Ofsted has revealed its new report cards for school inspections but head teachers warn that it risks “replicating the worst aspects of the current system.” The inspectorate is consulting on proposals after scrapping single-word judgements last year.
The report cards which will be introduced in the autumn, would help parents to better distinguish between schools across categories such as attendance, inclusion, behaviour, and leadership, Ofsted boss Sir Martyn Oliver said.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is set to roll out plans for struggling and failing schools in a speech.
Under the proposals by Ofsted, the old one or two-word judgements, such as “Outstanding” will be replaced from the 2025 autumn term by a report card. It will describe what inspectors found across key areas.
These include: Quality of education, Behaviour and attendance, Personal development, and Leadership and management. There will be five possible grades for each area which will be one or two words in length. They will be “causing concern,” “attention needed,” “secure,” “strong,” and “exemplary.”
The new grading scale will also examine how schools support more vulnerable pupils, with greater emphasis placed on the local circumstances a school operates in. Another part of the report card will look at whether the school’s responsibility over safeguarding have been met.
But school leaders’ unions said that it will add “enormous pressure” on schools, possibly worsening “an already severe recruitment and retention crisis” in education. The plans could generate a new league table based on the sum of Ofsted judgements across at least 40 points of comparison,” according to Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders.
It would be “bewildering for teachers and leaders, never mind the parents whose choices these reports are supposedly intended to guide,” he said.
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