“High-stakes accountability systems can lead to significant, negative unintended
consequences. In addition to the stress that these systems inevitably place on
schools and their pupils, such cultures can divert attention from meeting the
needs of young people as individuals as schools seek to disguise weaknesses
and present themselves in as good a light as possible. Undue attention may be
given to those pupils whose marginal improvement will affect performance
figures…. At its worst it can inculcate a culture of fear, inhibiting creativity
and genuine professional analysis and discussion.” [emphasis added]
from ‘A Learning Inspectorate – An independent review of Estyn’,
[Estyn is the Welsh inspectorate]
by Graham Donaldson, June 2018
This is a page in the making, to which you are also invited to contribute – you can do so via our <Contact> page.
The Facebook INSTED group contains many insightful resources around OFSTED, its history, case reports, and about better ways for education moving forward (if you are part of the group you will find them under <files>). We have copied most of these to this site as well, under the different categories below, and are now looking through other material we have on OFSTED and inspections. You are welcome to join the INSTED Facebook group and add to the conversations – see https://www.facebook.com/groups/396703371261584/. Anyone can also peruse and leave comments on the INSTED Facebook page – see https://www.facebook.com/InspiringNewStandards. Naturally, if you are not on Facebook then you will have this website now for resources. The Facebook pages, though, will have more of the ongoing media articles – it’s easier to post there!
Table of Contents
On OFSTED inspection experiences
“Ofsted: a case of official negligence?” An opinion article from the British Medical Journal! dated 21 May 2023
An excellent short article, stating the case for a thorough investigation into the circumstances and causes surrounding the death of Head Teacher Ruth Perry, and the other chronicled suicides following OFSTED inspections.
“Should we scrap OFSTED?” – Radio 5 Live and BBC 1 Phone-in, 21 March 2023, with Nicky Campbell
An excerpt transcribed verbatim from https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001k796 (started at 1 hr 5 mins 4 secs; access expired on 20 April 2023)
Repercussions from the tragic Caversham inspection – Guardian article 1 May 2023
Laura McGhie interviews the National Association of Head Teachers’ President, Simon Kidwell, 29 April 2023
Radio 5 Live, 29 April 2023, 4.05 am [available for 30 days at https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001lhvf ]
Over 3000 Ofsted horror stories related by teachers – March – April 2023
This is a spreadsheet compiled by a primary school teacher – Mr. P on twitter @ICT_MrP – where teachers have been invited to anonymously give experiences they have had at the hand of OFSTED. It is sobering! You are invited to give your own experience to add to this via this Google form link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScuFlNSJ5yY76GgbU5-QKPDJU01GL98_67Ot5v3tfi7N7sR6Q/viewform
An Open Letter to Amanda Spielman (head of Ofsted), and to Steiner Schools Recently Rated “Inadequate” by Ofsted, June 2019
An Open Letter signed by over 50 educators from around the country. Similar to many other reports, OFSTED downgraded several schools here from Good or Outstanding to Inadequate on many spurious and also inaccurate safeguarding grounds.
‘Bullying’ Ofsted too test-obsessed to understand Steiner schools, say experts in response to watchdog’s condemnation, Exclusive: Former Archbishop of Canterbury is among signatories of a letter calling for Ofsted to change, Education news article, The Independent, 3 July 2019
England’s schools have reached crisis point, with DfE policies and Ofsted’s inspection methods the culprit, letter to the editor, The Independent, 1 July 2019
Fair Judgement and memorial to Ruth Perry. Crowd-Fundraising for an OFSTED challenge, May 2023:
Some details (click on the link above for more): “Thank you to all who have donated. As you can see from the total opposite, we have met our first target, but need to continue to work to meet potential legal costs and ensure a proper memorial to Ruth Perry. Our solicitors, Irwin Mitchell, have prepared a brief to leading counsel, Catherine Callaghan KC, and we are actively co-operating with other groups and organisations, including Queen Emma School and the National Associatin of Headteachers. Catherine Callaghan and Irwin Mitchell are kindly acting for us at a heavily discounted rate.”
On OFSTED
Will the Leopard Change its Spots?: A new model of inspection for Ofsted, by Frank Coffield, Pb 104pp, UCL IOE Press, 2017 (available at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Will-Leopard-Change-its-Spots/dp/1782772138)
The Experience of Ofsted: fear, judgement and symbolic violence,
by Catherine Gallagher and Rob Smith
Free schools should come with a health warning,
by Warwick Mansell
Inspection, Inspection, Inspection: How OfSTED Crushes Independent Schools and Independent, Teachers
by Anastasia de Waal
Testing times in English primary schools 1992-2012: The effects of a performative culture on teachers’ and pupils’ relations and identities,
by Bob Jeffrey
An Inspector Calls: Ofsted and its effect on school standards, edited by Cedric Cullingford, Pb 228pp, Kogan Page, 1999 (available at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Inspector-Calls-Ofsted-Effect-Standards/dp/1138158046/ref=sr_1_1)
OFSTED, Inspection and the Betrayal of Democracy, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 35, No. 4, 2001,
by Michael Fielding
Please Show You’re Working: A Critical Assessment of the Impact of OFSTED Inspection on Primary Teachers, (2000) British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 21, No.4, December
by Peter Case, Susan Case, and Simon Catling
OFSTIN on Ofsted, (1999)
OFSTIN is the name adopted by a voluntary unfunded group of educationists who began to meet in 1996 because of their serious concerns about the Ofsted system of school inspection. They published this summary report in 1999, a shortened version of a larger report which follows:
A Better System of Inspection?
A Report by Chris Boothroyd, Carol Fitz-Gibbon, John McNicholas, Meryl Thompson, Elliott Stern and Ted Wragg
This report followed on from a conference in Oxford in 1996. From the forward:
“In June 1996 more than a hundred people attended a conference at New College, Oxford to share experiences and ideas about Ofsted inspections of schools. The conference focused on four issues: the soundness of Ofsted’s methods; its impact on schools, teachers and the education service; the extent to which it represented value for money; and the way forward for inspection as a means of accountability
and a tool for school improvement.”
This report is important as it demonstrates that the questions about Ofsted’s methods have been controversial and questioned, with negative effects on schools and teachers – and thus also pupils – almost since day one of the inspectorate’s creation.
On education and better ways
Learning and Education as if Our Humanity Mattered: Some Personal Reflections,
by Faysal Mikdadi
Reflections by Faysal Mikdadi on the state of education in England. (from Self and Society, No. 4, Winter 2019-20 issue). Mikdadi (now deceased) was a teacher, senior leader, school inspector and teacher mentor.
From the beginning: “For the last 40 years or so, I have felt that state education and all its tributaries have been aimed at creating robotic and compliant adults. In fact, this goes back to the Prussian militaristic approach to developing children each as a homunculus from his/her earliest years. On this view, there is no need for childhood since being a child is childish, and therefore worthless in the eyes of us intelligent capitalist grown ups… What we do to our children in today’s school is nothing short of obliterating their most natural and most powerful quality: ‘imagination’.”
Finnish Lessons, a presentation by Pasi Sahlberg, PhD
This was a presentation by Pasi Sahlberg to the British Parliament on 17th May 2012. Three slides of many:
Other related articles and publications
The Risk Management of Everything: Rethinking the politics of uncertainty,
by Michael Power