Scrapping single-word gradings for schools would not alleviate the “underlying discomfort” teachers feel, Ofsted’s chief inspector has said, as she came under increasing pressure to reform the system after a headteacher’s suicide.
Amanda Spielman has announced a series of changes in response to Ruth Perry’s death, but has been criticised for not going far enough. Perry, the head of a primary in Reading, killed herself this year after learning an Ofsted inspection was to lower her school’s grade from “outstanding” to “inadequate”.
“It’s not for me to decide that there will or won’t be judgments in this system. We could write a sentence but, if the significance is the same and the consequences are the same, then it wouldn’t really solve that underlying discomfort [of headteachers],” Spielman told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“The choice is the wider accountability system, which sets consequences for different overall outcomes. That is what drives the world’s focus on those overall grades for us.”
Teachers in England have said they are being driven out of the profession by Ofsted’s punishing inspection regime. Much of the attention has settled on the inspectorate’s practice of labelling English schools with a single overall grade, such as “inadequate”.
Perry’s sister Prof Julia Waters has previously said she was disappointed Ofsted had refused to consider removing “harmful and misleading single-word judgments”.
