It’s not often that an education secretary publicly admonishes a chief inspector. It may have happened in the past, but I can’t remember when.

Certainly, the recent letter from Bridget Phillipson to Sir Martyn Oliver - published on the Department for Education’s website - is highly unusual.

In it, she expressed her disappointment that Ofsted had “found it necessary” to delay its response to the consultation on its proposed new inspection system - and publication of inspection materials - from the summer until early in the autumn term.

She also noted his “absolute commitment” to introduce the revised inspection framework in November “as planned and communicated to the sector.”

This is, of course, absolutely bonkers.

The crazy rush for new Ofsted inspections

The original timetable was already harum-scarum because it left schools, colleges and inspectors very little time to prepare for a radical overhaul of the inspection system.

The new timetable leaves them even less time. Quite why neither the secretary of state nor the chief inspector have done the sensible thing and agreed to delay implementation is a mystery. What’s the rush?

In her letter, the education secretary also said she was delighted to announce the appointment of Dame Christine Gilbert as the new chair of Ofsted, adding that Gilbert will provide the “strong challenge and support that all organisations need”. Indeed.

And then there’s the proposed inspection system itself. Yes, the one that is based on a Nando’s-style metric of five colour-coded grades applied across multiple areas.

‘It’s doomed!’

It is obviously not going to work. Anyone with a modicum of common sense can see that no inspection team is going to be able to make that number of finely balanced decisions in the course of a single inspection.

No matter how the grade descriptors are worded or the amount of training that inspectors receive, there is no way on earth that this can possibly result in consistent or reliable judgements.

The words of Private Frazer in Dad’s Army spring to mind: “It’s doomed!”

And the casualties of this chaos will inevitably be leaders and staff as their schools and colleges are sifted and judged by an inspection system in which they have no confidence, but which will be used to make granular comparisons between institutions.

Morale will plummet, stress and anxiety will rocket - and the pressure cooker has been turned up another couple of notches by the narrow window for implementation.

Frankly, we’re now at a point when it might be better for Ofsted and the government to go back to the drawing board and start again.

Initial progress

How have they got this so wrong?

There was real progress when Sir Martyn arrived in post and set out a number of actions to better protect leader and staff wellbeing following the appalling, preventable death of headteacher Ruth Perry.

This included commissioning an independent learning review by Dame Christine, which concluded that Ofsted’s initial response to this dreadful incident had appeared “defensive and complacent”.

Sir Martyn also undertook his “Big Listen” consultation exercise and introduced some welcome changes to the existing framework.

And there was more good news when the newly installed Labour government began the school year by scrapping “with immediate effect” the system of single-word inspection judgements that was so clearly a major cause of the high-stakes culture driving stress and anxiety.

Instead, we were promised a new system of report cards - something that we’ve called for over the course of many years as a way of providing a more nuanced and complete picture of schools and colleges.

And then things went wrong.

A reset is needed

While our vision was of a slim set of nationally agreed standards with a simple “met” or “not met” judgement against each of them, it turned out that Ofsted had something much more complicated in mind.

It swapped one set of adjectives - “requires improvement”, “good”, etc - for a different set of adjectives - “attention needed”, “secure”, etc. It increased the number of grades to five, added some colour-coding, and decided to apply them to up to 10 areas of inspection.

It also announced a timetable for consultation and implementation that was impossibly tight - as events have shown.

I cannot tell you how often we - and many others - have pointed out the problems with all of this, and how resolutely determined Ofsted has been to plough on regardless.

Which is how we’ve ended up with the current dog’s dinner. It does feel that we’re now at a point when a reset is needed. Anyone can see that this set of reforms is not going well and it is time to take a breath.

What is required is an inspection system that is fair and accurate, providing helpful information to parents, identifying where there are weaknesses and where support is needed, and which is deliverable within the available time and resources.

We need to take some time to review the current proposals with this in mind, rather than rushing through a flawed plan.

School and college leaders are keen to work with the government and inspectorate to this end. We hope this will be reciprocated.

Pepe Di’Iasio is general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders

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