Scrapping one-word gradings won’t solve heads’ ‘discomfort’, says Ofsted chief

Scrapping single-word gradings for schools would not alleviate the “underlying discomfort” teachers feel, Ofsted’s chief inspector has said, as she came under increasing pressure to reform the system after a headteacher’s suicide.

Amanda Spielman has announced a series of changes in response to Ruth Perry’s death, but has been criticised for not going far enough. Perry, the head of a primary in Reading, killed herself this year after learning an Ofsted inspection was to lower her school’s grade from “outstanding” to “inadequate”.

“It’s not for me to decide that there will or won’t be judgments in this system. We could write a sentence but, if the significance is the same and the consequences are the same, then it wouldn’t really solve that underlying discomfort [of headteachers],” Spielman told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“The choice is the wider accountability system, which sets consequences for different overall outcomes. That is what drives the world’s focus on those overall grades for us.”

Teachers in England have said they are being driven out of the profession by Ofsted’s punishing inspection regime. Much of the attention has settled on the inspectorate’s practice of labelling English schools with a single overall grade, such as “inadequate”.

Perry’s sister Prof Julia Waters has previously said she was disappointed Ofsted had refused to consider removing “harmful and misleading single-word judgments”.

On Monday, Spielman told BBC Breakfast: “The whole school accountability system is built around those judgments. Government decides when to support schools, when to intervene based on those judgments so it is simply not up to me to frustrate that system by changing the model.”

She explained that Ofsted planned to changed the “language of reports so that we don’t sound over-focused on the head and senior leaders”. Spielman added that it was “down to government” to change the rating system.

Waters told Today elements of Ofsted’s proposals would have helped her sister – including the scrapping of its “inhumane” confidentiality requirements. She said Perry was made to wait three months for the publication of the report, knowing she would go through “public humiliation”.

“She didn’t last three months – she lasted 54 days with that knowledge. The one change that Amanda Spielman hasn’t yet mentioned that would have made a significant difference to my sister is the removal of the inhumane confidentiality requirement.

“[The draft report] says categorically that teachers must not share that information and that Ofsted would consider it a serious breach of confidentiality and take appropriate action.

“She told me, her sister, because she told me everything, but it was always couched in this dreadful: ‘Don’t tell anyone – I’ll lose my job if I get found out’. Even unburdening herself was a burden because she was so terrified that she would lose her job – lose her school, which she had loved and led for 16 years.”

Speaking on behalf of the government, the levelling up secretary, Michael Gove, backed the Ofsted changes announced on Monday.

He told Times Radio: “I think that all of us recognise that the Ofsted process can be a testing one, and all of us are aware of the particular individual case that has shone a light on inspection. But rigorous independent inspection of our schools has contributed to the improvement of education alongside the excellent work that teachers and headteachers do.”