“Ofsted and the government appear to have learned nothing from the death of headteacher Ruth Perry and have instead devised an accountability system which will subject a beleaguered profession to yet more misery.
“Rather than securing high and rising standards – something we all want to see – this is a sure-fire way of doing the exact opposite. People will vote with their feet by leaving teaching which will worsen an already severe recruitment and retention crisis.
“We will end up without teachers to teach children and leaders to lead schools.
“Astonishingly, Ofsted’s proposed school report cards appear to be even worse than the single-word judgements they replace. The introduction of five new judgements that can be applied across at least eight performance areas creates a set of hurdles which will be bewildering for teachers and leaders, never mind the parents whose choices these reports are supposedly intended to guide.
“We would question whether it is possible to reach with any degree of validity, in the course of an inspection, such a large number of conclusions – all of which are critical to those being inspected and where judgements may be finely balanced between categories. It is certainly a recipe for systemic inconsistency.
“Rather than reducing the pressures on teachers and leaders – a situation so serious that it is unsafe – this system will introduce a de facto new league table based on the sum of Ofsted judgements across at least 40 points of comparison.
“The schools with the greatest challenges will continue to be stigmatised by the application of the labels ‘attention needed’ and ‘causing concern’ in exactly the same way as the previous system. This will in turn make it harder to secure improvement.
“And the vast majority of schools which are providing a high standard of education will continue to feel that this is not good enough if they don’t achieve a prized ‘strong’ or ‘exemplary’ grade.
“It seems that the government will then add to the chaos with a support system administered by its planned regional improvement for standards and excellence teams which is so muddled as to be barely comprehensible and is unlikely to have anything like the capacity required to be effective.
“All of this will have a devastating impact on the wellbeing of teachers and leaders and will be intensely demoralising for parents and children. We are extremely disappointed with these proposals and will do everything possible to persuade Ofsted and the government to see sense.
“School and college leaders had high hopes that an approach to inspection based on report cards might be more nuanced and humane. Sadly, the way in which Ofsted and the government are going about this suggests that the opposite will be the case.
“It is essential that the inspection system is clear to parents and has the confidence of the profession. These plans achieve neither objective.”