“There is a risk of future deaths if there is only lip service paid to learning from tragedies like this.”
Coroner Heidi Connor issued this warning after she concluded that an Ofsted inspection contributed to Reading headteacher Ruth Perry taking her own life in January last year.
Long-held discontent over inspection exploded into an outpouring of anger. Heads wore black armbands and held a minute’s silence during inspections; staff protested at school gates. Police had to escort one inspector into a school visit.
The scrutiny tables had turned on Ofsted, and it was found wanting. Schools Week investigates the Ofsted accountability reforms …
No more crusader
For a few years from 2014, the main Ofsted flashpoints were from the very public turf war between the inspectorate and the new regional school commissioners (see chapter one).
Amanda Spielman took over as chief inspector from Sir Michael Wilshaw in January 2017.
She had a shaky start after the education select committee took the rare step to reject her as the government’s favoured candidate.
She had led the exams regulator Ofqual, but MPs were concerned she had not been a teacher. Then education secretary Nicky Morgan appointed her anyway.
A committee member said Spielman showed a “lack of passion” for the job. But she would say this was misconstrued with her commitment to end the “crusader language” the sector was “pretty exhausted by” – a nod to her more outspoken predecessor.
She promised more intelligent and responsible inspections. What children were being taught would be the focus, as opposed to the outcomes they got.
It certainly made her popular with the government. Nick Gibb, the former schools minister, recalls: “Amanda Spielman was one of the great chief inspectors. She put the curriculum at the centre of the inspection framework, which is absolutely right.”
But the new framework was put on ice just months later when Covid hit in September 2019. After battling criticism about when to return, full inspections were back in autumn the following year.
Post-Covid downfall, why?
The framework was the same. But in the post-Covid world, something changed.
When asked how positively they felt about Ofsted (1 the most negative; 9 the most positive), 38 per cent of teachers in 2018 rated the inspectorate 3 or below.
By March this year, it was 67 per cent. A quarter of teachers gave Ofsted a 1.
Carol Dewhurst, the chief executive of the Bradford Diocesan Academies Trust, says Ofsted was “constrained by a framework that didn’t want to take into account local context”.
“At times it held schools to account for societal changes: rising levels of SEND, mental health presenting in schools, behaviour … a lot brought in from beyond the school gate. It’s unsurprising it’s had a difficult time.”
The shift in opinion came as fewer schools were rated less than ‘good’ – although the drawbridge had been pulled up somewhat on ‘outstanding’.
One former adviser says it was a “crystallisation of something brewing before Amanda. Covid and general stress on the system exacerbated it, but it was a catastrophe born of years of pressure building up in the accountability system”.
Spielman blames the government for the “ratcheting up of regulatory levers”, citing the ‘coasting’ intervention measure. From September 2022, schools with successive ‘requires improvement’ grades could be academised or rebrokered to a new trust.
“That hugely increased anxiety about inspection in the sector, predictably, which was why I advised against it,” she says.
“That made Ofsted’s job progressively harder. At school level, the government wanted to sustain a high-pressure, high-stakes accountability system.
“I did everything I could within those constraints to make inspection as constructive and supportive as it could be with, I believe, considerable success. But ultimately, if government turns up the thumbscrews too far, people are going to scream.”
But others lay blame at the inspectorate’s door.
‘Why did it take the death of a headteacher to achieve change?’
There was a “lack of consistency” in inspections and “total lack of consideration of the impact of inspection on small schools”, says Adrian Ball, the chief executive of the Diocese of Ely Multi-Academy Trust.
“For us, in one small school with just three classes, the phonics lead was required to do a walk with the inspector before going straight into a meeting on the art deep dive.
“Meanwhile, the other inspector visited her class during this time and commented that subject knowledge of the teaching assistant covering was limited and showed an area for improvement.”
Laura McInerney, the former editor of Schools Week, adds: “It was just harder to be a primary school through the pandemic. With inspectors coming in so soon, people felt they needed more leeway. Being told ‘you’re generally doing well, but the RE and music curriculum is not good enough’, it felt like a slap in the face. It stored up extra resentment.”
‘This has to be a watershed’
Then headteacher Ruth Perry took her life while her school, Caversham primary in Reading, awaited publication of an ‘inadequate’ judgment. Resentment became anger.
In the immediate aftermath, leaders wore black armbands during inspections. Some held a minute’s silence.
One head even refused to let an inspector enter her school, but backed down after it was made clear it was a criminal offence. The inspector had to be flanked by police.
Unions demanded inspections were paused. “This has to be a watershed moment,” said Paul Whiteman, the head of the leaders’ union NAHT.
Connor, the coroner at Perry’s inquest, ruled: “The evidence is clear … and I find very easily that Ruth’s mental health deterioration and death was likely contributed to by the Ofsted inspection.”
Other causes included the conduct of the inspection, the single-word ‘inadequate’ judgment for a school rated otherwise ‘good’ but with issues that “could be remedied by the time the report was published”, and confidentiality requirements placed on headteachers before publication of reports.
She said Ofsted had publicly described the tragedy as “a pivot to try and discredit what Ofsted does. This is without any attempt to analyse the evidence more carefully.”
History teacher and Teachers Talk Radio founder Tom Rogers says Perry’s death should have brought “immediate and cataclysmic change. As it was, Spielman doubled down in her defence of the inspectorate.”
‘It’s not me, it’s you’
In a particularly telling interview in November, Spielman said Ofsted was “poorly understood”. Budget cuts were to blame for its “curtailed” positive role and critics used Perry’s death as a “pivot to try and discredit” its work.
One Schools Week’s front page that month ran a picture of Spielman next to the headline: “Parting shot: It’s not me, it’s you”.
Dame Alison Peacock, the chief executive of the Chartered College of Teaching, says the response lacked “empathy, humility and recognition of the ripple effects that that the accountability system has”.
Mary Bousted, the then joint-general secretary of the National Education Union, adds: “It brought Ofsted into disrepute. It had [previously] acted with almost complete impunity. Ofsted was not an agency used to being held to account for its competence, performance, effect it had on the progression.”
An independent review of how the inspectorate responded to Perry’s death, led by former chief inspector Christine Gilbert, said the initial response appeared “defensive and complacent rather than reflective and self-critical”. It “increased the damaged to its reputation”.
Jonathan Simons, a partner in Public First, says Ofsted had been given more and more responsibility over the years.
“The government loved Amanda… but it led to a siege mentality, where any criticism by definition was invalid.”
An inspectorate will always face a degree of unpopularity. As one former adviser explains: “It is an organisation that basically gets told every single day it is horrible, so that can be really difficult. Sometimes those accusations are bad faith, so there was an instinctive defensiveness in the organisation.”
But they add: “The only way to protect this thing we think is really important – inspection of schools – is to make sensible changes and not be stubborn and pig-headed. Lots of those accusations were reasonable.”
Spielman made some changes. But it took Sir Martyn Oliver, the new incumbent who arrived this January, to deliver the kind of change that was closer to what the sector was demanding.
“There was lots of stuff that could have been done, and has since been done, quickly and easily,” Simons says. “It wasn’t radical.”
And Bousted asks: “Why did it take the death of a headteacher to achieve this?”
Responding to the criticism, Spielman says: “We endeavoured to express all the regret, all the empathy, all the sadness that we felt. I was in a very difficult position where people wanted me to say that the inspection had been wrong, and yet I couldn’t without undermining a serious and competent inspector. All the reviews did not support that.
“I do accept that the inspection contributed to Ruth Perry’s death – at least in part because it was how she first learned of serious failings in her school, which so regrettably led to her fearing for her job and reputation. From my first day at Ofsted I was conscious of the fear factor and all the changes I made were intended to reduce this as much as it was possible.
“People want Ofsted somehow to be able to take away a fear of consequences. Only the people responsible for deciding what happens to schools can do that.”
‘It’s a governance issue’
Leora Cruddas, the chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, adds inspection must be viewed as a “wider part of the public accountability system … [and] we need one that is intelligent, proportionate and compassionate. We should be careful of using Ofsted as a lightning rod.”
And there is the role of employers, too, in how the “consequences” of inspections are handled.
Sir Jon Coles, the chief executive of the United Learning academy trust, adds: “I don’t think the issue with Ofsted is Ofsted. The issue with Ofsted is the governance of schools.
“Nobody in United Learning has been, or will ever be, sacked because of Ofsted. We should know how good our schools are in a way that Ofsted can’t possibly know after a two-day inspection. If Ofsted found something wrong that was true, and we didn’t know about it, then that’s on us [the trust].
“If you’ve got a well-functioning governance and support arrangement, there shouldn’t be any consequences of Ofsted”.
Reading Borough Council, which oversaw Caversham primary, seemed to avoid criticism. A learning review commissioned by the council, and run by two retired local authority chiefs, concluded they “would have … responded the same way”.
The review instead claimed councils more widely were “effectively hamstrung” in providing high-quality support because of government policy and funding cuts.
Scores on the doors?
Labour has already axed one-word judgments. And from September 2025, report cards will provide parents with a greater understanding of where a school can be better, and which areas are improving, Bridget Phillipson, the new education secretary, has said.
It has been widely welcomed, but coming up with a replacement will be difficult.
Rogers says the pledge is the “last hope for those who have spent 10 years trying to change the inspectorate for the good of the profession… Will it be a new and more illuminated chapter, or will it be another phase that promises much, but delivers little?”
Becky Allen, the co-founder of Teacher Tapp, says while overall judgments are “a bit shaky… we create a lot of problems when we increase the importance of sub-judgments that in themselves are necessarily more unreliable.
“Imagine we put massive weight on these, and they do it within the accountability system? You just have to be careful what you wish for.”
There is also the big issue of what Labour will do about intervention.
Sir David Carter, the national schools commissioner, adds: “Ensuring that children attend a good school is one of the core responsibilities of a government and a system that explains how [intervention] decisions are reached needs to be thought about alongside how overall judgments will be described.”
The future
A key debate is what the inspectorate’s core role should be. Spielman firmly believes the inspectorate is there to protect the interests of children. Oliver talks more about the inspectorate being “of the system”. And Labour has flirted with the idea of Ofsted being a school improver.
“If Ofsted is not improving kids’ education, or making a difference to the quality of teaching, what’s the point coming in and making statements that haven’t made any real difference?” says Dewhurst. “I do think Ofsted has a role as school improver.”
Liz Robinson, the chief executive of the Big Education academy trust, says inspection should focus on “improving, rather than proving.
“If we feel we have to defend ourselves … we hide things. How do you change the nature of the conversation so we’re not triggering people’s defence mechanisms? [Currently] Ofsted doesn’t help you get better, it makes improvement harder.”
Michael Fordham, the principal of Thetford Academy in Norfolk, says Ofsted does a “really good job” in fulfilling the equivalent role of a hygiene inspector. “It can quickly say is safeguarding good, are behaviour and exam entries sensible.
“But it doesn’t have capacity in the current funding model to do the ‘food critic’ work – ‘is this a good maths curriculum’? That would need a much larger inspectorate, longer inspections. I’m not sure there’s desire for that.”
Ofsted’s own board has warned that the reliability of inspections will be “compromised” if funding is “further constrained”.
Funding is now 29 per cent lower in real terms compared with 2009-10, despite its responsibilities growing.
David Laws, a former Lib Dem schools minister and chair of the Education Policy Institute, adds: “Ofsted remains the one part of the education system that can be trusted and relied upon to call out bad behaviour and underperformance. We give that up at our peril.
“But quality matters tremendously, and being able to carry out inspections to a high standard. The Ofsted budget … has shrunk quite dramatically It puts at threat the quality of inspection, and that worries me. We need a review into whether it has the budget to do its work in a high quality way.”
Bousted also wants a review, but one into the validity and reliability of inspections. “It’s an agency that has lost its way and is in the wilderness. But that’s where you start.”
The best we can come up with is ‘let’s make this more collegiate in spirit – but not abandon it’
Peacock, involved in various commissions relating to the future of Ofsted, adds: “We’ve looked everywhere, and the best we can come up with is ‘let’s make this more collegiate in spirit – but not abandon it’. It just needs to be less pernicious.”
But Spielman cautions: “If we are there to look after the interests of children in schools, there will be times when really tough and difficult messages have to be given.
“Do I think it’s right that Ofsted should fudge or soften judgments and not say when things are not right for children, if it thinks there’s any possibility that somebody could be upset by that? Of course, I don’t.
“But I do think it’s important that cases of failure are handled as sensitively and carefully as they can be.”
