Ofsted Under Fire

Monday's edition of the Guardian reported that Ofsted was facing a crisis in public confidence as it came 'under a series of attacks on its authority this week, with the watchdog accused of being "flawed, wasteful and failing"'. (Guardian, 2009)
The report goes on to say that:

The children's services inspectorate will be criticised today by service
heads in every local authority in the country, headteachers' leaders and in a
damning forthcoming report by MPs on the government's school accountability
system.

Its new inspection regime is accused of forcing social work departments to
focus on passing inspections instead of looking after children, giving good
schools mediocre ratings on routine technical matters – such as fences not being
high enough – and more claims that sub-contracted inspectors are not fit for the
job. (Ibid)

The critics include former Ofsted chief Mike Tomlinson (pictured above).

You can read the full report here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/nov/23/flawed-ofsted-fails-inspections

I don't have much time for analysis tonight, but my initial thoughts are roughly as follows.

Few teaching staff will shed tears for Ofsted, and most will hope that the criticism leads to some genuine improvement. But I wouldn't hold my breath. But while government are under pressure to make cuts in public spending, while attempting to not reduce quality, this might be the perfect opportunity to take a close look at what Ofsted has to offer, and streamline it to focus on the things that will really make the difference to education's bottom line.

Parkinson's law says that work expands to fill the time available, but I think that there is an equivalent in the public sector that says remit and work expands to fill the funding available. If the coming round of cuts includes Ofsted we may see the inspectorate forced to focus only on the things that really matter.

Whatever happens, it brings delight to teachers everywhere to see their most ardent critic under critique themselves.