Sean Harford | Schools Week

Harford: ‘Longer Ofsted inspections could reduce anxiety for schools’

In his final interview as Ofsted’s national director of education, Sean Harford talks to Schools Week about the future of inspections, his proudest moments and plans for the future. After 18 years, six chief inspectors and countless hours of commuting, Sean Harford has retired from Ofsted. He had intended to remain in post as national […]

‘Permissive’ national curriculum gives schools too much freedom, says Ofsted director

The national curriculum has become too “permissive”, and making more subjects compulsory at key stage 4 could help “lever change and improvement”, a senior Ofsted official has said. Sean Harford told the House of Lords youth unemployment committee yesterday that schools had responded “in a way that has been unhelpful” to decisions to stop requiring […]

Chris Russell to replace Sean Harford as Ofsted’s national education director

Ofsted is to name Chris Russell as its new national director of education, replacing Sean Harford, Schools Week has learned. The watchdog revealed last month that Harford will leave at the end of August this year after deciding to take early retirement. Russell is currently Ofsted’s regional director for the south east, having previously held […]

Ofsted national education director Sean Harford to take early retirement

Ofsted’s national director of education Sean Harford is to stand down from his role to take early retirement, the watchdog has announced. Harford has worked at Ofsted since 2003, initially as a Her Majesty’s Inspector and then in a number of management roles. He has been in his current role since 2015, and was national […]

Has Ofsted given up on school case studies?

Ofsted’s case studies have not always had their intended consequences. As Sean Harford said at the recent ‘Radical ideas to transform Ofsted’ conference at the UCL Institute for Education: “When Ofsted tries to nudge something, it often becomes a shove.” A famous example is triple marking. When the inspectorate published the case study of a […]

Schools must plan curriculum and be able to show inspectors, says Harford

Schools will need to show they have “designed” their curriculum and whether it helps pupils to be upwardly socially mobile, says Sean Harford, Ofsted’s national director of education. He said Ofsted would increasingly look for evidence of “strategic decision-making” in a school’s curriculum, something that was likely to form part of a new common inspection […]