Being involved in education in England involves navigating an intense policy landscape where accountability is entangled with surveillance and performativity (Spencer Woodley, 2014; Kilderry, 2015). Ofsted, the regulatory accountability mechanism in England, has seen heightened scrutiny recently after the tragic death of a headteacher. Consequently there have been impassioned reactions, with calls for reference to Ofsted to be removed, inspections to be halted and ultimately whole-scale reform.
Certainly, in the work of (early) education there are accountabilities to multiple stakeholders. Few educators would question their accountability to children and parents, but the surveillance and high stakes scrutiny by regulators is something entirely different. Recent days have seen a wave of stories in the press and on social media highlighting the stress, anxiety and health ramifications of Ofsted inspections. Accountability brings an emotional vulnerability as the boundaries between the personal and professional are porous, especially when it comes to judgements being boiled down to one word only. Words and images that appear through multiple documentation are powerful and have both effect and affect (Albin-Clark, 2021). There are further questions too about how the processes bound up with inspection processes (deep dives, mock inspections, data generation, staff monitoring observations) impact upon young children themselves, along with their families and educators.
According to Colman (2021), Ofsted foregrounds a hyper-enactment of policy that prioritises compliance at the expense of school leaders’ ability to address the important social context of the school. Professional unions have questioned the relationship between inspection and educational standards in English schools (Bousted, 2020). It would seem we have reached a crisis point in asking questions about who exactly schools and early childhood and care settings are in service to as they walk a tightrope of conflicting accountabilities.
