Commenting on the publication of Ofsted’s Annual Report, Kevin
Courtney, Joint General Secretary of the National Education
Union, said:
"Ofsted is right to acknowledge that their annual report comes in
the midst of an extraordinary time for schools, pupils and staff.
Schools are scrabbling to do the best they possibly can for their
pupils, with too little money and insufficient support and
guidance from government. Other services that support children
and young people are also struggling, leaving schools to provide
much more than education to pupils and families.
"We all know that children are better off in school, both because
they learn better and because of the care that schools provide,
but the lack of resources and space to provide for social
distancing mean too many schools are having to send pupils home
because of positive cases in schools or because they do not have
enough staff.
"Teacher and leader workload has gone through the roof during
this pandemic. While much of this has been unavoidable, in order
to make schools as Covid-secure as possible, too many teachers
are also under pressure to prepare for the return of Ofsted
inspections. And Ofsted is misguided in its confidence in
returning to using the Education Inspection Framework when full
inspections restart, failing to acknowledge that the EIF has had
a devastating impact on workload, particularly on primary
schools.
"The best thing Ofsted could do today would be to announce that
their routine inspections will not begin again this academic
year.
"In matters of curriculum, Ofsted tells government only what it
wants to know. Those who work in schools have long pointed to the
damage being done by the government's dogmatic preference for one
model of teaching reading, based on synthetic phonics. Research
published last week by UCL suggested that most teachers think new
phonics tests for Year 2 pupils are a waste of children's time.
Such voices are not heard in this report. It is remarkable, also,
that in a year when many schools have been passionately engaged
with issues of racism, social justice and equality, Ms Spielman
can find no space for them in her report."
