Ofsted chief: ‘It’s time to reset the bar to raise standards’

Ofsted chief Sir Martyn Oliver has said plans for new report cards are “revolutionary” for parents, and will “reset the bar” to raise standards.

Here is a full Q&A from Oliver’s interview with Schools Week editor John Dickens as Ofsted unveils its new inspection reforms.

How do you think your plan will land with the sector?

I hope that they’ll say this is fairer, this is more proportionate, and at the same time, gives parents the information that they want.

You’ve said changes would be ‘evolution not revolution’. This is a big departure from the current framework – is it more a revolution?

I think people should see a revolutionary way of working for parents, but an evolution of Ofsted’s practice.

Since 1992, we’ve received a single word summary judgment. It is possible for schools to be wholly great, or wholly have areas for improvement, but most schools will be a mixture of both. And you can be both at the same time.

We wanted more nuance. Schools are too complex for a single word judgment, and so that’s what this gives us. I think that’s the revolution, the way of working.

The evolutionary part is, if you look at the curriculum toolkit and you look at the inspection framework, you’ll see clearly how that’s been pulled across.

People should see a revolutionary way of working for parents, but an evolution of Ofsted’s practice

You can also see how we’ve pulled in all of the other standards, and there’s loads more research, like the best start in life that we’ve done.

What I’m attempting to do here is to define the quality standards, not dreamt up by Martyn Oliver, but leaning into the professional standards that exist for teachers: that statutory and non-statutory guidance.

They are the democratically-elected standards that governments have put in place.

And Ofsted’s job is to say to parents, ‘are people doing what they’re supposed to’?

So it’s a new way of thinking, but actually you’re [being inspected] on what you should always have done.

Inspections will focus more on results. Deep dives will be ditched. Is it fair to say the dial has swung back away from curriculum?

Every chief Inspector designs a framework designed for the time. It’s never meant to be a swing from one side all the way to the other. I am hoping this is a balance.

I have listened to people when they say ‘77 per cent of schools are good’. People criticise and talk about the consistency of Ofsted, because there’s a school at the very bottom of ‘good’ that could have been ‘requires improvement’. Meanwhile there’s a school that’s the very top of ‘good’ that could have been ‘outstanding’.

It’s such a broad brush that it’s captured more than three quarters of the entire system. And it doesn’t give that nuance. It doesn’t give that flavour that people are asking for.

Do you think that figure is accurate?

I stand by our inspectors, inspecting against all of the frameworks that’s led to that picture. But I do know from the Big Listen consultation that people don’t trust that figure. There was a real concern about that, and that’s why I think this bit is another revolutionary moment.

I think after 1992, using four, five, six, seven – the back to four – ways of having a single word judgment, it always pretty much centred around good and outstanding, or satisfactory, RI and inadequate. Those words have endured.

77% of schools good? Most people don’t trust that figure

I think it is time to reset the bar, to raise standards for parents and for children. This is a revolutionary way of reporting, and the methodology is revolutionary, but the content isn’t. The content is only an evolution.

When I was a headteacher and got a school back to ‘outstanding’: it got ‘outstanding’ across the board.

But I remember saying to myself at the time: ‘I know there are bits I’ve got to do better’.

So to say that I had no areas for improvement made no sense to me. I don’t see how that helps the system. I think there are things that we can learn from and things that we can improve.

Inspectors will only be able to recommend the new ‘exemplary’ rating so it can be moderated. What sort of percentage of these grades might you give out?

I absolutely have no quota.

If you look at our PISA and PIRLS results, England is really high performing.

The word ‘exemplary’ should mean the best in England. If England’s a very high performing nation internationally, what I mean is the best in the world.

I should have a very, very, very, very high bar.

I would discourage trying to describe what a current ‘outstanding’ is equivalent to. It’s impossible.

If the entire whole of England, all 22,500 schools, decide to be the best in the entire world, in every single one of them, then everyone could be exemplary everywhere.

Unlikely that would be happening. But it’s entirely possible.

I’ve done this in a way which is closer to how Ofqual work: you norm reference the question difficulty.

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I’ve set ‘secure’ a standard that I think parents will be able to say ‘I can see that my child’s score is doing what it’s supposed to do’.

I’ve set ‘strong’ higher and harder than that, and exemplary ‘world class’.

‘Needs attention’ is not a fail. It’s a bit like if you take your car to an MOT, and it passes – but it gets an advisory notice. If you don’t pay attention to this, this could be a problem in the future.

I think we’ve developed a methodology there which is better than the cliff edge.

This is better than a [system that simply states that a school has met or not met one standard], because there’s just the cliff edge.

Imagine the sheer number of schools if you tried to raise standards with a met/not met? People have tried to sell that idea to me: they think it will lower pressure. I think it would raise pressure exponentially across the system and cause great harm.

What was the thinking behind monitoring inspections, even for schools that have just one amber rating?

As a headteacher that’s been through inspections from Ofsted since 1995, I remember the period of Ofsted doing monitoring inspections. I thought they were some of the best inspections that took place in the whole system.

It was a real chance to focus on that aspect. And again, there’s that sense of, ‘oh, look, it’s another visit. Therefore it’s more pressure’.

Read the detail. I’m saying that we can go back and if you’ve paid attention to that area and improved it, then we’ll re-grade that area and move it up so schools don’t have to languish.

We’ve heard this: schools languishing with a negative grade, or a grade that they perceive, or parents perceive, to be negative. They say it harms them, and that they wish Ofsted could return quicker to move that area.

We’ve stuck by that, and it’s our hope that we can just go back and look at that one area alone and move it up.

It is giving people a chance to improve faster, and telling parents in the community they’ve improved faster.

Have you tested the framework yet? Do you know if inspectors can reliably grade so many different areas?

This is going to be a record amount of trialling and testing and training the system because we’ll suspend inspections throughout September and October.

If this goes through the consultation, we would have all of…May, June, July, August, September, October, before the third of November, to train inspectors, to train the system.

I don’t see it as rushed. And remember, this is the evolutionary part. We’re building upon great practice that already exists, even though it’s a revolution the way we go about reporting it.

The ASCL union said report cards are worse than single-phrase judgments. Do you want to respond to that?

All I know is that I’ve worked really closely, and I’m really grateful to all the trade unions.

They said to me that they wanted fast reform. They wanted removal of the single-word judgment. They wanted more nuance. They wanted to talk about the complexity of schools. So I’d be really surprised if they now saying that it’s too nuanced and too complex.

Which area of the framework are you least sure of, and want your former colleagues from across the system to most focus their feedback?

I’m looking for as sharp as possible descriptors across each of the grade evaluation areas.

I want it to be so open and transparent that people should be accurately able to identify themselves without an inspection even happening.

I want this to feel as if it’s not a surprise when the inspection takes place. So, I’m really looking forward to detailed feedback that will help me get that difference between particularly ‘needs attention’ to ‘secure’ to ‘strong’ [the three middle grades].

That’s where I want the greatest amount of help. I also want to hear really clearly from parents about does it work for them?

What is your favourite bit of the new framework?

Inclusion. I’ve tried my best in my life. I wouldn’t say I’ve always succeeded, because I’d never been that arrogant.

But I’ve gone to the most difficult schools that were an offer for sponsorship. I could have stayed in my comfortable, large, secondary, outstanding school.

But I went to difficult schools that were twice in special measures, the worst attainment 8 school, the worst progress 8 school in the country. And I’ve tried my best.

And what I really want is I want schools, I want children’s homes, I want nurseries, I want colleges to take the most vulnerable and most disadvantaged children and know that Ofsted will recognise them for doing that work.

I never, ever want Ofsted to be an excuse for people looking after the most disadvantaged children. So I hope that that’s going to be the best part of this framework.