A tale of two inspection regimes

In spite of various eminent people’s conviction that the state and independent sectors have very little to do with one another, I, as do many of my fellow independent school heads, frequently meet with colleagues from the state sector.

Recently, when I was attending a borough-wide training update for safeguarding contacts, our conversation turned to school inspections. Our trainer had just announced that under the new Ofsted arrangements for state-maintained schools, any shortcomings in the area of safeguarding, such as regulatory checks or central staff registers, would no longer mean a “limiting judgement” across the whole inspection.

I explained to colleagues on my table that we in the independent sector had never received a single overall grade as state schools have, but we remain in possession of “limiting judgements” across governance, leadership and management for shortcomings of this kind.