School inspections from January 2012

In response to the government’s commitment to raise standards in schools and proposals put forward in the White Paper, The Importance of Teaching and included in the Education Bill that is currently before Parliament, OFSTED has reviewed its arrangements for inspecting schools from January 2012.

The revised inspection framework ( click here to view ) explains how inspection will focus more on the quality of teaching when judging the quality of the school, with inspectors spending most of their time in classrooms.

How will inspections change?

OFSTED states that the revised framework will focus more sharply on those aspects of the work of schools that have the greatest impact on raising achievement. This will:

·         reduce the scope of the inspection and the number of judgements made;

·         increase the proportion of inspectors’ time in school that is spent observing teaching and gathering evidence of learning, progress and behaviour;

·         enable schools to request an inspection and OFSTED to charge for this;

·         discontinue the expectation that schools complete a standard self-evaluation pro-forma although inspectors will take account of any self-evaluation evidence they present.

What will inspectors judge?

Inspectors will report on the quality of education provided in the school and its overall effectiveness.  In particular, judgements will focus on:

·         the achievement of pupils at the school;

·         the quality of teaching

·         leadership and management

·         pupils’ behaviour and safety.

Inspectors must also consider:

·         pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development; and

·         the extent to which the education provided by the school meets the needs of the range of pupils at the school, in particular the needs of pupils with special educational needs or who are disabled.

Who will be inspected?

In response to the government’s wish for a more proportionate approach to school inspections, schools judged to be outstanding will no longer receive routine section 5 inspections unless there is evidence to suggest that standards have fallen or there are issues about pupils’ behaviour and safety.  All other schools will be inspected over a five year cycle, with the greatest focus being on those judged to be either inadequate or satisfactory.

The importance of self-evaluation

The SEF may have gone but the effectiveness and accuracy of the school’s self-evaluation will be crucial to the final outcome.  While the SEF was unwieldy, at least schools have a standardised pro-forma to use.  They will now need to decide how to manage self-evaluation and be able to evidence both the robustness of the process and the accuracy of the outcomes when measured against the inspection criteria.

Raising the bar

OFSTED makes no apologies for using the introduction of the revised framework to raise expectations about what schools should be achieving.  Given government concerns about the proportion of schools judged to be outstanding that did not receive an outstanding judgement for teaching and learning and the current eligibility criteria to apply to become a teaching school, it is likely that schools will need to be able to demonstrate outstanding practice in all four key areas.