Hello, everyone. It’s great to be here in Birmingham, thank you for having me at the CST conference once again. It was great to see so many familiar faces last night. It is always a privilege being among colleagues who devote their professional lives to improving the life chances of children! I spoke to you almost exactly one year ago today, when we stood on the cusp of launching our renewed education inspection fram...
Hello, everyone. It’s great to be here in Birmingham, thank you for having me at the CST conference once again. It was great to see so many familiar faces last night. It is always a privilege being among colleagues who devote their professional lives to improving the life chances of children! I spoke to you almost exactly one year ago today, when we stood on the cusp of launching our renewed education inspection framework. One year on feels like a natural moment to reflect. I’ve been doing a lot of that in recent weeks, reminding myself what it’s like to be a headteacher or a trust leader and listening to the challenges you all face at this moment – especially those of you who, like I did, work in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the country. We do it, don’t we, because we know it is where we can make the biggest difference for children. But that doesn’t make the day-to-day any easier. Worrying about accommodating increasing SEND needs… Doing so with what feels like ever dwindling resources… Never seeming to have all the specialist staff and support that you need and that your children deserve… Coping with falling rolls, and grappling with how to make the numbers work in years to come… And – to top it off – the worry around Ofsted inspections, compounded by a sense that you might not be treated fairly when inspection day comes. I understand that. I get it. I know what it is like to deal with these challenges. And I also know what it is like to lead a school through inspections whilst dealing with those challenges. When you’re working in and leading schools in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the country, it’s no good to only see schools in more affluent areas being held up as exemplars – often by people who’ve never so much as even visited the town or region you’re working in. What you want is for inspectors to see your context clearly – to understand the lives of the children and families you’re working with and the work you’re doing to get them the best education that you possibly can. Yours is a difficult job – and you need confidence that Ofsted is going to treat your schools fairly without creating undue additional pressure. Leora was saying as much yesterday. I do understand, and I am listening. That’s why I am announcing an important change today. And it most definitely won’t be the last improvement that we can make. We are working closely with the Department for Education on a package of changes that we will be speaking to you about in the weeks and months to come. Changes to our complaints system But today, after listening to lots of feedback about our complaints system, I can tell you that we are piloting an independent complaints review service. This is the latest significant change we’ve made to the complaints process since I became HMCI . We’ve already introduced: A new helpline for providers to call when they have concerns on inspection… A national hub that makes sure complaints are handled outside the region where they arose… And new complaints panels attended by union and sector representatives who meet regularly to scrutinise some of our recently closed complaints. Now, we are introducing independent external oversight with the power to advise on whether to reopen inspection judgements. As far as we know, no other inspectorate in the world does this. This is a pilot where schools can seek a review of how Ofsted has handled their complaint and, for the first time, this review can include the outcome of the complaint, including aspects linked to inspection findings. The review will be undertaken by an independent body, through a contract held by the DfE and independent of Ofsted. The reviewing organisation will be a full member of the Ombudsman Association and must operate strictly in compliance with their high standards for case handling and impartiality. The reviewer will be able to recommend that Ofsted looks again at a complaint. And where the complaint includes grading, I can then decide to set aside a published report card and arrange a new inspection. Now, you might ask why the independent reviewer can’t just do this themselves – and the answer is legislation. Under the law, only His Majesty’s Chief Inspector (delegated through our inspectors) can make grading decisions. That said, a recommendation from the reviewer to look again at grading would carry a great deal of weight with me. And we will judge the success of this pilot very carefully. I am committing to getting feedback from CST and the trade unions before we decide how to proceed following the pilot. As we have done since I took on the role of HMCI , we will work openly and transparently, sharing the good, the bad and the more complex! Considering context Which brings me onto some data about context that we’ve published today. When I set out to make Ofsted a world-class inspectorate and regulator, I was determined to share evidence about how we are doing. The analysis published today considers how our inspectors judged achievement in context, by comparing grades awarded last year to the new, similar schools measure – which wasn’t available to inspectors at the time. I’ll let you be the judge, but I think the data is compelling and shows that inspectors take context very seriously. The analysis also goes on to exemplify how we are now using the similar schools measure on inspection and in quality assurance – as part of our commitment to improve and to keep challenging ourselves. But I know we need to keep doing more. So, I want to hear from you about context, which is why I’ve asked all my regional directors to talk to you over the next few months. But that’s enough about Ofsted for just a second. I would much rather talk about the great work we’re seeing out there. Inspections so far… First, let’s quickly recap the past year. We have done just over 4,000 full school inspections. From the published report cards, we are still seeing a mix of grades, both across schools and within trusts – which is what we’d expect. The purpose of our report cards is to allow for this nuance, and to highlight different strengths and areas for improvement. ‘Expected standard’ is the grade we’ve seen most often so far. We give this grade where schools are doing all the things they need to be doing right by their pupils – giving them a solid, supportive education that sets them up well in life. In the ‘inclusion’ evaluation area, 9 out of 10 grades are at ‘expected standard’ and above, and that’s even higher for the ‘personal development and wellbeing’ evaluation area. That is being driven by dedicated ‘leadership and governance’, where more than 8 in 10 grades are at ‘expected standard’ and above. That tells us that there are thousands of leaders who know what their plans are and are well on the way to executing them successfully. We hear your concerns that poor attendance might have a knock-on effect on the ‘attendance and behaviour’ grade and drag grades down even where pupils behave well. But I am really pleased to tell you that well over 8 out of 10 grades in this evaluation area are ‘expected standard’ and above. In the ‘curriculum and learning’ evaluation area, nearly 8 in 10 grades are at ‘expected standard’ and above, and that figure is getting on for almost three-quarters of ‘achievement’ grades. Achievement is an area we also heard concern about, with some saying that any school that’s below average – so, by that definition, nearly half of schools – would be at ‘needs attention’ or below. This is clearly not the case! That’s a lot of talk about evidence and data. Lots of numbers. So I’d like to bring us back to the meaning behind all of this. I recently read the inspection report for Oastlers School, based in Bradford, and part of the Exceed Academies Trust. One of the pupils there told inspectors that, in being at Oastlers School, ‘I have learned to want more from life’. ‘I have learned to want more from life.’ You can’t help but be deeply, deeply moved reading that student’s words. It summarises (far better and more succinctly than I can!) the purpose that sits at the heart of trusts and all your hard work. The spirit of the trust sector Because this is a sector fundamentally born from the belief in doing something good. Trusts were founded with an incredible moral purpose, to take on struggling schools and to make sure that the pupils there get a shot at a better education, a better life. Leora spoke so compellingly about that ‘animating spirit’ of the trust sector – a spirit that refuses to accept less for children in disadvantaged areas. A spirit that demands a system that serves all our children. A spirit that says, with clarity and conviction, ‘we were built to do this’. I have seen this animating spirit first-hand, again and again. I have seen colleagues, TAs , teachers and leaders all pulling together and doing everything they can for the children who need it most. There are some stories that stay with me even now, and I am sure that all of you have your own. Of course, every child is most directly impacted by the teachers and staff who welcome them through the school gates every day, who lead their lessons and provide that, so needed, pastoral support. But what the best trusts do is to create the wider context, the climate, the culture, in which those staff are able to do their best work for children. If schools are the buzzing hive at the heart of local communities – alive with pupils, parents, teachers, carers, joy, learning, enrichment – then trusts are the gardens that sustain them. They are the space for cross-pollination that helps an entire area to thrive and flourish. And together, the trusts represented in this room are responsible for the education of millions of children. What a responsibility! As trust leaders, you make educational, professional, staffing and financial decisions that shape the daily experiences of all pupils, staff and parents who attend one of your schools. So it matters to pupils, and it matters to parents and carers, even if they aren’t aware of the hard work that’s happening at the trust level. All of us here know that a school becoming an academy, joining a MAT , isn’t magic: turning a school around takes time. It’s more than taking on a building and classrooms and a playing field. It’s taking on a whole community and deciding how you’ll do right by that community. How you identify which improvements to make, which strengths to build on. The conversations you have, the priorities you set. And when your decisions help a school go from poor outcomes to good ones, it has a ripple effect that spreads far beyond the school gates. It shows up in the myriad examples of young lives being turned around – of children getting tailored support, being given the structure they need in life, feeling confident and secure in whatever they go on to do next. They carry that forward into the interactions they have over the rest of their lives. Trusts magnify that ripple effect. When you take on multiple schools and help turn them around, those ripples get bigger and bigger – more powerful, reaching more people, becoming a current and eventually turning the tide. It takes careful stewardship, of course. As I said before, being an academy isn’t magic. We all know that. But MATs matter: there is a moral imperative behind the very existence of this system. That is precisely why we can’t just sit back and look around at all the good work you’ve done. We all need to get better continuously. The children and young people we all serve deserve no less. That isn’t news to any of you. CST ’s recent National School Trust Report showed the most common ambition among trusts was raising standards, attainment, and outcomes, especially for disadvantaged pupils – with Ofsted grading helping leaders to focus on continued improvement. I am of the trust sector, I back this sector, and it’s for that reason that I support this belief that we must push even harder in the service of children, learners, parents and carers. That also means that inspection must better support the work of professionals serving children and young people. Trust inspection will be a way to do that and to recognise the things I’ve just mentioned. A way to celebrate where trusts take on schools and do the difficult, necessary, long-term work to turn them around. To share trust best practice – including helping parents to understand the tremendous value that trusts bring up and down the country, as well as in their own neighbourhood. Trust inspection will allow us to show where excellent work is happening – work not currently captured at the level of an individual school inspection. It will be a way to look at context and locality and the difference being made in an area. It will allow us to help address underperformance where it does exist, and support improvement, taking a wider view of a set of schools and identifying where more can be done. And it will help you to get even better outcomes for the millions of children who are educated within trusts and will go on to attend them 10, 20, even 30 years from now. Listening, learning, improving Before I finish today, you might have seen that last week we released the interim report of an independent evaluation of our new-look education inspections. That evaluation identified challenges that I will walk through – as well as some positives that may have been missed among the headlines. The vast majority of education providers reported feeling that inspections are more collaborative, respectful and empathetic under the new framework. In other words, many feel that the tone of inspection is turning. Report cards are also widely seen as a more accurate way to really capture what it’s like to be a child or learner at a setting, school or college. And, very importantly, most believe that their inspection will help improve their school, nursery or college – which is exactly what it is designed to do. Improving outcomes for children is precisely the point. I also know, of course, that there is still more to do. While early years settings felt that we did seek to understand their context, the sentiment is not as strong in schools, particularly secondary schools. It shows that we must do more to be more consistent – and we need to keep sharing our evidence with you, like I have done today, to make sure we’re being fully transparent about this area of our work. As I said at the beginning, I know what it’s like to work in and to lead schools in some of the most disadvantaged parts of the country. I know that you are often working against the odds. So we must fully and fairly recognise that on inspection and I am committed to doing so. Workload and wellbeing are also clearly still challenges. We do know that inspectors did take action to minimise stress and anxiety, and this was seen as helpful in most cases. But those actions alone don’t solve the wider anxiety that still exists around inspection. I understand that. And as I promised at the beginning, the pilot I announced today is not the only change that is coming. The jobs you do are deeply, deeply important – you create that positive ripple effect that spreads from within your school gates to the communities beyond them. With such responsibility, it is inevitable that day-to-day pressures will persist. Every day you are navigating myriad challenges and deciding how to deal with them, while holding the interests of thousands of individual children in your heart. It is an admirable task, and it is a mammoth one. I will never lose sight of that. Our responsibility as the inspectorate is to keep reflecting, to keep listening and to keep improving – for every one of you as professionals as well as for the children we’re all here to serve. That’s why we’re working with the DfE and preparing further adjustments and improvements that I hope to share with you all soon. As you heard from the Secretary of State yesterday – and I’ve heard in my meetings with her – she is passionate about improving the life chances for all children, especially the most vulnerable and disadvantaged. This has always been and remains my clear passion too. So I completely agree with her when she said to you that ‘accountability is an essential part of sustained improvement.’ We will work together – and with CST and its members and trade unions – on how Ofsted, as part of the accountability system, can keep getting better.
Speech Brief