding.

The outlined areas tally roughly with a leak back in November, to the Financial Times, of the potential contents of the report cards. This had mentioned “teaching” as another of the inspected areas, which had also featured in a report by the Telegraph in October.

The chief inspector said that the new set-up would see Ofsted moving from a “low information and high-stakes” system which had been based upon single-phrase judgements of schools, to one of “high information and more proportionate stakes”.

The use of more indicators would provide greater nuance and detail for people reading inspection reports, he suggested, without overwhelming readers.

He suggested that the current first aspect under which schools are currently judged – “quality of education” – could be split into three separate indicators: on the curriculum, on teaching and on “outcomes”. “That allows more nuance,” he said.  

He added that schools, for example, which had low results but where leaders were developing staff well would see this varying picture recognised in report cards, rather than both aspects having to be contained within an overarching indicator, as now.

Pupil attendance rates could be considered by inspectors alongside contextual indicators such as local attendance figures and the availability of support outside the school, he suggested.

Sir Martyn said that the consultation on the new report cards, which would be launched “later this month,” would be followed by him and Lee Owston, Ofsted’s national director of education, touring the country until late March, talking to people about the plans. Sir Martyn said he was keen to seek the views of pupils and their parents, alongside those of “providers”.

Sir Martyn was also asked about the prospect of inspections of multi-academy trusts, which were flagged up in Labour’s general election manifesto last year. He said he was in favour of this idea, within the context where any organisational group responsible for an institution covered by Ofsted – such as a children’s home provider – would be inspected in the same way. But he indicated that the move could not happen without specific legislation first.

He said a previous move, running until October 2023, which had seen some multi-academy trusts subject to inspection rather than just individual academies within them, had been abandoned as it had not been funded by government and had not had specific legislation behind it.

Sir Martyn was also asked, during the session, to respond to the figure, contained within the “Alternative Big Listen” consultation exercise conducted by two former Her Majesty’s Inspectors, of 91 per cent of respondents stating that Ofsted as not “fit for purpose”.

Why was trust in the inspectorate so low within the teaching profession, he was asked by the Labour MP Mark Sewards.

Sir Martyn responded that the way in which  inspection judgements had been used had been a big part of this.

He said: “We had a historical abeyance of outstanding school inspections put in place [by the former education secretary, Michael Gove].

“This meant that every school that was outstanding sat on that judgement for an awful long time. When I was a headteacher, we got outstanding in 2012 and [the school] was not inspected until last year…

“Caversham [where the headteacher Ruth Perry, took her own life following an ‘inadequate’ inspection verdict] had been an outstanding school and had not been inspected for an awful long time.

“[For] A new headteacher inheriting an Ofsted judgement, there’s a lot of pressure on that. If you then do not maintain your ‘outstanding’, there is a good chance that people put in a complaint in about Ofsted.”

Schools with “inadequate” judgements might also challenge these, he said. And then, under the previous government, the policy of schools receiving two “requires improvement” judgements being subject to having their control changed also put great pressure on this outcome not happening, for schools.

Three of these situations, then, led to a “level of accountability that was really, really high,” for schools and their leadership, he suggested.

There was an “awful lot happening on the back of Ofsted inspections,” therefore, he said, although Ofsted itself did not create these actions, but rather it was government itself which decided the uses to which inspection judgements were put.

Sir Martyn also said that 95 per cent of Ofsted reports were published within the inspectorate's expected 30 working day limit of the time between the inspection happening and the report appearing. Of the remaining five per cent, two per cent had seen the report delayed by schools making a complaint about the inspection, while three per cent had seen the inspectorate simply missing its deadline, for various other reasons.