Ofsted proposes revised school inspections

Under the proposed changes, high performing schools will have frequent, 'light-touch' visits and underperforming ones will be subject to longer inspections. This could bring inspection time down from three days to one for the sixty per cent of schools currently ranked as good.

Sir Michael will say: "At the moment, it can be five years or even more between inspections for a good school. This is too long. It's too long for parents. It's too long between inspections to spot decline, and it's too long for improving schools to show that they are outstanding.

"Far better for an inspector to visit the school for a day than for a full team to descend on the school more infrequently, and then giving, more likely than not, the same judgement as the previous inspection."

The ASCL welcome the proposed changes. General secretary Brian Lightman said of the current system: "What happens sometimes is that on the back of an inspection, which recognises that schools have got areas to improve but they are still schools which are doing lots of good things, people are losing their jobs.

"That's putting people off going for headship and that's very worrying."

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