The Final Word

Poor Ofsted is in trouble again, amongst other things, for using numbers to articulate intricate and complex judgements about schools that simple readers will understand.

Anything claiming to be simple always turns out to be anything but. 

The current outcry over number grades has led to a renewed cry for the removal of Ofsted and its inspection trauma.

While they are at it, these reformers could also add to their list of agencies to be removed because they too inspect: the health and safety inspectorate, HM Inspectorate for Prisons, aircraft engineers, house building regulators, Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency UK, The WHO and any inspectorate that certifies any activity as lawful, harmless and safe for use because it has been thoroughly checked. 

Inspections are all around us.

If anything, we could do with a few more. The crumbly concrete in school buildings proves that a sharper eye on how the buildings were put up might have helped avoid the current crisis.

Some schools welcome the arrival of inspectors. It is the only time they can demonstrate their success and high achievements and be compared and be seen to be as good as, if not better than, their competitors.

Young people deserve to be reassured that the quality of their education is as good as it can be.

Vets are inspected and regulated to protect animals. Why not schools?

The advocates of removing numbers from reports, propose the complex judgements about schools should be written in a nuanced, carefully crafted display of word artistry that is comprehensible to every reader who comes in contact with the report. 

In other words, they want reports written to the same standard of clarity, persuasiveness and subtlety that a skilled wordsmith would use to craft a best-selling novel.

You can whistle for that one.

Inspection reports demonstrate the inability to do anything other than plod through a series of judgements. The judgements are set within a given framework that hopefully gives a true real time evidence based account of the school, rather than using the sneaky procedure of applying algorithms that predetermine the outcome.

Hopefully, the judgements are expressed with some degree of clarity and a faint nod to the prowess of the reader to cope with technical terms, abstract and abstruse concepts, education speak and occasionally failing to address all of the criteria in the framework.

Writing a report is challenging.

It is no more challenging that running a school and explaining to an outsider what you are up to and how good you are at it.

And another thing – a school fails, the headteacher is sacked.

What if the inspector fails?

Who has the final word?

(c) Ted Dunphy

8.12.2023