Tim Sanders Warwick Mansell

Shaky foundations of Ofsted’s house of cards

Warwick Mansell is a freelance education journalist and founder/writer of educationuncovered. co.uk

WHAT happens when an inspection agency completely loses the trust of those it is meant to be inspecting? I have been wondering about this, after contemplating a slow-building scandal involving the agency which as a country we are encouraged to trust to tell the truth about the state of our schools.

Yes, Ofsted has been under the microscope again, and the details of its activities in one recent aspect of its work have been especially concerning.

Last year, the inspectorate started publishing “research reviews” in national curriculum subjects. These looked at existing research evidence, before, as Ofsted puts it, setting out studies that had “informed our thinking on subject quality”.

As these reports emerged, though, a problem soon became clear. Ofsted was accused of cherry-picking studies that supported what seemed to be a pre-standing ideology at today’s inspectorate, in favour of traditionalist approaches to teaching as advocated by this Government.

What has become more shocking, though, has been the extent to which evidence in studies referenced by Ofsted appears to have been misrepresented, or even, it would seem in some cases, invented.

A researcher at Sheffield Hallam University told Schools Week that he had been “astonished” to find his research cited in Ofsted’s maths review, in support of a statement about how homework motivated children, when he had not investigated the issue.

I then tracked down complaints from three seemingly eminent research teams, based in the US and the Netherlands, who had told Ofsted that their findings had been misused in the maths review. Another high-profile academic told me that what seemed a central idea put forward by Ofsted in its maths document, which had as its only reference a paper he co-authored, amounted to a “complete fabrication”.

Ofsted also cited a study involving five pupils as its only reference behind the sweeping statement: “When pupils obtain levels of proficiency, they look forward to and enjoy tests.”

Overall, the Association of Mathematics Education Teachers found that, for 86 of the 307 references in this document, Ofsted’s statement did not match what the referenced research had said.

Turning to Ofsted’s English review, the prominent grammar expert, Professor Debra Myhill, complained it was “hard to see” how Ofsted’s statement, which had referenced an editorial of hers, “bears any resemblance” to it. And another research team, writing on English Literature, set out how Ofsted had misquoted them.

The Language Learning Journal published an entire issue on controversy around Ofsted’s document for modern languages. Early educators are also criticising its equivalent in their field. The NEU organised an all-day conference on the reviews, at which I spoke.

It is hard to overstate how damaging this has been to Ofsted’s reputation, among those who have viewed these complaints up close. For, if an inspection agency cannot tell the truth, what is it doing presiding over our education system?