Scrapping Overall Ofsted Grades: Benefits and Drawbacks

Scrapping Overall Ofsted Grades: A Step Forward or Backward?

Author: Tim Clark. Published: 4th September 2024

The government’s decision to immediately scrap single overall Ofsted grades could, if replaced by an effective alternative in the near future, be a very positive step for both helping parents make informed decisions and leading to genuine school improvement. This isn’t to argue that overall grades haven’t had their place. For instance, during my first headship, when the school (which had consistently been rated “good”) became “outstanding” and remains so, it was a tremendous boost for staff and pupils and significantly improved the school’s profile and standing in the community. Likewise, there are still schools that are poorly led or massively underachieving and need to be held accountable. However, both scenarios can still be addressed without a single overall grade.

The Limitations of a Single Overall Grade

The first objection to a single overall grade was that, by definition, it was always an amalgam, a compromise, a best-fit outcome, which ultimately obscured the whole truth and was therefore of little help to parents when choosing a school, or to school leaders striving for improvement. A school rated as “outstanding” might not have been outstanding in all areas; similarly, a “good” school might actually have been requiring improvement in some areas or outstanding in others. (The commonly used phrase, “good with outstanding features,” was never an official Ofsted classification.) To take an extreme example, consider the high-performing grammar school that had consistently been rated outstanding but was then downgraded to “inadequate” (the lowest grade) while still achieving excellent examination results and receiving a “good” rating for its “quality of education” in the same inspection report. Single grades can, therefore, sometimes be misleading or even meaningless.

Current Grading System: Broad and Overgeneralised

Until September 2024, in addition to the overall grade, schools were also graded on four separate areas [and this, for now, continues to be the case]: quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, and leadership and management. [Schools with a sixth form also receive a separate grade for post-16 provision.] As with the overall grade, these four areas are far too broad to be of any real use to parents or school leaders. The first and broadest category, “quality of education,” includes examination results, pupil progress, the quality of classroom teaching, lesson and curriculum planning, assessment use, SEND provision, and preparation for pupils’ next steps. As is immediately obvious, these various considerations are not necessarily linked, yet they are all lumped together to provide one generalised grade. What about a school with poor teaching but great examination results (due to bright and motivated pupils)? A school that provides well for SEND pupils but not for the most academically able? A school that consistently scores highly in examinations but shows poor progress (i.e., bright students who are underperforming)? And what about a school where classroom teaching is inspirational, but lesson planning on paper is poor, or the opposite: where lesson plans are brilliant but classroom execution is poor? Currently, all the above must still be captured in one single grade for “quality of education,” which, until this month, contributed to the determination of the best-fit overall grade.

Towards a More Nuanced School Evaluation System

One simple but significant improvement to the current system would be to increase the number of specific areas to be analysed and to grade or evaluate each in turn. Suggested areas might include:

Public examination results
Value-added/progress made by pupils
Quality of classroom practice
Pupil engagement in lessons and attitude to homework
Effectiveness of assessment, formative and summative
Provision for all pupils (including SEND, Gifted and Talented, etc.)
Lesson and curriculum planning
Appropriateness of resources (and the use of classroom assistants, where appropriate)
Professional development and training of staff
Pupil behaviour around the school, including incidences of bullying
Provision of PSHE and personal development
Provision of pastoral care and individual support
Careers and next steps provision
Range and quality of extra-curricular provision
Leadership and management at all levels – middle, senior, and governance

The Case for Detailed Information for Parents

Since the John Major government in the 1990s, successive governments of all persuasions have supported the concept of parental choice and have tried to aid those choices by providing relevant information about individual schools—published examination results, league tables to suggest comparative performance, and Ofsted inspection reports every few years. [Prior to 1992, publicly available reports, and even inspections, of individual schools were rare.] Surely, therefore, there can be little argument against providing parents with much more nuanced and, therefore, accurate information to help them make the right choice?

Challenging the Need for an Overall Grade

Some argue that the overall grade is essential for parents. Such an argument is simply patronising. The approach outlined above would give parents a fuller (and, therefore, more accurate) assessment of a school’s performance, enabling them to see, for example, that a school’s results are good, but its extra-curricular provision is poor; that behaviour is poor, but pastoral care is good, etc. If this is unintelligible to parents, then how, for example, can they decide which type of car to buy? Are they incapable of choosing a Land Rover over a Fiat 500 when they need a four-wheel drive to traverse muddy fields, or of choosing the Fiat when they want to nip around town and park in small spaces? Could they only choose a car if it had a single, overall grade? If we are going to trust parents to make crucial decisions about their child’s education, they surely have the right to be given the necessary information to make an informed choice.

Benefits for School Leaders

Equally, for school leaders, if inspection reports become much more specific about where a school is performing well or poorly, this must be of much greater use than a single, wide-ranging, broad-brush generalisation. This will become an even more powerful tool for raising standards if the grades are accompanied by specific advice and strategic plans on how to improve. However, this will necessitate a serious examination of the quality and training of inspectors. Although I have no doubt that many inspectors are experienced and motivated by the right reasons, there are also many who lack the knowledge, experience, and ability to help a school move forward. The fact that inspectors are being trained in mental health awareness and on how to spot when staff are distressed or anxious is simply frightening: anyone lacking such emotional intelligence, common sense, and basic courtesy should not be allowed anywhere near teachers, let alone pupils.

Addressing the Teacher Recruitment and Retention Crisis

Let us also not forget the continuing elephant in the room: the teacher recruitment and retention crisis. Last year, over 40,000 teachers (equating to more than 9% of the workforce) left the profession for reasons other than retirement. The fear/pressure of Ofsted was not the largest causal factor in this exodus, but it was certainly a contributory factor for some. This isn’t an argument to stop Ofsted from being a robust form of accountability, but it is a realisation that if we want to have enough teachers left for Ofsted to actually inspect, then we need to work with the profession and understand the challenges they face.

The Tragic Catalyst for Change

The recent debate about Ofsted has, of course, been prompted by the tragic death of Ruth Perry at the start of last year. For most teachers, as for Ruth, teaching is a vocation and an all-consuming commitment; it is also very hard work. The call for change, however, is not only a response to a heartbreakingly sad suicide, it also stems from a passionately held belief that we can make the system better: that we can create a system that is fairer and more manageable for teachers, more useful to parents and, most importantly, one that genuinely raises standards for the benefit of future generations of young people.

The Author: Tim Clark

Tim Clark is an experienced education consultant and former headmaster with over three decades in education. He has successfully led schools to excellence and now shares his expertise globally, advocating for educational reform and leadership development. Passionate about holistic student growth, Tim remains committed to improving education systems worldwide.