Inspection changes welcomed by unions

Education unions have welcomed the government’s announcement that it will scrap “reductive single headline” inspection grades of schools by the Ofsted schools inspection body.

However, the NEU education union said Ofsted should be abolished and replaced. “Ofsted is toxic for teachers and school leaders and no amount of rebrand or reform will help Ofsted win back the trust of the profession,” said NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede.

He called for an alternative system of accountability that creates “a culture of trust, transparency, and a shared responsibility for the quality of education”.

NASUWT teachers’ union Patrick Roach called for “root and branch reform to fix the foundations of the broken accountability system”.

He said the union would be calling on the education secretary “to go further with legislative change to end the fallacy that academy conversion is the only route to securing the improvements our schools need”.

The current inspection model “does real harm to the health and wellbeing of leaders and their teams”, commented NAHT school leaders’ union general secretary Paul Whiteman.

“We would have liked the government to have gone further by also removing sub-judgements from inspections.”

The move follows union campaigning for changes to school inspections after primary headteacher Ruth Perry killed herself in January 2023 while waiting for an Ofsted report.