Your vox pop of senior education figures (The verdict on Ofsted? ‘requires improvement’, Education, 28 October) was damning. It is clear that all trust has been lost; Ofsted is regarded as a highly politicised, untrustworthy, damaging organisation. That’s one reason why the Green party is calling for its abolition and replacement with continuous collaborative assessment and a national council of educational excellence working closely with local authorities.
Of course we need more change than that. The state of Ofsted is a reflection of the state of a system that is vastly overfocused on exams, has lost local democratic accountability, and has left teachers overworked, disempowered and increasingly demoralised.
Natalie Bennett
Leader, Green party
• The views of 16 educationalists on Ofsted and its inspection of schools leads me to wonder, what is Ofsted for? Is this intimidating body with its constantly changing goalposts the best way of spending £70m on improving education? My answer is that, after 22 years’ meandering, it should be abolished. In its place is needed a revitalised, small, well-trained HM inspectorate looking at national issues and local inspectors/advisers giving challenge and support to schools in a locality that they are familiar with. Yes, returning to the school support system of pre-1988 that was demolished for political reasons and not on the basis of research evidence.
If, as I suspect, this would liberate substantial funds, they could be spent to great value on Sure Start centres, linking them to primary schools to give parental support in helping the language development of those very young children who sadly are growing up in culturally impoverished families. This would be a much more effective strategy for raising educational standards than Ofsted inspections because it would focus on those all important first two years of life and parent-child verbal interaction. With limited funding for education we should not waste it on ill-conceived inspections.
Professor Michael Bassey
Newark, Nottinghamshire
• I obviously inhabit a parallel universe to that of your editors and contributors. In my Britain, black and minority ethnic children and young people are more likely to end up in schools struggling to give them a high-quality education, their parents are more likely to be frustrated then engaged and black and minority ethnic teachers are more likely to have disciplinary proceedings taken against them. In this world, it is difficult to find evidence that Ofsted has led to improvements in the experience of these children, their parents or this group of teachers, except to note that “outstanding” schools have very quickly been shown to be failing as a result of a “Trojan horse”.
I look forward to your next review of Ofsted and how it has contributed to progressing equality for all.
Jabeer Butt
Deputy chief executive, Race Equality Foundation
• I hope the consultation Ofsted is engaged in will involve a wide spectrum of opinion – far wider than the Guardian’s so-called “public inquiry” which, with one or two exceptions, features the usual suspects. I am surprised at the political and educational naivety of many of their responses. Ofsted is not going to go away – there is no political will for that; no political capital to be gained from it. In the current climate, parents and local communities are not going to be satisfied with peer evaluation by schools, even if moderated by a distant Ofsted. There can be no return to a golden age of stress-free inspection and evaluation.
Certainly Ofsted requires improvement – as it itself has belatedly acknowledged. Its culture is shifting for the better (in my judgment) and the way to work towards a more responsive, more proportionate and more humane inspection regime is to support that shift, though not in an unquestioning way.
Professor Colin Richards
Spark Bridge, Cumbria
