Ofsted inspection should lead to a “narrative description” of a school’s strengths and weaknesses across different areas and not graded judgements, which are “reductionist” and “misleading”.
The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) says it is concerned that Ofsted is “losing the trust of the profession” and has published a paper setting out ideas for both immediate and longer term reform.
The paper suggests that the implementation of the Education Inspection Framework (EIF) has been “flawed”. It states: “Too many school leaders feel that the framework allows for overly subjective judgements to be made, that the quality of inspection teams is too variable, and that inspection activity sometimes goes beyond that set out in the handbook.”
