An overhaul isn’t sufficient: Ofsted will have to cross | Letters

The scathing feedback of Prof Julia Waters at the govt’s proposed tweaks to the best way Ofsted inspects and stories on colleges are completely justified and the entirety she says is totally true (Ruth Perry’s sister joins calls to pause proposed Ofsted overhaul, 28 April).

In the previous 25 years, rigidity brought about via Ofsted inspections has been cited in no fewer than 10 coroner’s stories and there’s transparent proof that many extra college leaders have thought to be taking their lives following a detrimental inspection.

It is reasonably astonishing that the present “consultation” makes no reference to those surprising info, whilst showing to be in keeping with the basis {that a} gadget that objectives to “improve” colleges via the planned use of public humiliation is basically sound and simply wishes some beauty adjustments.

Ofsted’s most effective obviously observable “achievement” is to have caused a disaster within the recruitment and retention of academics. The govt will have to know all this and it’s time it had the braveness to recognize that a whole reconsider is easily late.
Michael Pyke
The Campaign for State Education

Julia Waters and others are proper to query the function of Ofsted and the federal government’s session. The proposed adjustments are nonetheless in keeping with the primacy of parental selection. That is erroneous and harmful. The primacy for the state gadget will have to certainly be to boost requirements around the gadget. The present summative gadget demoralises many group of workers and will set some colleges on a downward cycle. Schools in difficulties, regularly in essentially the most difficult cases, will have to be supported, no longer named and shamed. This calls for a formative review gadget.

Of direction, folks will have to be stored knowledgeable, however which may be via a document with commendations and proposals along with an motion plan for development evolved collectively via the inspectors and the college. This radical trade of means may just no longer be followed via Ofsted. It would want to be disbanded and changed via an workplace for college and school development.
Robert Dyson
Emeritus professor, University of Warwick