There aren’t enough words to damn Ofsted’s one-word school reviews…

As the government doubles down on its requirement that every school be given the briefest summary – in spite of the death of headteacher Ruth Perry – James Moore says being dismissed as ‘inadequate’ is far from the only pressure leaders in education face

Headteacher Ruth Perry took her own life after Ofsted downgraded her ‘outstanding’ primary school to ‘inadequate’ (PA Wire)

Who would work in a school today? Ofsted’s controversial one-word summaries – which can mean an otherwise “outstanding” school that has slipped up in one area can be branded as “inadequate” – are here to stay.

Which is a pity. According to the government, these gnomic, TripAdvisor-style judgements confer significant benefits to parents. Well, not this parent.

There have been calls for this blunt grading system to change in the wake of the death of headteacher Ruth Perry, who took her own life after an Ofsted report downgraded her Caversham Primary School in Reading from the top rating to the lowest. Relatively minor safeguarding concerns was the sole category in which her otherwise “outstanding” school left itself down, and it was declared “inadequate”.

Professor Julia Waters, Mrs Perry’s sister, described the response of the Department for Education (DfE) to a critical education committee report as “woefully inadequate”. She said the changes offered to date “do not go far enough”. Cross-party MPs had urged the DfE to “develop an alternative to the current single-word overall judgement that better captures the complex nature of a school’s performance” – an eminently sensible suggestion.

Regrettably, schools will be stuck with a potentially misleading and simplistic system that heaps pressure on leaders and staff, who often look as if they’ve been drained by vampires after the inspectorate has finished with them.

It would be bad enough if Ofsted inspection was the only stress that school leaders – and teachers more widely – face. But it is not. The National Association of Head Teachers told me that schools are grappling with a “significant increase in complaints” from parents, including “a big rise in those they consider to be clearly vexatious or baseless”. A poll of members found 94 per cent had experienced a rise in complaints over the past three years.

“Schools are seeing more pupils who are struggling after a decade of under-investment in children’s social care, mental health services and support for children with SEND [special educational needs and disabilities], alongside cuts to welfare support. While they do their best to help, they do not always have the resources or access to the specialist services they need,” general secretary Paul Whiteman told me.

“Sometimes, this means they are unfairly taking the brunt of parents’ anger. In the worst instances, we have seen the complaints process being deliberately used to cause distress for the professionals involved.”

I understand parents’ frustration. I have a SEND child myself. However, my family found the school to be the lone source of support. We are lucky – not all schools are as exemplary as ours. Sadly, even similarly good ones can still find themselves on the rack.

Why? Local authorities – which have decision making power on Education Health and Care Plans for SEND kids – are a brick wall. Getting them to answer phone calls and emails is tougher than Further Maths A-level.

Childhood and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) seems to spend more time finding ways to avoid doing its job than it does in providing the support children desperately need. Schools have thus been left to pick up the pieces amid a childhood mental health crisis, exacerbated by social media and the lingering after-effects of the Covid lockdowns.

The National Association of Head Teachers has a motion from members going to its annual conference in Newport next week, which seeks to tackle the issue by demanding that complaints should only be heard by one body at a time, and that all complaints should go through a school’s complaints policy before being escalated.

I’m wary of removing levers from parents, but consider the pressures that school leaders are facing. It isn’t just the ongoing problems with Ofsted and the deluge of complaints. They are also struggling with teacher shortages, crumbling schools, budgets stretched to breaking point, contentious cultural issues without the benefit of government guidance, and even rising pupil violence.

How do you imagine the talented people that we need to prepare our children for the challenges they will face in the future – improving Britain’s stagnant economy, the increasing influence of AI, the skills gap – are likely to respond? Is it any wonder that they’ve been voting with their feet?

The best of it is, schools in England are still performing remarkably well by international standards. Indeed, the DfE crowed about the position they had secured in the global league tables produced by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), looking at maths (11th), reading (13th) and science (13th), all of which are improvements on previous assessments.

“These strong results demonstrate that the government has made real progress in driving up standards,” said the DfE. See! It was all us! Education secretary Gillian Keegan did make reference to “our incredible teachers” lower down the release – but that line that should have been at the top.

There are those who would use these results to argue that the system is working. But for how long? I fear that if the government fails to address the increasing pressures schools are under, they will ultimately buckle, then break. I’ve seen far, far too many passionate, committed teachers wrecked by the pressures of the job.

The DfE should reconsider those unconscionable Ofsted grades, before moving on to look at the endless reels of red tape it likes to foist upon schools. And then there is funding. Sorry to add to your in-tray, Ms Keegan, but there’s no getting away from that.

As for Ofsted’s one-word school reviews, I’ve got two words – and the second one ends in “off”.