Headteachers should be telling Ofsted inspectors to phone their supervisors if they feel that they have been asked to produce something that is not a necessary part of inspection, according to her majesty’s chief inspector.
Amanda Spielman said that schools should have the confidence to tell inspectors if they suspect procedure is not being followed correctly, and feel that unrequired documentation is being requested.
Speaking to delegates at the Association of School and College Leaders’ (ASCL) annual conference in Birmingham on Saturday (March 10), her message was clear: “If something doesn’t feel quite right, if an inspector seems to be going off asking for too much or things to be done for them specially, (school leaders should) say: ‘hang on a moment – could you possibly check with head office to make sure that is required, because it seems to run counter to what I’ve heard’.”
She acknowledged that making such a request was “not going to be easy” in the context of an inspection, but said that challenging inspectors on such issues would ultimately help schools to reduce workload.
“We have been clear about what we actually look at on inspection and, more importantly, what we don’t,” Ms Spielman said. “We don’t want to see a performance, we don’t want anything special to be created. We don’t want schools to create Ofsted-ready files, and above all we don’t want you to employ consultants to perform ‘mocksteds’.”
She said that producing such documentation was “a distraction from the core purpose of education, and a costly distraction at that”, and added that Ofsted was “putting a lot more effort” into inspector training to help reduce incidents where schools were wrongly being asked for documents.
However, schools leaders at the event expressed their reservations at the idea of challenging inspectors in this way.
Sarah Bone, headteacher of Headlands School in Yorkshire, acknowledged the need to reduce the workload associated with inspections, but said she would feel “very, very nervous” about challenging an inspector.
“The relationship with the lead inspector is not like that,” she told SecEd. “They are looking at your leadership and management, and making a judgement. I would feel very uncomfortable questioning them. My school is an RI (requires improvement) school, and everyone in the local area is waiting for us to get a ‘good’ inspection. I wouldn’t want to challenge them in that way.”
Amy Stamford, deputy head at Headlands, added: “We are being told we need to be courageous and need to be bold – but might we be judged unfavourably for being bold and courageous? It is the inspector’s decision at the end of the day, and it is their decision that makes or breaks you as a school.”
Geoff Barton, ASCL’s general secretary, said that although it was reasonable to ask schools to challenge Ofsted inspectors, in reality many would find it difficult.
He said one headteacher had phoned the union’s advice line after being asked by an inspector to produce a “predictor” of next year’s Progress 8 performance based on current students.
“We told them not to do it,” he said, since schools had been instructed not to produce any new documents. “But what did the headteacher do? They did it anyway.”
He said it was positive that Ms Spielman had addressed the issue on stage, and that he hoped this would mean that in time more schools would feel comfortable challenging inspectors.
Elsewhere at the union’s annual conference, the secretary of state for education Damian Hinds delivered his first major speech since his appointment in January.
He too focused on workload, promising that there would be no overhauls of the national curriculum and no changes to GCSEs or A levels for the remainder of the current Parliament.
He said he wanted to “acknowledge the government’s part” in increasing school workloads, adding that “the pace of change has been fast these past eight years”.
“Too many of our teachers and our school leaders are working simply too long hours – and too often on tasks that the evidence shows are not helping children to learn,” he added.
Meanwhile, Mr Barton also used his conference address to ask the government and other agencies to “do all they can to reduce the bureaucratic burden on teachers and leaders”. But he also urged headteachers to play their part.
“At its heart, teacher workload is an issue for us as leaders: we hold all the cards. In the short-term, that is about doing what we can to strip out the meetings, administration and monitoring practices that deflect teachers from their core classroom purpose.”
He said that in the longer term, schools needed to explore how technology and artificial intelligence might “take some of the routine activities from teachers’ lives”, and allow them to spend more time with pupils.