No more ‘outstanding’ schools: Parents face confusion under Labour’s Ofsted plan
Exclusive
Single word Ofsted judgements would go - eventually. But parents would have to compare two different types of school ratings for years
Labour’s shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson who plans to scrap Ofsted’s single-word judgements on schools, a measure called for after head teacher Ruth Perry took her own life
Parents would face having to navigate two systems of Ofsted school ratings for five years or more under Labour’s reforms, i can reveal.
The watchdog’s reports have long been seen as crucial guides in deciding which schools to apply for. But there are fears that gradual changes under a Labour government could soon make the task “very confusing”.
Sometimes an outstanding school would still be known as simply “outstanding”. But others in the same area could have a more nuanced new style of Ofsted “report cards” without this single word summary.
Experts have told i they think the report cards, planned by Labour, could be more difficult to understand and give sharp-elbowed middle-class parents a new advantage in the race to get places in desirable schools. And they fear the transition process will be “fiddly”.
Unsuspecting parents would have to work out how to decipher the two separate systems and how they relate to each other in order to use Ofsted verdicts to help them compare schools.
The situation would be expected to last for at least five years and would come as a result of Labour’s manifesto promise that Ofsted would stop using a “single headline grade” for its school inspections and introduce a “new report card system telling parents clearly how schools are performing”.
i understands that Labour’s plan is to “move away” from headline grades, introducing report cards gradually when schools are re-inspected. Experts say that a big-bang approach would be practically impossible, as it would require instant re-inspections of more than 24,000 state schools.
The change is being welcomed by school leaders and teachers who have criticised Ofsted for fuelling anxiety in the profession and deepening the recruitment and retention crisis.
The death of Ruth Perry – a primary head who took her own life last year while waiting for the publication of a critical report – was blamed partly on Ofsted by a coroner and has increased the pressure for the end of single-word headline judgements.
The tragedy that boosted calls for Ofsted reform
Ruth Perry’s death added rocket boosters to the campaign to end single-word Ofsted judgements on schools.
The headteacher took her own life in January 2023 as she waited for the publication of the report on her school – Caversham Primary in Reading.
Ruth Perry, headteacher of Caversham Primary School in Reading, took her own life over the negative Ofsted report (Photo: Mark Kerrison/Getty Images)
She had learnt that Ofsted was about to downgrade it from its top “outstanding” grade to “inadequate”.
Ms Perry’s family has been campaigning for the “single-word labels” to go describing them as “callous, perverse and inhumane”.
The detail of what would be on the report cards that Labour would introduce has yet to be decided. But a survey of parents has suggested that many may have reservations, with around 80 per cent saying Ofsted reports should include “an overall evaluation” of a school.
Emma Last, a mother of three and a chair of governors at a primary school in Chorley, Lancashire, sees the end of single-word judgements as a “step in the right direction” towards easing the pressure on heads, teachers and support staff.
But Ms Last, who also works with schools as a mental health strategist, told i that her “worry” is about the “change-over” period from one approach to the other.
“A school currently might be ‘outstanding’ but if there’s no mapping to what that report card is, then some are going to be on an old system and some are going to be on a new system,” she said. “It becomes very confusing.”
Jonathan Simons, a former Downing Street education official under both Labour and the Conservatives, thinks the transition process will be “fiddly”, though “manageable”. But he has concerns about the report card system that would come afterwards.
He thinks the premise of a more balanced judgement is “really important and really valuable” but is worried about parents “not understanding the nuance that the report card is trying to get to”.
‘Report cards risk baffling people and being too clever by half’
“The risk is that it tries to be too clever by half,” Mr Simons, now head of education at the Public First consultancy told i. Citing the example of school report cards introduced in New York.
He added: “The risk is that it tries to put in so much information and so much contextualization, that it just baffles people, and people revert to the headline numbers.”
He said that this headline metric would be likely to be exam results, meaning that “you end up, perversely, not getting the nuance and balance that you’re after”.
Sam Freedman, a policy adviser to Michael Gove when he was a Conservative education secretary, fears a report card system could favour middle-class families who are more used to “navigating these types of systems”.
“If it was to be too confusing, it would give an advantage to parents who have a more professional background and more educated background themselves, who are perhaps more used to navigating these types of systems and would be able to read between the lines of a narrative and make a better call,” he told i.
“It could disadvantage parents who aren’t able to do that. One of the advantages of simplicity is that everyone can understand the information in the same way.”
Mr Freedman, now a senior fellow at the Institute for Government, said Labour’s Ofsted reforms would cause a transition period where two different report systems would be in place alongside each other for as long as five years.
“It takes about five years to inspect every school,” he said. “So you will definitely have a situation where parents are looking at a report card for one local school and an old-style judgement for another school.”
He added that it would “not be possible” for schools to be inspected all at once, saying: “You just don’t have the capacity to inspect that many schools at the same time.”
New York reveals how school report cards can go wrong
Jonathan Simons, head of education at Public First, said “more and more indicators” were added over time, meaning it has “lost its effectiveness”.
He said: “New York started with quite a clean report card, they spent a lot of work designing a nice rubric to identify what good teaching and good schools look like.
“But if you look at the original New York report card versus what it looks like now, it has mushroomed.
“There are hundreds of data points on there because it’s an easy thing for any advocacy group to ask for. Over time, the government agrees to a certain number of those, and you look backwards, and suddenly you’ve got 20 new indicators on your report card.
“At that point, it just starts to lose its effectiveness because you’ve just got too much stuff and parents can’t understand it.”
Sam Freedman, from the Institute for Government, also cited the New York school report cards as a cautionary tale for Labour.
He said: “They have a report card [in New York] and they have an overall grade for the schools. But if you have an overall grade, that’s no better than a single-word judgement.
“You start to get into these quite difficult questions about the design of the report card.
“Schools, I suspect, will want more detail and more complexity and parents would probably want more simplicity, so you’ve got to find a balance.”
Geoff Barton, the former leader of ASCL, the largest secondary heads union told i he had been working “behind the scenes” with Labour on the Ofsted changes and on how to ensure schools are still being held accountable.
He said that the Ofsted reforms were likely to be brought in with a “gradual shift” away from single-word judgements.
“A new framework for inspection will be developed,” he told i. “And that would then start to be rolled out with those schools which have been inspected the longest time ago. That would be the beginning of a process which would probably take over five years.”
Mr Barton said this would be the “most sensible approach” as simply removing Ofsted judgements would leave parents in the dark about the quality of different schools.
The former headteacher said many parents recognised that reducing a school to a single grade was an “oversimplification” and there is a “case that can be made – and can be won – to take away some of the high-stakes nature of Ofsted”.
‘We know there are risks around this’
But he added: “We also know there are risks around all of this. The risks are, if you’re not giving the school a grade, like inadequate, how do you know whether a school is inadequate? If what you’re basically just doing is giving a narrative?
“So we’re exploring what that looks like and if there is some kind of dashboard whereby you could provide parents with better more detailed information than a single word judgement.”
i understands that Labour, if elected, would start reforming Ofsted from day one, consulting rapidly on a new report card system with parents, teachers and experts to move away from single-word judgements.
Polling of a representative sample of parents with children at schools in England in April revealed that parents were significantly more supportive of proposals for Ofsted report cards where they included an “overall evaluation” of the school.
The survey commissioned by Parentkind, a charity representing school parent teacher associations, found that proposals that included an overall evaluation were backed by average of 79 per cent parents. Proposals where it was missing were backed by an average of just 52 per cent.
Parentkind’s director of research and policy Frank Young said: “There’s plenty of evidence that parents are not engaging with Ofsted reports as much as they could be.
“Parents generally are agnostic at best when it comes to single-word judgments. But they tell us very strongly that they do want an overall assessment of how well a school is performing.”
John Jerrim, a professor of education and social statistics at UCL Institute of Education, said inconsistencies in approach were “already an issue with Ofsted judgements” under the current system.
“Different schools have been judged on different frameworks,” he said. “There are graded and ungraded inspections. Although at face value they seem to be comparable, they’re not really.
“It’s already a problem at the moment and it’s hard to know what this [the gradual introduction of report cards] will do to that problem.”
‘Watering down Ofsted could harm children’s education’
He said he feared Labour’s manifesto promises could bring about a “watering down” of both inspection and assessment at schools.
“At the moment, you’ve got the Ofsted proposals in the Labour manifesto, in particular, and then you’ve got an assessment review as well,” he said.
“Could you be very much watering down Ofsted as well as watering down the test score metrics and the test score accountability side of things?
“If you were to ask me what the accountability system will look like in England in three years time, I have absolutely no idea based upon the proposals. It could be very heavily watered down.”
He said the risk is that “standards of educational achievement and standards in core subjects will decline and children’s lives and children’s educational achievement will get worse as a result”.
However, he added that the benefit of “watering down accountability” would be addressing the crisis in recruitment and retention as the pressurised Ofsted system is driving good teachers away from the profession.
Bridget Phillipson, Labour’s shadow Education Secretary, said: “Parents want a better picture of their child’s experience at school, which is what Labour’s plan, to replace headline grades with report cards, will deliver.
“Report cards will identify where schools are performing well and where there’s room to improve, helping to drive the high standards that are crucial to children’s life chances.
“Labour’s fully funded plan to drive change across our education system will bring back hope for our children’s futures.”
