Ofsted is considering renaming the ‘secure’ grade in proposed new report cards, amid concerns it won’t be clear to families where it sits on the new scale, Schools Week understands.
The inspectorate proposes replacing its current four-point grading system with five grades across up to 11 judgment areas. The system is now being piloted and is open to consultation,
Schools would be given one of five colour-coded judgments for each area, ranging from dark green to red. Under current plans, those would be ‘exemplary’, ‘strong’, ‘secure’, ‘attention needed’ and ‘causing concern’.
However, although it remains wedded to five grades, Ofsted is now understood to be considering replacing ‘secure’ with another word or phrase.
Fears parents won’t understand grade
Schools Week understands the matter was discussed with inspectors by Sir Martyn Oliver, the chief inspector, and Lee Owston, the watchdog’s director of education, at an internal conference last week.
It follows concerns raised with Ofsted that the meaning of ‘secure’ in the context of rating a school is not clear, and it is not obvious where it should sit on the sliding scale.
Pepe Di’Iasio, the general secretary of the ASCL leaders’ union, welcomed Ofsted’s willingness to rethink elements of its proposals, but said it needed “to go much further than simply a change in terminology”.
Ofsted’s plan for a five-point grading scale was “fundamentally flawed” and risked producing less reliable judgments while putting additional pressure on school and college leaders.
“The proposed toolkits are wildly open to interpretation, with the distinction between ‘secure’ and ‘strong’ in particular being exceptionally vague in several places,” he said..
Frank Norris, a former senior inspector, said Ofsted was “trying to keep face when actually … the criticism isn’t with the word ‘secure’.
“How sad that they’re spending time on that word when it’s not that word, it’s the actual structure of the grading system.”
‘Secure’ vs ‘strong’
It comes after Oliver told leaders at the ASCL conference last month that Ofsted was looking at better “defining the differences between grades”.
Schools Week ran a blind online survey asking readers to distinguish between the criteria for the “secure” and “strong” descriptors.
More than 3,000 respondents, primarily teachers and school leaders, on average got two of five wrong. One question proved particularly confusing, with just 36 per cent of respondents successfully choosing the higher grade descriptor.
Under its proposed new framework, Ofsted has published “inspection toolkits” that break down the requirements schools must meet for each of the five grades.
Oliver said the kits aimed to “remove any mystery or guesswork”, helping leaders and teachers “understand each standard in exactly the same way as…inspectors”.
Ofsted is testing the framework with about 240 “visits” to education settings.
Oliver said there had been positive feedback, “but we are also hearing that we have more to do on defining the differences between grades, particularly between secure and strong”.
He told ASCL’s conference that clarification work “has begun”.
‘No decisions have been made’
The inspectorate has come under fire from those who say its deadline does not leave enough time for the plans to be changed and repiloted, or consulted on if needed.
Asked if it planned to change the ‘secure’ rating, Ofsted responded: “The consultation is still live. No decisions of this kind have been made.”
The consultation ends on April 28. Ofsted then plans to publish a consultation report in summer, before implementing the new framework from November.
Final agreed reforms “will then be piloted again across all education remits”.
The watchdog has insisted “nothing is set in stone” and that it will listen to consultation responses. But it has also said it has “clear plans to introduce changes in November”.
Last week, ASCL urged Ofsted to reconsider its five-point system, arguing it would “introduce even greater anxiety” for school staff.
It instead put forward its own proposal for a three-point system – featuring just the ‘secure, ‘attention needed’, and ‘causing concern’ grades.
But Oliver this week told a meeting of education leaders at the Guildhall in the City of London: “I know there are some who want us to stop there and to say, this school has met the required standard, and that’s good enough. But I don’t want to just say ‘that’s good enough’.”
He said having two additional grades above ‘secure’ would help “drive higher standards”.
