In early February 2025, OFSTED announced its revised proposals for a new category system for the inspection of schools that include different judgement words and more categories to be evaluated. Gone will be the designations of ‘inadequate’ and ‘outstanding’. There will be eight core areas to be evaluated and five judgement categories – ranging from ‘exemplary’ to ‘causing concern’ – along with a suggested report card system for relaying the essential judgements.
The proposals were immediately condemned by various sections of the education world. Professor Julia Waters, sister of the late headteacher Ruth Perry (who committed suicide after her school was downgraded by OFSTED), appeared on BBC News to criticise the new proposals. Headteachers and education trade unions were equally unimpressed, seeing them as bewildering and ineffective. All of us have 12 weeks to respond to the consultation.
I can respond now – by suggesting that OFSTED should be shut down.
There are many reasons for my adoption of this harsh view. My reasonings are historical, academic and personal, given my long history in many roles in education, including being one of the first, in the 1990s, to join the five-day training course for the new OFSTED inspectors. I was involved in 36 inspections around the UK before resigning and stepping down due to reservations about the purposes and methodology of the inspections. You can read my more detailed critique of OFSTED that I published in 2023 (Dufour, B. FORUM, 2023).
Historical Reasons
OFSTED has had a rocky history since it was invented in the 1990s by the Education (Schools) Act 1992 to inspect schools and monitor the National Curriculum, which was itself set up by the Education Reform Act (1988). The idea was to inspect all schools every four years – except private schools, exempted, that many Conservative ministers had traditionally attended. These included the great public schools (that were anything but public) such as Eton and Harrow.