The chief inspector of schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw, has admitted Ofsted has struggled to recruit senior staff in the wake of child protection scandals in local authorities such as Rotherham, but dismissed the issue as “a blip”.
Facing questions from members of parliament’s education committee, Wilshaw said Ofsted faced difficulties with staff turnover and disagreements over its approach.
Marion Fellows, the Scottish National party MP for Motherwell, highlighted Ofsted’s inability to recruit a national director of social care, asking: “What are you going to do to address this instability?”
Wilshaw replied: “It’s a difficult one. I know local authorities are struggling to appoint really good directors of children’s services. Ofsted struggles sometimes to appoint outstanding leaders as national directors.
“People will come, people will go, they get promoted elsewhere, they move sideways and so on, we’ve just got to face that fact. We’ve want to make sure that good people are appointed to national positions and that they remain with us for a period of time … It is a blip.”
Ofsted, which is responsible for inspecting local authority children’s services as well as schools, is on its third national director of social care in the space of four months. Debbie Jones, who was in post for 18 months, resigned in April, and her interim successor, Kath O’Dwyer, left after a month, to become head of children’s services at Cheshire East council. The job is currently filled until December by Eleanor Schooling, Islington’s director of children’s services.
Asked whether staff were being undermined, Wilshaw replied: “Sometimes it’s a disagreement in terms of an approach, and those people who find working for Ofsted uncomfortable need to move on.”
The hearing was a contrast to some of Wilshaw’s previous appearances before the education committee, with a string of newly appointed MPs examining Ofsted’s recent record, including its handling of child abuse in Rotherham and its inspections of schools in Birmingham.
Suella Fernandes, the Conservative MP for Fareham, challenged Wilshaw to say how many local authorities may be hiding child sexual exploitation problems similar to Rotherham.
“I don’t know, is the short answer to that. All I would say is, in terms of Rotherham, we judged Rotherham to be inadequate in 2009; three years later we said it was adequate and perhaps we shouldn’t have done – we certainly shouldn’t have done,” Wilshaw replied.
Another Tory, Michelle Donelan, the MP for Chippenham, pressed Wilshaw over what she said was a crisis in the social care profession. The chief inspector agreed that retaining experienced staff was a priority.
Wilshaw, a former headteacher, was on familiar ground when the committee turned to schools. But he faced a battery of questions from Lucy Frazer, Tory MP for South-East Cambridgeshire, over criticisms of Ofsted’s inspection of science teaching.
“You and I would be happy if there were enough science teachers out there, and there certainly aren’t,” Wilshaw said. Isolated schools in coastal and rural areas faced particular problems in finding quality staff, he added.
“The big debate over the next few years is how can we can ensure there are more good people coming into the system, and are they being distributed well to parts of the country that are languishing and not doing as well as other parts of the country,” he said.
Wilshaw rejected a claim by Fernandes that Ofsted inspectors preferred “child-centred” teaching. “If that was a culture that predominated in Ofsted years ago, we have changed it – and I have made it my mission at Ofsted to change it,” he said.
“The best teacher I have ever seen in east London used to jump on a desk and teach groups of children from a desk. The big issue for her was that when she said ‘stop’, the children stopped. She was very interventionist and because the school was a good one – one I led – the discipline was so good that the children obeyed.”
Kate Osamor, the Labour MP for Edmonton, raised the role of regional schools commissioners, given wide powers by the Department for Education to intervene in school management. When Wilshaw said he didn’t know whether the new system was working, Osamor suggested he might want to inspect the regional commissioners as well.
“We inspect almost everything that moves at the moment. If the government wants to give us a few more million quid to inspect regional schools commissioners, we would gladly do that,” said Wilshaw.
“I’m just wondering when you’ll be inspecting that committee, given that answer,” the committee’s chair, Neil Carmichael, said to laughter. Wilshaw did not join in.
