School inspections in England will be overhauled for the second time in a year, after a barrage of complaints that the new system was dangerously stressful and damaging teachers’ mental health. Lucy Powell, the education secretary, will tell the schools regulator Ofsted to “go back to the drawing board” after becoming concerned that inspection changes overseen by her predecessor, Bridget Phillipson, were creating problems for headteachers. Sources say Powell does not want to scrap the new system of ratings, which score schools from “exceptional” to needing “urgent improvement” in six key areas, but she does want inspectors to take greater account of the social and economic background of each school and its pupils.
Powell’s changes, which will be communicated to Ofsted in the coming weeks, will be the second set of major alterations to the school inspection regime in just over a year, after Labour’s election manifesto pledge to replace the previous inspection framework in the wake of the death of the headteacher Ruth Perry. One source said: “She wants Ofsted to go back to the drawing board when it comes to measuring inclusion in particular. That’s where most of the problems seem to lie.” Powell’s changes will mean a significant shift from those carried out by Phillipson, who is now equalities minister and party chair.
The two MPs fought an occasionally bitter contest to become Labour’s deputy leader last year, during which allies of each traded insults and accusations. Andy Burnham promoted Powell, a long-term ally, to Phillipson’s job as education secretary when he entered Downing Street earlier this year. Powell told an event at last week’s Labour party conference: “I want to see a much stronger emphasis in the current inspection regime on context, much stronger than it is at the moment.
The inspectorate has commissioned its own independent evaluation of the new framework, with an interim report due out later this year. Paul Whiteman, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said he was encouraged that ministers were listening to the criticism of inspections being raised by parents and experts as well as teachers. Whiteman said: “We have serious concerns about fairness and comparability.
Schools serve very different communities and face very different levels of challenge. Leaders working in areas of greater disadvantage, or with higher numbers of pupils with special educational needs (Send) and disabilities, must not be placed at a systemic disadvantage by an inspection framework that fails to properly reflect those contexts. The new system was initially welcomed by teachers, though criticised by others who warned it would make it harder for parents to judge a school.
Since its implementation however, the regime has been met with a flurry of complaints from school leaders, who say it is harming their mental health and creating greater stress than the system it replaced. Perry’s sister, Prof Julia Waters, said last month that she had been contacted by at least a dozen teachers left “feeling suicidal” by Ofsted inspections, and raised her concerns in a letter to the prime minister. Amanda Hulme, the headteacher of Claypool primary school in Bolton, told the Guardian last month that her most recent Ofsted inspection was the most stressful experience of her career.
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