‘Outstanding’ has been the holy grail for school leaders since Ofsted was born in 1992. The implicit rewards in the judgement have long incentivised schools to push for Outstanding. For many years, it would exempt schools from further inspection. This was always an odd quirk of the system because if all schools could genuinely be Outstanding then surely, this could, in theory, make Ofsted redundant.
One of the problems with Outstanding is that it is an exacting judgement, meaning that it sits on a constant knife edge. One mistake and your school slides unceremoniously back down to the ignominy of ‘Good’. This is where the second problem begins. Good schools should be celebrated because providing a good education is incredibly complex and difficult. Yes, it is the right of all children to have a good education, but that doesn’t make it any less impressive that schools consistently provide this with all the challenges and nuance that society, politics and cognitive science throw at them on a daily basis. It should be enough. But, it’s not. My school has recently completed open season, welcoming over 200 prospective parents and carers through the doors to see what our Good school is doing and evaluating whether or not they want to entrust their child’s future with us. I lost count of the number of times I was asked why, given our outcomes (within the top 1% of schools in the country,) we are not Outstanding. So, here you have a school that last year, could virtually guarantee you some of the best outcomes in the country, setting your child up for Secondary school as well as any Primary in the country, with a long-standing reputation to match, and by far the most common question (other than how many children passed the 11+ this year) was why are you not Outstanding?
The point that the above raises is that Outstanding can often skew the way schools generally are viewed. It is not only Outstanding schools that ever do anything outstanding. Some schools with Inadequate judgements do some Outstanding things, the most high-profile example being Ruth Perry’s Caversham Primary school. But instead of being able to direct visitors and the school community at large to celebrate and linger on the excellent curriculum offer, the brilliant outcomes, the exemplary behavior or the enriching wider offer that pupils have, the current system sadly reduces many excellent schools to ‘not Outstanding’.
There needs to be some accountability measure. I think almost everyone in the sector would agree that the answer is not to have no requirement for schools to meet a set of basic inspection standards when they are responsible for the education of children who get only one opportunity at that education. But, the trouble with Outstanding is that it suggests that there is one type of Good that is better than all the others. Take a look at the grade descriptors for Outstanding – The work given… enables pupils to achieve the aims of the curriculum. This pushes schools into an obsession with evidencing progress and achievement in every lesson – something that has long been debunked. Furthermore, it suggests that assessment, in all subjects, should be regularly summative, in order to prove that pupils have indeed ‘achieved the aims’. It also pushes schools to design aims of their curriculum that are measurable and demonstrable by the most accessible and easily administered means. And this is the upshot of just one of the grade descriptors.
Schools need to reflect their contexts, their communities and the type of education that teachers and leaders in the school value. That might be wildly different in one context than an another and while Ofsted do not overtly state that they do not value this variety, the Outstanding judgement does suggest that there is one version of it they would prefer to see. Removing Outstanding would mean that schools not only get the credit they deserve for being consistently Good, it would also mean that once they had achieved Good, they would be free to develop in their own ways, reflecting their contexts and communities rather than narrowing their development pathway to the lens of Ofsted Outstanding. In short, it would make space for schools to truly decide their own development pathway and would provide parents and carers the space to focus on what is really important to pupils – what is their day to day at this school actually going to feel like and be like?
If Outstanding were to be removed, Good wouldn’t have to be a limiting judgement either. Good would act as the base standard from which schools would be free to develop and thrive in the way deemed right for their context and community. This would likely look very different from one school to the next, but isn’t that how it should be? Parent and carers would then be free to choose the school with the philosophy of ‘great’ that suited their own beliefs. While this is not a perfect system, it is, I believe, an improvement on the current one. Schools would have the freedom to continue to improve and develop from the inside out and parents, carers and the inspectorate would retain the quality assurance measure to the extent to which it remains useful and fulfils its central function – to ensure that schools are serving pupils well.
Removing the Outstanding grading would not only free schools from the shackles of improvement based on a word by word analysis of the Ofsted framework, it would also help parents and carers focus on what is really important when choosing a school – to what extent does this school’s values and priorities align with my own for my child? It would also lift the burden on Outstanding rated schools, tied to the Outstanding criteria for ever more. Removing the Outstanding judgement may not solve all of the problems with inspection but it would certainly be a realistic step in the right direction.
Adam Kohlbeck, December 2023
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