The World Education Summit stands together with the profession to do the right thing and show humanity and support for school leaders whilst ensuring high standards for our learners in schools globally.

We know that different school systems have differing levels of inspection. There is no correlation between the intensity of inspection and the performance at country level. At a system level we need to get this right. Everyone needs to be accountable – including Ofsted.

School inspections work best in checking on children’s safeguarding and ensuring minimum educational standards are met. However, too often they encourage short-termism and reactivity in planning and can induce fear where encouragement would better serve.

We are saddened if there is a negative impact on our school leaders. 

Professors John Hattie and Michael Fullan were very clear for schools in England, Ofsted is not fit for purpose in its current form in their opening keynotes Monday 20th March.

Our Recommendations 

1. Inspection should be subject to regular independent systemic review.
2. During the systemic review, there should be a regular independent review of alternative means to achieve improved outcomes to inform the next iteration
3. We have been very clear that Learning Matters in our call for learning to be part of any Inspection Framework. In our large scale Student learning survey led by Professor John Hattie, of the 43 schools with an Ofsted rating of Requires improvement, Good or Outstanding – their rating did NOT differ on any of the learning scales. This showed that Ofsted does not discriminate on learning. Indeed, for all measures, schools rated Good outperformed those rated Outstanding. Great learning schools are not necessarily valued by Ofsted. 

We have an opportunity as a gathering of evidence based global leaders to improve at a systemic level.