Commenting on the passing of Motion 5 at the National Education
Union’s Annual Conference, which is being held virtually,
Dr Mary Bousted, Joint General Secretary of the National
Education Union, said:
“Our latest survey of over 10,000 members casts Ofsted in a very
poor light. As we emerge from a time of great challenge for the
education system and all who work in it, there is no taste for
the return of full inspections. 77% of respondents told us that
if Government are to truly support us during the recovery, they
need to put both Ofsted and performance tables on the backburner
throughout this academic year and the next. (1)
“Recovery is not a one-term effort. At this time, we must focus
on the needs of pupils and what schools and their staff judge to
be the best approaches to rebuilding on-site learning.
“Even to set aside Covid, we already knew that Ofsted was not fit
for purpose. Inspections are by definition judgemental but these
are judgements without solutions. They are crude snapshot
assessments of the work of a school or college, conducted without
much regard for local context and certainly without a full sense
of a school or college’s year-round work. And even by its own
admission, Ofsted cannot guarantee consistency or fairness in the
work that they do. For many years they have sent inspectors
unqualified in the phases or subjects they are required to
inspect.
“Plans to return to full inspections from September indicate that
the Education Inspection Framework will be foisted upon
workplaces where it is utterly inappropriate. Primary schools
cannot jump through those hoops as they do not organise on a
subject basis in the way secondaries do.
“We need to see a new, fair and reliable system of inspection
which works with schools, gives them confidence to make changes,
and generates meaningful, accurate and reliable information about
the school their child attends. Our current inspections system
offers none of this.
“Ofsted is not an agent of change. It is a blunt instrument – a
wholly negative presence in schools, never offering constructive
advice. Its determination to get back into schools at the
earliest opportunity has been unseemly. Ofsted is a symbol of the
dead hand of Government, of its lack of trust in the profession,
and must be abolished.”
