In recent years Ofsted has become buffeted by harsh winds which have blown it off course. While rightly inspecting schools of all types without fear or favour, Ofsted’s independent stance has been accompanied by an arrogant disregard of the quality of its inspectors, or the safety of its inspection judgements.
Compounding this fault line in inspection quality is the lack of transparency and complexity of Ofsted’s complaints process which means that schools which unfairly fall foul of its judgements find that they have very little opportunity to put the inspectors, and their judgements, right.
There can be no doubt that Ofsted was unprepared for the growing, well-informed and well-evidenced critique of its purpose, its practice of inspection, and the accuracy of its judgements of school quality. The mountain of criticism over the past few years has disturbed the agency’s equilibrium. In a nutshell, Ofsted has been unable to answer the charge that its inspection judgements lack sufficient reliability – that is, that the grade given by one inspection team would be replicated by another.
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