Why celebrating OFSTED grades is the wrong thing to do

After another wave of celebratory social media posts about just-published OFSTED reports, I felt compelled to write something about it. Not a tweet, because they are always too short, but something to explain why I think, ultimately, this is the wrong thing to do.

First, let me outline the current problems as I see them:

Unreliable judgements

Following the death of Ruth Perry in January, the floodgates opened with thousands coming forward to share their own stories of inspections that, for a multitude of reasons, ended in judgements being made that they felt were wrong. These people who have been wronged can't all be wrong. In September this year, Queen Emma School in Cambridge successfully challenged their own inspection outcome. After originally being graded ‘inadequate’ in 2022, in June 2023 they were upgraded to ‘good’. Other schools are expected to follow this path with NAHT crowdfunding for such action. This feels like the tip of a giant iceberg. A group of headteachers, led by John Bald, has raised £46,000 for the pur