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England’s education regulator wants to replace one-word assessments of schools’ overall performance with similarly brief judgments in 10 areas of evaluation, according to documents seen by the Financial Times.
Sir Martyn Oliver, the chief inspector of Ofsted, has proposed giving schools a colour-coded rating on each of the 10 areas, ranging from “exemplary”, in purple, to “causing concern”, in red.
The system would replace the old grading system where schools were given an overall judgment ranging from “outstanding” to “inadequate”, along with single-word verdicts on four subsections.
The Labour government scrapped the previous system in September after lobbying from teaching unions, who said the schools inspection regime and single rating put unmanageable pressure on teachers.
Teachers have long complained that the system of headline grades was subjective, unrepresentative and difficult to appeal against, although some parents find they are helpful for deciding where to send their children.
The 10 proposed new areas of assessment are curriculum, teaching, achievement, leadership, behaviour and values, attendance, preparation for next steps, opportunities to thrive, inclusion and belonging, and safeguarding, according to the documents seen by the FT.
A new system is due to be introduced in September of next year. Until then schools are receiving verdicts only on the four subsections that existed under the previous regime. They are: quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, and leadership and management.
One senior figure in the education sector criticised the new proposals as “really bad” and said they would face pushback from school leaders
“School leaders’ entire identity is linked to the performance of the schools they run. If you’re branded ‘inadequate’ that can be incredibly shaming,” they said.
“Now it looks as though the system will be replaced with something even more punitive with even more areas for school leaders to be given damaging one-word judgments on.”
Ofsted and the Department for Education did not immediately respond to requests for comment.