As a teacher, it has always struck me that any kind of “inspection” framework is likely to be controversial as it is too blunt an instrument to measure the success of a school (“Ofsted to press ahead with ‘Nando’s-style’ schools scorecard”, Report, February 1).
Rather than using one-word judgments, Ofsted — Britain’s schools’ standards regulator — has come up with a checkerboard of colour-coded words under the same categories as before, to try to give a more nuanced picture.
Yet these inspection standards simply lead to tick-box judgments based on snapshots taken over a very short period of time. Many of these inspection standards have little to do with the quality of the educational experience for the students, either in the classroom or outside it.
It is difficult to know how to design a system that fairly represents the quality of education offered to students in a given institution, especially when education budgets are constantly squeezed; teacher recruitment and retention is so difficult and, in some areas of the country, the dysfunctional nature of family support for students generates immense issues for schools.
Is Ofsted actually achieving anything to improve education and will changing to colour-coded judgments make any difference at all to what the students experience during a school day? I very much doubt it. Perhaps the whole issue of accountability and quality needs to be rethought. Never mind the most obvious objection to these colour-coded scorecards — namely how does this work for people who have CVD, colour vision deficiency or what used to be called colour blindness?
Julia Hodgetts
Teacher, School Beyond Limitations,
Castle Cary, Somerset, UK
