The current leadership of OFSTED appear to be rushing around making cosmetic changes to justify its existence. But there really needs to be a fundamental look at how schools are inspected and regulated. When John Major established OFSTED he talked about schools having rigorous inspections every four years and at the time he set up OFSTED the vast majority of schools were under local authority control.
If a school failed an inspection or got into difficulties local authorities could step in a support the school and help it to improve. Today less than half of all schools in the country are under local authority control and and local authorities have reduced their education departments to a skeleton staff so when a school does fail they usually end up becoming academies because there is no longer any local council support to help turn a school around.
Perhaps now is the time to give local authorities more of a role in inspecting and regulating schools in their area. If this was to happen intervention could happen much quicker and schools could be turned around before they reach the point at which them are labelled as failing.
In recent years many schools that have been labelled outstanding have been spared regular inspection so by the time an inspection team finally arrive an outstanding school could have gone rapidly downhill. This would be less likely to happen in local authorities were monitoring schools because they would be better placed to know if concerns were being raised locally.
- By Crabcakes
- By davidjay