WIREDGOV

A speech given recently (08 November 2024) by Martyn Oliver, Ofsted's Chief Inspector, at the Confederation of School Trusts’ conference.

Introduction

Good morning and thank you for having me, it’s great to be here with you all today.

As you know, before taking on this role I was heavily involved with Confederation of School Trusts (CST) and have often been sat in the audience at these events – so it’s an honour to now be up here this time speaking to you.

And, can I take a moment to congratulate Sir Hamid, Leora, Steve and all of the team at CST for their work.

I valued the role of CST as a trust leader and I value the role of CST as His Majesty’s Chief Inspector – working with the system is a priority for me throughout my time at Ofsted.

And it’s great to be among so many familiar and – I hope! – friendly faces.

It was great to have the chance to speak to a number of you last night at the dinner and can I add my congratulations to Sir David Carter for his lifetime achievement award.

One of the questions that came up most, and it’s one I often get, is what have I learnt since joining Ofsted that I didn’t know before?

And this is a great place to start today, because if I am truthful, I have learnt a lot since joining Ofsted.

Not just about the wider role Ofsted has across so many services that work with children, but also about how all these organisations should and, in most cases, DO work together.

The whole picture of a child’s life

Ofsted’s remit is large and that is one of its greatest strengths.

The fact that there is a single organisation that inspects children’s homes, early years settings, childminders in their homes, after-school provisions, prison education and so much more gives us a privileged position when assessing children and young people’s experiences and wellbeing in any location.

As an organisation, we have access to the information that presents the whole picture of a child’s life in your areas, not just their life at school.

For example, as a secondary head, I, as most do, worked hard on our relationship with our primary feeder schools.

But I hadn’t really given enough thought to what the early years provision was like in the area my school was in.

What kind of provision did the children get in those crucial formative years?

And how easy was it for parents in my area, including the teachers and staff in my school who were parents, to get that provision?

Of course, when I went on to work in and lead a multi-academy trust, which sponsored primaries and had early years provision, it allowed me to start to build this knowledge and those relationships.

That’s one of the strengths of a strong group of schools.

But I still question whether I did enough to support the leaders of my trust’s schools to fully embrace and understand what the full educational and care journey was like for the children who I had the privilege to teach.

And on early years provision – we’ve recently released some research that shows huge disparity regionally about access to childcare.

And of course it is those areas that are disproportionately deprived or who have lower incomes that are more likely to have less access.

We all know that the best way to close gaps is not to have a gap in the first place – the earlier the intervention, the better.

Do have a look at the provision around your schools.

This sort of work and information is just one of the ways in which Ofsted will use its privileged position and information to provide new area insights.

These insights will bring together a range of data currently found in many of our pre-inspection tools and will help us understand the context of the education and care providers we inspect and regulate better.

By doing this, we will be fairer to providers and more useful to parents and service users.

And it is worth me talking about care provision.

Because, as a trust leader overseeing schools in some of the most deprived areas, we had a real focus on supporting a large number of children in care.

I nevertheless simply didn’t know enough to say whether any of my looked after children were in children’s homes that were not registered with Ofsted, and therefore not inspected.

I knew of all the children in my schools that were looked after children, but like many of you I am sure, I didn’t think that they might be living in a home that wasn’t even meeting its legal requirements.

I ask you all now – do you know which of your looked after children are in unregistered children’s homes and which are in registered ones?  

Would you want even stronger pastoral support in place if you did know?

Being registered with the regulator and being inspected by the inspectorate does give significantly greater assurance about the system.

This – this – is the job of Ofsted.

And, as it happens, I was in a local authority run children’s home not long ago and I had a wonderful afternoon and even got to judge the sausage roll competition, which was excellent!

But even with those children’s homes that are registered, many of which, like the one I visited, do an excellent job – there is a lot that many teachers and school leaders might not know about them.

Jack’s story

And on this note, I want to talk to you about a young man my Deputy and I had the real pleasure of talking to just last week – Jack.

Jack is with me today, sat in the audience.

Jack grew up in a children’s home and thankfully, in the main, had great staff supporting him – staff that were really invested in his development as a person.

Jack is really keen that I tell you at this point that he’s trans and transitioned in 2012 and this adds to his story, because his teenage years were challenging for him and he challenged the system…

…he’s the first to admit that he had a troubled childhood, and this would often come out while he was in the children’s home.

He told me about how the staff put up with his “window smashing”, aggressive outbursts.

With his crying, his up and down moods including deep long lows, sadly resulting in suicide attempts.      

He said he had soul destroying low self-esteem.

And let’s be honest, it is heart-breaking that a child can go through that, things that can shape the rest of their lives through these most crucial years.

But, he would also talk about how the staff supported and taught him good social skills and a self-confidence to get back out there in the world.

He talked about rollerblading and laughing “his head off”, to quote him directly; days out to the beach, to the countryside, to a castle, and to Blackpool in what he describes as “a great childhood at times”.

He talked about how the staff were invested in him and what was best for him – like fighting for him to stay in his children’s home past his 18th birthday so he could finish the academic year.

He describes those staff as not the mums and dads he needed but more like aunts and uncles, great aunts and uncles and nans and grandads and even cousins – role models in their unique ways.

It was these people that got him to school, presenting as any other child would.

He says that all the good qualities people see in him today are as a direct result of his time in children’s homes.

Jack is now a part time researcher at Cambridge University and has just successfully just been appointed into the Civil Service.

Areas impacting a child’s life

Now, I know there were children like Jack in my schools and despite my best efforts, I was simply not always aware enough of the extent of what was going on in their lives.

Children who the staff in those children’s homes were patching up and sending to school – dealing with the trauma at home and being such a force for good so that when the child got to school they could be as much of their best self as possible, and get the education they so desperately needed and deserved.

Now, schools cannot and should not be expected to solve all of society’s problems, but we are, as CST has advocated, anchors in the community.

And this is what I have learnt most about the importance of Ofsted and our role across almost all of the services and areas that could impact on a child’s life.

There are lots of services and provisions, all looking after or catering for one part of a child’s life, but often not looking across at what else is happening and what may be impacting that child.

Ofsted, and its wide area of responsibilities, can help with this.

And as trust leaders, more and more of you are reaching beyond what was traditionally required of you.

Not only do your trusts have responsibility over so many children’s lives, but you are also the hubs for all these anchors of communities – you have real influence over a community, which adds an unseen pressure for success in your schools.

You are helping children to belong and you are helping them to thrive – both of which are areas I’m keen we look at and recognise as we develop our work at Ofsted. We want to do, and we are doing, our bit to help you with that.

Changes

I know a lot of you responded to our Big Listen that ran earlier this year, and I want to thank you for that.

Hopefully you will have seen some of the changes we are proposing to make already.

The biggest of these will be to the education inspection framework and one of the questions I am often asked is ‘why change something that in and of itself isn’t that old?’

The answer to that is quite simple.

I am not changing for change’s sake, and much of what we do now; and we heard you like – such as the focus on the curriculum, will endure.

But, the opportunity that the removal of the overall effectiveness judgment brings – the opportunity to develop a more nuanced report which tells parents and carers better what the quality of provision their child is receiving is like – must be embraced.

There are a lot of good things Ofsted does, but our approach hasn’t always sat well with the sectors we inspect.

I am acutely aware of the vast amount of pressure each sector is already under.

I don’t want to add to those pressures; rather, I want to work with the sector on improving together.

I have often talked about wanting Ofsted to be ‘of the system, by the system, for children, their parents and carers’.

This is because we all share a common goal in what we want for children – so we, as the inspectorate, should be working with you to achieve this.

Improving education, children’s services and skills must be inherent in good regulation and inspection.

We must move as far away as possible from uncovering and detecting failures only. 

The future lies in supporting leadership to self-identify or self-assess their performance against clear standards.

Those standards should not be ones dreamt up by Ofsted, but be inherent in the professional standards, regulations and statutory guidance.

They should be co-constructed with the professions, with evidence at their heart.

Improving standards for all; especially the most vulnerable and disadvantaged must be –will be – at the heart of our work.

Therefore, we will build an inspection and regulation model that promotes improvement – because improvement is what all of us are about.

Such a system must be built on data – but data alone cannot tell the story.

The context, the journey that providers are on and leaders’ ability to show capacity to improve are all essential.

And that can only be judged through high quality, professional, courteous, respectful and empathetic human interactions. 

I promised to take on board your views before I made any changes and I did this with the Big Listen – Ofsted’s largest ever consultation - and one of the first things I did.

And I will continue this approach with the consultation on the new inspection framework.

That consultation will launch early next year and it will be your opportunity to share your views on what we are proposing.

Again, working with you to make sure it is right for you, for us and most importantly for children.

What we’ve changed so far

However, there were some things that you told us in the Big Listen that were in our gift to change immediately.

So, where we could, I made sure that is exactly what we did:

You told us inspection put undue pressure on your workload – that waiting all week for “The Call” is stressful.

So we’ve changed that – now you’ll know by Monday afternoon if we’re coming and that your routine inspection will start on the Tuesday.

But please remember, we don’t want to see an ‘Ofsted Tuesday’ – we want to see what a normal Tuesday, and every day, is like every week in your schools.

We’ve put new policies and training in place to make sure inspectors deal sensitively and consistently with well-being concerns.

We’ve made our handbooks clearer, so you know exactly what we’re looking for when we review your school’s single central record.

In that vein, we also want to help schools better understand the regulatory requirements for safeguarding so that this anxiety and uncertainty is reduced.

So we’ve also provided further clarity on the statutory expectations in the Department for Education’s ‘Keeping children safe in education’ guidance. 

If you are a school with a religious character, we’ve also made changes to make sure that you don’t run the risk of concurrent inspections from Ofsted and their section 48 inspectorate.

And, one of the most important changes we have brought in now, is the steps we have taken to improve how we inspect safeguarding in schools.

If we find safeguarding concerns in an otherwise high-performing school, and we think leaders can resolve these issues quickly, then we’ll suspend our inspection, let parents know, but won’t publish a report until after we’ve returned in no more than 3 months’ time.

This is so that you have the opportunity to fix the issues without wider mandatory intervention.

But, it’s frustrating to sometimes see safeguarding described in the media as “paperwork”.

Everyone in this room knows it is not paperwork to ensure that staff have had the proper checks to ensure they can work with children.

It is not paperwork to know that all staff are confident in recognising and reporting concerns.

This is about keeping children safe and checking this is, and will always remain, a very important part of Ofsted’s work.

And we’re not stopping there.

As part of our changes next year, we’ll be putting forward plans for a new, stand-alone assessment of safeguarding in our reports.

This will be distinct from leadership and management, to emphasise that all members of staff should be proactive about safeguarding.

We want to show more clearly how a school is keeping children safe and we will never shy away from our responsibility to do that.

As part of the changes we’re bringing in now, we’ve also looked at the inspection process itself and, again, where we can make changes, we have.

For example, we’ve changed our practice for ungraded school inspections.

We no longer carry out full deep dives when inspecting quality of education, which allows more time for professional dialogue:  “done with”, not “done to”.

Finally, as part of my drive to be ‘of the sector’, we’ve introduced the Ofsted Academy.

This is a one-stop-shop that will draw together induction, training, learning, professional development and good practice in one, easy to find place.

We’ve also set up 6 national hubs to improve consistency across all of our regions.

These hubs will gather insights from across our work and feed into our training through the Ofsted Academy.

And earlier this week, we began to publish the materials that we use for inspection training, something that we have been asked to do for a while, which shows you how our inspectors are trained to inspect your schools.

This material is not meant for your staff – we provide tailored webinars and information to help you understand what to expect on inspection.

But I think it’s really important to be transparent about what we do, and the videos we have released are a big step in that direction.

But this really is just the beginning for the Academy.

We are determined to continue to improve our culture and be a learning organisation and there will be lots more to come from the Academy throughout the next couple of years.

Our consultation in January

But, like I say, this is also just the beginning of the changes we are making at Ofsted.

So, what will we be proposing in January?

Well, our consultation will seek your views on a number of things, from new report card-style reports to how we inspect inclusion in schools.

I don’t want to give too much away now as I want you to be able to look through all the detail in that consultation and form your own opinions on what we are suggesting.

But, I do want to talk about this focus on inclusion – a new element we want to bring into inspection.

We know that first and foremost, schools must meet the needs of all their local children.

It really shouldn’t be the case that local children have to fit into the needs of their school!

And by this we don’t mean that we will penalise schools that use suspensions and exclusions legitimately.

But we will want to know that the highest standards are in place to make sure all children are receiving the most appropriate provision.

By this we mean that behaviour policies and practices are appropriate and, when it is needed, the school is maintaining these high standards through the most suitable, high-quality registered specialist and alternative provision.

The new framework will have a greater focus on pupil outcomes – because putting children first will always be, unapologetically, our priority and because of this, outcomes matter.

Put simply; imagine a three-legged stool.

For that stool to be solid and balanced, all 3 legs must be the same length and of equal weight.

The 3 legs to the quality of education are curriculum (the intent), teaching (the implementation) and outcomes (the impact)

Impact matters.

I immediately recognise that some will infer that this means raw outcomes.

It will not.

As I have said, context matters and the journey providers are on matters – this is what good inspection through good human interactions means and what it will bring.

There has been lots of speculation in the press about what we will be proposing that simply isn’t true.

I know it’s not helpful to you or your staff and I would simply say to everyone, ignore the speculation and wait until the consultation is out to see what we are doing.

Collaborative approach

Now, you might be thinking that all this talk about next year is all well and good, but I am in the window for inspection now, so how can I prepare my team for that?

Well, I know some of you can find inspection stressful, I have been through a lot of them myself.

But as leaders, my advice to you is that you need to lean into your inspection, and the outcome from it.

Good leaders should not be surprised by the outcome of an inspection.

You should know how your school is performing; where its strengths are and where improvements need to be made.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I read a lovely bit of feedback about an inspection of a local authority from a Director of Children’s Services (DCS) who wrote in a blog:

“Inspection is a uniquely privileged scenario, where as a DCS, you receive an external view of all the very best examples of the work everyone has been doing”

This is where our changes will help.

The new framework should help set you up in advance of inspection so that you see the direction your school is going in – what is and isn’t working.

So, when it comes to the inspection itself, it is more of a collaborative exercise – working with the inspectors to showcase all that is good about your school as well as improvements that need to be made and how you plan to make them.

And we should be starting this collaborative approach now.

I have pressed it upon my staff that I want them to act with professionalism, empathy, courtesy, and respect at all times.

They should also be able to expect the same back from you.

I know that in the most part they absolutely can and do, but, I sadly am hearing about occasions where trust leaders are putting pressure on inspectors and making the inspection process more adversarial.

I will never tolerate any of my inspectors being rude or acting unprofessionally.

I have been very clear with all of my staff about that.

But to help make inspections as constructive an experience as possible, I need everyone involved in the process to behave with the same courtesy.

And I thank you in advance for your help with this.

Inspections won’t work as we all want them to, if they run ‘hot’. I really want to take the temperature down.

Conclusion

So, let’s call this a fresh start if we need to.

We’ve already removed the ‘overall effectiveness’ grade and, following the consultation, will replace it with a ‘report card’ that gives a more nuanced, detailed assessment of a school.

One we hope which will support you to be more diagnostic in determining for yourself, not just waiting for us to turn up and identify strengths and areas for development.

We know that is something a lot of you have wanted and have campaigned for.

But we have to make it work for everyone.

I want you to know that I am someone who understands, and will always take time to understand, your roles – the pressures, expectations and challenges.

I understand the job you have to do, but Ofsted has a job – an absolutely crucial job – to do too, and I need you to understand that.

Together, with that mutual understanding and our underlying desire to do the very best for children, their parents and carers – we can all be a force for good.  

And I go back to what I said earlier: Ofsted must be of the system and by the system – and that is the Ofsted I am working with you to build.

Thank you and thank you for all you do for children.