ASCL comment on accelerated Ofsted inspections

Commenting on the news that Ofsted has been asked by the government to inspect all schools and further education providers by summer 2025, to give a quicker assessment of how well education is recovering from the pandemic, Julie McCulloch, Director of Policy at the Association of School and College Leaders, said:

“We have to say that the government has some strange ideas about the priority for education recovery.

“It isn’t Ofsted inspections that will help children to catch-up with lost learning caused by the pandemic but ensuring that schools and colleges have sufficient funding from the government to deliver recovery programmes at the scale required.

“However, the government hasn’t committed anything like the level of investment which is needed for this task, although it has managed to find an extra £23.85 million to spend on inspections.

“At the moment, many schools and colleges are still dealing with the disruption caused by the pandemic, and the prospect of also having to deal with a visit from an inspection team isn’t particularly helpful.”