By Stephen Brierley
ASCL Vice President 2024-25 

What should you be doing? 

I’ve lost count of how many times that question has passed my lips! Usually, it’s been aimed at a student whose actions have caught my attention, probably not for the right reasons!

But sometimes it’s a good question for all of us to ask of ourselves. From time to time, we all need to refocus on our core purpose, on what we should be doing. ‘Mission creep’ can distract us from that, and when it does – well, that’s when things can really go belly up.

So, with that in mind, I’d like to ask: what should Ofsted be doing? You may think that’s obvious. Ofsted exists to inspect schools, colleges and other settings. Nobody’s going to disagree with that.

But over the years, there has been a bit of ‘mission creep’. Somewhere along the way, Ofsted became school improvers as well as school inspectors. I know a number of us have reservations about that.

The 2019 Education Inspection Framework, though, went further. Through that framework, Ofsted boldly set out to define the very substance of education. And as a result of that framework, many of us spent long hours defining the intent of our curriculum and of each subject within it.

Now, I’m actually, on balance, a fan of the 2019 EIF. But that’s not my point right now. My point is simply this: is it Ofsted’s job to set the direction for schools, colleges and other settings in this way? Is it what they should be doing?

I don’t think it is. In a democracy, it should be the government of the day that collaborates with us to set the direction for schools. Working with the profession and with other stakeholders, it is they who should co-construct our vision, co-articulate our priorities, and co-direct our development. Then Ofsted should design a framework to see how well we’re doing in getting there. Inspectors should inspect; they shouldn’t direct.

Which brings us to the here and now. We have a new HMCI – someone who’s engaging with the profession, someone who seems to want to hear our views. And he’s talking about a new framework, too, to be rolled out in September 2025 (which doesn’t seem very far off).

But is it just me that sees a danger here? Another new HMCI, another new framework, another huge refocusing of the teaching workforce’s efforts to meet the new direction of travel. Is this what Ofsted should be doing?

Ofsted, we’re told, exists to tell parents how good schools are. Do parents change their minds about what makes a ‘good’ school or college as often as Ofsted do? Or should that actually be something the government sets out?

These feel like big questions – maybe ones that, in the past, we should have focused on more. I think we need to keep a very careful eye on what Ofsted should be doing over the next few months, i.e. inspecting, not directing. A lot, it seems to me, depends on whether we do.
ASCL has published two papers to help shape a reformed approach to inspections, the first of these in 2023 on the future of inspection, and, more recently, a discussion paper on what an accountability model based on report cards might look like. You can read them here.

Stephen Brierley is ASCL Vice President 2024-25