Ofsted's chief inspector gave speech on future reforms

Sir Martyn Oliver gave his first speech as Ofsted’s chief inspector at the annual National Children and Adult Services Conference (NCASC) in Liverpool.

He thanked the many directors of children’s services around England, practitioners and professionals, as well as those who responded to his Big Listen: a public consultation into how school inspections can be improved.

Following the Big Listen, he said he would set out 132 actions to reform and improve the current education system. He promised: “I’ve got about 1,500 days left in this job and if the last year is anything to go by, I’m going to spend every single one of those listening and learning and making changes for children and young people.”

He also detailed changes he would be making now, paying particular attention to vulnerable and disadvantaged children, such as the removal of the overall effectiveness judgement and the move to report cards. As a result, all education remits will happen in September 2025, and the same will happen for inspecting local authority children’s services (ILACS) in 2026.

He said he will look into adopting a supportive approach to their social care common inspection framework (SCCIF) inspections. He said that for further education, early years, and for his ILACS and SCCIF inspections, the Department for Education (DfE) will respond to their reports, and so they will need time to redesign that system. The DfE has set the pace of reform that will follow from Ofsted’s inspections.

Martyn Oliver said: “I believe, if we get it right, this is a great opportunity to add more nuance to our reports. To offer a clear picture of the quality of provision beyond a single headline and to frame our findings with important contextual data and information.”

He also stressed the importance of social care in future reform and policies pedalled by Ofsted. He said: ‘Whilst these changes are happening first in the education space, many of the reforms we’re making for schools, for skills providers, for the early years, they’re inspired by you and the way we work with you through ILACS and SCCIF.

“That is perhaps not surprising when you look at the responses to the Big Listen. Social care respondents to an independent research survey that we commissioned were consistently the most positive about our inspections.”

Identifying that there are significant and systemic weaknesses that disproportionately affect children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), Ofsted pledged to refresh inspections and provide adequate support. To help target these weaknesses, he mentioned the Ofsted Academy to strengthen inspector training nationwide. 

He also said: “We know we need to do better to induct and support our SEND inspectors. And we want to recruit a broader range of SEND specialists to strengthen our teams. I want every inspector, whether they’re going into a mainstream school or a specialist provision to have a deep understanding of what good SEND provision looks like.”

He emphasised that some changes, like published training materials, would be more obvious than others, as a lot of changes are set to revolve around how things are done. He emphasised that children and their needs are at the heart of his methods: “While we cannot and will not lower our ambitions for children, we can make sure we understand why decisions have been made, and who is really responsible if things just aren’t as good as we all want them to be. 

“I also want to be very clear, that we will never penalise you for taking children with complex and high needs.”

“When things aren’t good enough, we have to follow the threads and work out exactly where things are going wrong and who should be accountable. And, using our legally enshrined independence, when things aren’t good enough for children, we’ve got to call it out.”

He stressed the need to see a bigger picture by collating data in a set area, region, or nationwide, allowing Ofsted to quickly identify gaps in provision, and where funding of staffing is not sufficient. 

He explained: “We’ve already launched a tool showing childcare deserts and oases across England. We’ve already started to share insights for specific themes in our joint targeted area, inspections such as our very recent one on serious youth violence.

“But that’s just got to be the start. We’ll be launching our area insights service in the coming months to set out what it is like to be a child in any area of England.”

He iterated the importance of collaboration. “This means a focus on inclusion and expecting schools to serve the needs of children in their area, not the other way around. It means alternative provision being used properly and strategically, not as a shadow SEND system.”

Going forward, he recognised the need to see the sector as it was now, not as it was when the Care Standards Act passed nearly 25 years ago. A big need for change is inequality, he said. “This should help to tackle regional imbalances such as 25 per cent of children’s homes being here in the north west while only 18 per cent of children in care are from here. That compares with just 6 per cent of homes being in London when 12 per cent of children in care are from there.”

He ended his speech with thanking his audience, and called on them to share their thoughts or questions.