Another term, another crisis (a desperately sad one this time) and another set of solutions mooted by opposition parties and policy commentators to the perennial school inspection problem.
As usual, it’s easy to jump to quick solutions by starting at “the end”. “The end” is the question of what policy triggers should be attached to the Ofsted judgement. “The end” is whether the information that Ofsted reports should be converted into four numerical grades, pass-fail judgement, six sub-categories, or something else entirely.
To understand why Ofsted judgments are so pernicious, we need to go back to “the beginning” – the school awaiting inspection. According to Teacher Tapp, half of the profession are on tenterhooks this academic year, expecting the call at any moment (an artefact of Ofsted being behind schedule).
Achieving great test scores and exam results is no insurance against the risk of failure. And those who claim that, since inadequate judgments are rare, stress is unjustified have clearly never walked across this particular minefield.
