Ofsted’s national education director said there will be no more “end-of-day surprises” in its inspections. The watchdog, he added, is in talks with the Department for Education (DfE) over its inspection of inclusion.
Its new inspection framework will allow school leaders to not have any “surprises” at the end of the day over what inspectors have found, school leaders have been informed.
The national director of education for Ofsted, Lee Owston, revealed the plans for the new report-card inspections at the Schools North East’s annual summit in Newcastle. The watchdog, he told the event, was in discussions with the DfE following concerns raised that its new inclusion category did not look at why pupils leave a school.
Because leaders will be alongside inspectors for much of the activity, “we can reflect as we go, in conversation,” he said.
“No more will we have end-of-day surprises. Nothing should come as a surprise because you’ve seen what we’ve seen, or if you haven’t, somebody’s come to get you to say,’ This is what we’ve observed. Is that typical? Is there more that we could do? Is there somebody else I need to speak to?’”
Ofsted will share “provisional grades as we work with you, with early feedback,” he said, adding that the watchdog “will cover all of the points you can expect to see in the report card. Again, no surprises.”
A question was asked at the event on why its focus on inclusion did not include looking at which pupils were leaving a school. This followed concerns about how it plan to inspect inclusion, one of its six evaluation areas to grade a school in its new report cards.
Geoff Barton, who leads the IPPR Inclusion Taskforce, told Times Educational Supplement (Tes) that it would not be right to judge a school as being strong on inclusion, if they allow some students “to be sent in a taxi elsewhere”. Unless the watchdog takes admissions into consideration, “any discussion of inclusion will be diluted,” he said
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