Inspecting Ofsted
13th January 2023 by Timo Hannay [link]
Update 13th January 2023: See also coverage by Tes here and here.
Done right, school inspections can hold staff to account on behalf of their pupils, provide useful feedback to school leaders, spread best practice across the education system and help families to make well-informed school choices. Each of the UK's four nations has its own school inspection framework and inspectorate. This post focuses on Ofsted, which inspects schools in England. A perennial subject of public, political and professional debate, Ofsted has been in the news recently for downgrading large numbers of previously 'Outstanding' schools. This post aims to provide a longer-term perspective over the period for which there are good publicly available data (roughly speaking, inspections conducted between 2006 and late 2022).
We find that:
- The types, outcomes and styles of Ofsted inspections have gone through several transitions in recent years, some corresponding to the appointment of new chief inspectors and introduction of new inspection frameworks.
- In general, the numbers of inspections that lead to a 'Good' designation have been rising and those leading to an 'Outstanding' one have been falling. The recent downgrading of many previously 'Outstanding' schools has drawn considerable attention, and does indeed seem to reflect a big change in Ofsted's propensity to confer its highest grade. However, this shift appears to have been underway for several years – albeit less conspicuously while existing 'Outstanding' schools were largely exempt from inspections during 2012-2020.
- Inspection reports have been getting shorter and using narrower vocabularies, particularly since 2019.
- Topics raised in Ofsted reports have waxed and waned over the years. Currently popular ones include curriculum, leadership, safeguarding and staff. Those in decline include attainment, EAL, progress and Pupil Premium. (Subscribers to SchoolDash Insights can to follow these trends for a long and growing list of topics.)
An inspector calls
As shown in Figure 1, across all schools1 about two-thirds of Ofsted inspections were 'full inspections' or 'school inspections'. (The latter is now the preferred term, though they both amount to more or less the same thing; full inspections were also known as 'Section 5' inspections after the piece of legislation to which they relate.)
The other common forms of inspection were 'monitoring visits' (interim inspection to assess progress, also known as 'Section 8' inspections), 'short inspections' (one-day visits of 'Good' or 'Outstanding' schools to check that they are maintaining standards), 'interim assessments' (reviews of data and other information to help determine how soon a highly graded school should be re-inspected) and 'curriculum and development visits' (what it says on the tin). Compared to primary schools, secondary schools have been somewhat more likely to be subjected to these rarer forms of inspection.
(Use the menu below to switch between all schools, primary schools and secondary schools. Hover over the graph to see corresponding values.)
Figure 1: Ofsted inspections of mainstream state schools in England, by inspection type (2006 - 2022)
Figure 2 shows how different inspection types have come and gone over time. Full inspections more or less ended in 2019, to be replaced by school inspections. Monitoring visits were most common during the early 2010s and the 2020-2021 COVID-19 pandemic, while short inspections were used during the late 2010s. Interim assessments were conducted in bursts between 2010 and 2014, usually at the beginning of each calendar year. Curriculum and development visits were most heavily used during the 2000s and the very early 2010s, then faded away. Across all types of inspection, numbers ran at around 400-800 per month until autumn 2015, when they fell to 200-600 a month (interim-assessment peaks and pandemic-related troughs aside). Very roughly speaking, this equates to each school being inspected about once every 4-5 years on average.
Naturally, some of these developments coincide with the changing leadership of Ofsted and its inspection frameworks. The last three Chief Inspectors have been Christine Gilbert (2006-2011), Michael Wilshaw (2012-2016) and Amanda Spielman (2017-present). During that time, some of the major changes to inspections have been as follows:
- September 2005: Short-notice inspections with four grades: 'Outstanding', 'Good', 'Satisfactory', 'Inadequate'
- September 2009: Revised inspection criteria, resulting in lower average grades
- September 2012: New framework, replacing 'Satisfactory' with 'Requires Improvement'
- September 2015: New Common Inspection Framework (CIF) with accompanying handbooks for different kinds of educational establishment
- September 2019: New Education Inspection Framework (EIF)
(Use the menu below to switch between all schools, primary schools and secondary schools. Click on the figure legend to turn individual inspection types on or off; double-click to show one on its own. Hover over the graph to see corresponding values.)
Figure 2: Ofsted inspections of mainstream state schools in England, by inspection type
Celeb-rating or denig-rating?
While all inspections make judgements and evaluations, only full inspections and school inspections result in an overall rating for the school. As shown in Figure 3, across all schools well over half of these have resulted in a 'Good' rating, though this proportion is slightly higher for primary schools and considerably lower for secondary schools, which are more likely to have received better or worse ratings. (Bear in mind that primary schools are much more numerous than secondaries, so they contribute disproportionately to the overall average.) Across both phases, 10%-15% of inspections resulted in a verdict of 'Outstanding'.
(Use the menu below to switch between all schools, primary schools and secondary schools. Hover over the graph to see corresponding values.)
Figure 3: Ofsted inspections of mainstream state schools in England, by inspection grade (2006 - 2022)
Just as we saw above for inspection types, the numbers of different inspection ratings have not been stable over time. This is shown in Figure 4.
The picture here is very different between primary and secondary schools. Among primary schools, the total number of graded inspections has been considerably lower since autumn 2015 (around 100-200 a month) than in previous years (more like 300-500 a month). Even so, it is clear that 'Outstanding' verdicts have dropped precipitously – and by much more than 'Good' or 'Inadequate' ratings. (Indeed, the latter have spiked recently.) Interpretation of the 'Requires Improvement' rating is slightly complicated by the fact that it used to be known as 'Satisfactory', but here too their number seems to have declined by no more than the overall decline in rated inspections.
Among secondary schools, the total number of graded inspections peaked in 2013-2014 and has tended to be somewhat lower since then than it was previously, albeit with a noticeable rise after the pandemic. Even allowing for this, the number of 'Outstanding' ratings is much lower than it was during 2006-2011, while the numbers of 'Good' and 'Inadequate' ratings have risen, especially of late. (Show all ratings again.)
(Use the menu below to switch between all schools, primary schools and secondary schools. Click on the figure legend to turn individual ratings on or off; double-click to show one rating on its own. Hover over the graph to see corresponding values.)
Figure 4: Ofsted inspections of mainstream state schools in England, by inspection grade
In order to more properly allow for the varying numbers of rated inspections, Figure 5 shows how the proportions of each grade awarded by new inspections have changed over the years.
Among primary schools, 'Good' ratings have generally been on the rise while 'Outstanding' ones have been in considerable decline for many years. After falling for 10 years or more, 'Inadequate' ratings have climbed again recently.
Broadly the same is true among secondary schools: 'Good' ratings have increased while 'Outstanding' ones have been in long-term decline. 'Inadequate' ratings have waxed and waned, but have been on the rise recently. (Show all schools and all ratings again.)
Recent industry and media discussion about Ofsted ratings has focused on the lifting of an exemption from inspections for schools that were previously deemed 'Outstanding'. But this exemption, which was introduced in 2012, was only removed in 2020 – and it's impact was then further delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet the increase in 'Good' designations and squeeze on 'Outstanding' ones appears to predate this by several years.
(Use the menu to switch between all schools, primary schools and secondary schools. Click on the figure legend to turn individual ratings on or off; double-click to show one on its own. Hover over the graph to see corresponding values.)
Figure 5: Proportions of Ofsted inspections by grade
The effects of this can be seen in Figure 6, which shows the changing proportions of schools by their latest Ofsted rating (even if the corresponding inspection took place in a previous year). Whether we look at primary schools, secondary schools or all schools together, the 'Good' group (green) has been growing since around 2012 (helped by the fact that 'Requires Improvement' was applied to fewer schools than the 'Satisfactory' rating it replaced). Meanwhile, the 'Outstanding' group (blue) has been shrinking almost continuously since about 2018.
So why the greater attention on 'Outstanding' ratings now? Probably because earlier shifts were primarily due to new, previously unrated schools becoming less likely to be designated 'Outstanding'. Now that we are seeing high proportions of previously 'Outstanding' schools being downgraded, this pre-existing trend has become far more conspicuous. To put it another way, schools are more likely to be upset at losing a previous 'Outstanding' rating than at not being awarded one in the first place. Barring further changes to inspection criteria, the proportion of 'Outstanding' schools will presumably flatten out over time at a new lower level and expectations will adjust accordingly.
(Use the menu to switch between all schools, primary schools and secondary schools. Click on the figure legend to turn individual ratings on or off; double-click to show one on its own. Hover over the graph to see corresponding values.)
Figure 6: Proportions of schools by latest Ofsted inspection grade
Figure 7 shows how Ofsted inspection outcomes have varied over time for schools with different pre-existing ratings. In particular, we can see that the probaility of being designated 'Outstanding' is now historically low for previously unrated schools, previously 'Good' schools and previously 'Outstanding' schools. Note that the very low proportions of previously 'Outstanding' schools that maintained this rating between 2016 and 2020 are a consequence of the fact that most such schools were exempt from re-inspection unless Ofsted had particular reasons for concern. Under such circumstances, it's not surprising that very high proportions of re-inspected schools were downgraded.
(Show all ratings again.)
Figure 7: Proportions of Ofsted inspections by grade
Textual analysis
This section examines the content of Ofsted's reports, starting with the number of words and range of vocabulary, which are both shown in Figure 8. (Note that there are breaks in the lines during periods when insufficient numbers of reports were available to produce meaningful results.)
Looking at word counts, full inspections (red line) used to range from 3,000 to 4,000 or more words, but since 2019 have become much shorter, with an average of just over 2,000 words. School inspections (yellow) come in very consistently at just under 2,000 words. Other kinds of inspections – monitoring visits (brown), short inspections (green) and curriculum and development visits (purple) – all come in at about 1,000 to 2,000 words.
The number of distinct words per report provides a rough measure of lexical diversity (see the footnote below Figure 8 for more details). Here, too, we see that full inspections used to employ vocabularies of 500-600 words or more, but this fell abruptly in autumn 2019 and now hovers at just over 400 words. This is roughly the same as school inspections. The vocabularies used in other report types have consistently been in the range of 250 to 400 words. (Show all inspection types again.)
(Use the menu below to switch between total words and distinct words. Click on the figure legend to turn individual inspection types on or off; double-click to show one on its own. Hover over the graph to see corresponding values.)
Figure 8: Ofsted report word counts
Figure 9 provides an analysis of the topics that appear in these reports and how their prevalence (in terms of mentions per 1,000 words) has changed over time. The frequencies for primary schools (red line), secondary schools (blue line) and all schools (black line) are shown separately. Some terms, such as curriculum (up roughly 10-fold since 2014), leadership (up about 4-fold), safeguarding (3-fold) and staff (2.5-fold) have been on the rise across all schools. Others, such as phonics (up about 5-fold for primary schools since 2012 and hardly mentioned at all before then) and careers (up 10-fold for secondary schools since 2013), have seen phase-specific increases.
Terms that have declined in recent years include attainment (barely mentioned these days), EAL (down by about 80% since 2014), progress (down by around 95% since 2018) and Pupil Premium (down to around 40% of 2014 levels). Others have risen and then fallen, including absences (now back to noughties levels), disadvantage (at its lowest since 2014), and maths and spelling (both their lowest levels ever). Yet other topics appear to be perennial – for example headteachers, parents and security. Use the menu below to explore these and other terms.
Another interesting aspect is the fact that changes in the frequency of mentions often happen gradually over long periods rather than as step-changes to coincide with a new inspection framework. Put another way, Ofsted's preoccupations sometimes (understandably) evolve over time, not just in response to explicit changes in policy.
(Click on the figure legend to turn individual lines on or off; double-click to show one on its own. Hover over the graph to see corresponding values.)
Figure 9: Ofsted report topics
Inspection customs
As we have seen, that the formats, ratings and preoccupations of Ofsted inspections have evolved a great deal over the last 10-15 years. Changes in ratings policy understandably gain a lot of attention, though as we show above these appear to be part of a long-term shift rather than a particularly recent development.
In light of this, it is also interesting to consider the practical roles played by different Ofsted ratings. To use a restaurant analogy, the distinction between 'Good' and 'Requires Improvement' or 'Inadequate' feels something like a health inspection: is the establishment fulfilling its legal duties? That between 'Good' and 'Outstanding' is more like the Michelin Guide: is the service exceptional in some way? The latter feels more subjective and also more dependent on the circumstances and priorities of individual pupils. In this sense, the decline of the 'Outstanding' category may be no bad thing: let Ofsted check statutory requirements, leaving others such as The Good Schools Guide or even our own offering, The Schools Guide, to help families decide on suitability for their children.
Changes in inspection report topics can show large swings over time, providing a window into Ofsted's shifting preoccupations. For those who would like to continue to follow these trends across an even longer list of topics, a similar analysis is now included in our premium dashboard, SchoolDash Insights, which is updated weekly. Existing subscribers can go direct to the section about Ofsted, which also includes analyses of recent inspections and schools that are statistically overdue for an inspection. Other readers are welcome to sign up for a free trial.
As ever, we would be delighted to hear your thoughts: [email protected]. And if you'd like to keep up to date with more analyses like this then please sign up for our free monthly-ish newsletter.
Footnotes:
Retweet 2022
4th January 2023 by Timo Hannay [link]
Happy New Year! Here at SchoolDash Towers, our annual roundup of educational sentiment in the British Twittersphere has become almost as traditional as Christmas pudding and indigestion, so we're delighted to bring you this 2022-in-review edition. (See our previous posts for coverage of 2021, 2020, 2019 and 2018.) In doing so, we will ignore the ongoing train wreck / turnaround project (delete as preferred) that is Twitter the company and focus instead on what its UK-based users have been saying about schools and education over the last 12 months.
The new normal
Figure 1 shows relative daily numbers of education-related tweets from the UK from January to December 2022. These are based on a random sample of just under 234,000 tweets that mention one or more education-related topics and have been geolocated to the UK. Activity levels are normalised so that January 2022 has a mean value of 100.
As usual, there are weekly cycles with weekend dips and mid-week peaks, as well as longer-term lulls during the spring, summer and winter holidays, and the late spring and mid-autumn half-term breaks. There also appears to be something of an annual arc, with baseline levels of activity tending to peak in the summer term. In 2022, there were no huge spikes of the kinds seen during 2020 and 2021, when schools closed and users took to Twitter to share their feelings.
Figure 1: Number of daily tweets from the UK mentioning education-related terms (2022)
Word salad
What were all those tweets about? Figure 2 provides a 'word cloud' for each month, emphasising terms that were used more frequently in 2022 than during the corresponding month in 2021.
During January 2022, there was still much talk of COVID, especially the omicron variant, but by February and March the focus had shifted to UK university lecturer strikes, Floridas's "don't say gay" law and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In April the Easter holiday beckoned and some COVID cohorts belatedly held their college and university graduation ceremonies. May and June brought both cheers at the Queen's Platinum Jubilee and bitter tears following yet another school shooting in the US.
The summer months of July and August saw the political meltdown of Boris Johnson's government and the febrile atmosphere of the first 'normal' A-level and GCSE results days for three years. In September, Elizabeth II died and was buried with pomp. In October, Liz Truss's premiership came to a more ignominious end amid disputed claims that she was the first holder of her office to attend a comprehensive school; there were also campaigns to extend free school meals and to introduce suicide prevention into the school curriculum. Political spats continued into November and December, with Labour and the Conservatives arguing over the tax status of independent schools; separately, there was talk of snow-related school closures and further strikes across the British economy.
(Use the menu below to select a month to view.)
Figure 2: Common terms in UK tweets about education (2022)
Is less news better news?
Figure 3 shows more quantitatively how some of these topics came and went during the course of the year. One general aspect to note is that only 10% or less of tweets mentioned any of these 'newsworthy' topics. During 2020-2021, when coronavirus-related issues were all the rage, those proportions regularly reached 20-40% or more.
Talk of COVID thankfully tailed off quickly at the start of the year and has been relatively low ever since, albeit with slight uptick at the end of the year. Mentions of the war in Ukraine peaked in February and March, and have generally been lower since then – though of course this doesn't reflect any decrease in hostilities or suffering. Mentions of shootings were highest in late May, coinciding with a tragic incident in Texas, and those about the British government reached a crescendo during July and August, when Boris Johnson's government was collapsing and (among other remarkable feats) managed to go through three Education Secretaries in as many days. A generally happier time was had in late August, when first A-level and then GCSE results were released. Then sadness again with Elizabeth II's death and funeral in September.
During the autumn and winter there followed a series of political spats: the "was Truss the first PM to attend a comprehensive school?" spat in October, the "should teachers in Scotland be paid more?" and "should independent schools get tax breaks?" spats in November, and the "who should get free school meals" spat, which came and went all year but was most prominent during the later months. It was almost a relief when many schools closed for snow days on 12th December and we could mostly blame the elements instead of each other.
(Click here to show all topics again. You can also click on the figure legend below to turn individual data sets on or off; double-click to show one data set on its own. Hover over the graph to see corresponding data values.)
Figure 3: Prevalence of selected topics mentioned in UK tweets about education (2022)
Second that emotion
We can also ascertain something about Twitter users' feelings using our widely celebrated1 'Net Emoji Score', which compares the prevalence of emojis associated with positive (eg, 😀), neutral (eg, 😐) or negative emotions (eg, 😩). The score is simply the percentage excess of positive emojis over negative ones.
Figure 4 shows a rolling 7-day-average for all education-related tweets during 2022. Throughout the year, score were positive (ie, there were more smiley faces than sad ones) and althouh there were considerable fluctations, these were much less extreme than we saw during the 2020 and 2021 lockdowns (which plumbed the depths of Twitter dissatisfaction) and subsequent re-openings (which caused temporary elation).
Figure 4: Net Emoji Score of UK tweets about education (2022, 7-day moving average)
Finally, we can correlate these sentiments with particular topics, as shown in Figure 5. The mean Net Emoji Score across all education-related tweets was +24.3 (ie, positive emojis were 24.3% more prevalent than negative ones). Mentions of royalty, strikes and campaigns for the extension of free school meals generally elicited supportive messages with greater-than-average proportions of happy emojis. Feelings about snow days were exactly balanced, with a Net Emoji Score of zero. Those about the government were firmly in negative territory, nestled between the war in Ukraine and mass shootings.
Figure 5: Net Emoji Score of tweets by topic (2022)
In many ways, 2022 was a return to normal after the truly exceptional years of 2020 and 2021. Here we have seen that Twitter users, too, complained less about about COVID lockdowns got back instead to moaning about a wide and ever-shifting gripes – and sometimes celebrating things too. Assuming that Elon doesn't completely destroy his new toy in the coming year, we look forward to taking another look in 12 months' time to see what 2023 had in store for us all. Fingers crossed🤞.
As ever, we welcome your feedback: [email protected]. If you'd like to keep up to date with more analyses like this then please sign up for our free monthly-ish newsletter.
Footnotes:
