Thousands of schools may be getting “highly unethical” alerts tipping them off to imminent Ofsted inspections by a firm that has developed an algorithm to predict possible visits based on website monitoring.
A Schools Week investigation has exposed what looks like a loophole in the Ofsted inspection system, which is built on the principle that schools should only be told about inspections at most the day before they happen.
Greenhouse School Websites claims to have “developed an algorithm to accurately tell when Ofsted are looking at your school website”. Inspectors look at key information documents from a school’s website between two and 14 days before inspections.
The firm has automatically signed its more than 2,000 school clients up to the “Ofsted alert emails” system, which was rolled out last month.
