NAHT favours 'light touch health checks' in response to Labour's 'scrap Ofsted' plan

The National Association of Head Teachers has indicted that it favours a 'light-touch' health-check approach for schools that are already good, with a more detailed plan for those that require improvement.

Responding to Labour's proposals for reform of school inspection and accountability, Nick Brook, deputy general secretary of school leaders' union NAHT, said:

"NAHT has long campaigned to rebalance holding schools to account with helping them to improve. The high-stakes consequences and fear that skew the current system mean that we are not seeing true assurance, solid diagnostics and proper support for schools and their teams.

"NAHT published the results of its Accountability Commission in September 2018. Since then our recommendations have helped shape the discussion on how to move towards a fairer and more reliable system. Today's announcements from Labour mirror many of the findings of the commission.

“NAHT's Accountability Commission did not call for the abolition of Ofsted. The name above the door of the school inspectorate is less important than how it operates. However, reform is necessary.

“Scrapping the four judgements in favour of something else, which is still easy for everyone to understand, but doesn’t reduce an entire school to a single grade, is absolutely the right thing to do and is something we’ve been suggesting for several years.

“A light-touch health-check approach for schools that are already good, with a more detailed focus and resources to identify and support those schools that still need to improve, is the right way to go.

“We are pleased to see that Labour agree that peer review should be a significant part of school improvement. Emerging evidence shows that schools can improve faster and more sustainably by working together. NAHT has just published a report outlining nine key principles of effective school-to-school peer review, which will be discussed at both the Labour and Conservative party conferences this month.”

Revealing the controversial plans at the at the Labour party conference, Angela Rayner MP, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary, said:

“In too many cases, Ofsted’s judgements and grades reflect the affluence of a school’s intake and the social class of its pupils – not the performance of the school.”

“School performance is far too important and complex to be boiled down to an over-simplified single grade, reducing all schools to one of four categories.

“The current system is unfit for purpose, so the next Labour government will abolish Ofsted and replace it with a system that will give parents the reliable and in-depth information that they need about our schools.”

“The current Ofsted regime labels and ranks schools but it doesn’t help them improve. Labour will improve standards in our schools and we will do it through collaboration, not competition.

“The next Labour government will launch a school improvement revolution, introducing a new system of peer-to-peer school-led improvement – based on the success of Labour’s hugely successful London Challenge – right across the country.

“Labour’s National Education Service will replicate the success of the London Challenge in every city, town and village and all corners of our country."