Ofsted

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) on securing this important debate. He has made a compelling case for ensuring the accountability of Ofsted. He has given a number of examples where it has fallen short and made arbitrary and subjective decisions.

Of course, Ofsted inspects not only schools but whole children’s departments and the protection and care of children. I will talk about a report that Ofsted produced on Manchester city council’s children’s department on 1 September, but first I want to reiterate what the hon. Gentleman said: inspection and monitoring are vital parts of public services. They are necessary parts of the accountability process, and it is important that we get them right and understand what is happening.

It is also important that the metrics are right. I will give just one example of how difficult metrics can be. When the Conservative Government in the early ’90s brought in metrics to measure the performance of planning departments and introduce a level of accountability, they said that planning applications should be determined within 40 days, and if they were not, the department concerned was seen to be failing. I was leader of Manchester city council then, and our average time for turning applications round was about 43 days. We were very pleased with that, because there were very few appeals against our decisions. As a lot of work was put in beforehand, the decisions were often better and all parties were happy. However, an arbitrary metric misguided the public as to the competence of the department.

One also has to look at who the inspectors are. My guess is that people do not start out life deciding to be an inspector of planning or an Ofsted inspector. Ofsted inspectors probably start off in child protection of some sort, as a social worker, or as a teacher. Sometimes they become inspectors because they have not done so well, or have failed, in those professions, and sometimes it is because they want more money, but my experience is that as a result they often have a jaundiced view of the inspection process. One has to be wary, and aware that that is a possibility, when looking at how effective these inspections are and what the accountability should be.

I will talk about Manchester’s children’s services department, but I want to place on the record that this is not a defence of that department. I have been concerned about a number of areas; I have written to the council; and I have published statistics that did not show the council in the best light with regard to what happened to referred children, because often they were not dealt with quickly enough, and in some cases they were not dealt with at all.

I have expressed public concern about referred children. I knew of a number of cases where the culture of the department had inhibited the fostering and adoption of children: the process was too lengthy; people had not turned up on time, or at all, to interview potential foster parents and adoptive parents; and interviewers often asked questions that were intrusive and—to my mind, and the minds of the potential foster and adoptive parents—irrelevant. So this is not a mindless defence of Manchester city council’s children’s department from an ex-leader of that department. It is really a case of asking whether we understand more about what is going on in the children’s department after Ofsted’s inspection.

On 1 September, Ofsted said in its report that for

“Children who need help and protection”

the service is “inadequate”. Similarly, it said that for

“Children looked after and achieving permanence”

the service “requires improvement”. Adoption performance was judged “inadequate”, and

“Experiences and progress of care leavers”

also “requires improvement”. Finally, it said that “Leadership, management and governance” were “inadequate”. That is not a glowing report. It was produced by eight inspectors over a period of about five or six weeks, and it must have been quite expensive.

Having complained about the department previously, I went to the report with some interest, but I have to say—this is the core of my contribution—that I was extremely disappointed. The department had had inspections in 2010, 2011 and 2013. The 2013 inspection was on fostering, the 2011 inspection was on adoption, and the 2010 inspection was on safeguarding looked-after children. Those inspections produced two “good” ratings and one “adequate” rating, so they were not cause for concern. However, as there had now been a report giving an “inadequate” rating, I wanted to look at numbers, to see exactly how the service had deteriorated during the period in question.

Although there were some numbers in the report, they were absolute numbers, telling us how many single assessments had not progressed, for example—there was a number in the report for that. However, that was not compared with any of the previous reports, and the comments were generally things such as “slow”, “quality of care record keeping: not good”, “could do better”, “too long to get help” or “too many children waiting for help”. Not only were there not absolute numbers but it was not possible to compare the numbers in the report with those in previous reports.

There was one particularly odd thing. It was not really a metric, but a comment that too many of the looked-after children did not go to good schools. The report did not say how many of the schools in Manchester were good and whether it was possible for all the looked-after children to go to them.

I wrote to Ofsted and asked if it could produce the comparative tables that would enable me to see if the department had gone backwards or forwards, and to see what the situation was that had justified the change to “inadequate”. Ofsted replied to me within about a fortnight; I have no complaint about its speed of response. The response was from Jo Morgan, Ofsted’s regional director, north-west. She said that it was not possible to produce those tables and she gave the reasons why. I will quote from her letter:

“The recent inspection differs from previous inspections as it has a different methodology. It is therefore not possible to make any direct comparisons between judgements. The current single inspection framework is an unannounced universal inspection. It is conducted in a three year cycle and judges local authority services for looked after children, alongside the arrangements to protect children. Ofsted acknowledges that the ‘bar’ has been raised in two ways. Firstly, ‘good’ is now the minimum acceptable standard. The new framework sets out the criteria for ‘good’ in respect of the protection of children, the care they receive, and the arrangements in place to lead and manage services. Any local authority that is unable to provide evidence that the characteristics of good are in place will be will be deemed to ‘require improvement’. The second aspect of our raising the ‘bar’ relates to our explicit and unrelenting focus on both the experiences of children, young people and families and the difference that the help they receive makes to their lives and life chances. Whilst it is recognised that this methodology presents a challenge to local authorities, our priority remains the contribution inspection can make to the help, protection and care of vulnerable children and young people.”

The philosophy behind that is sound, but if the local authority and anybody interested in what is happening are to know whether those serious criteria are being met, they have to be able to measure things and put numbers on them, but the letter and the report make no attempt to do that. Therefore, when Ofsted says that the methodology presents a challenge to local authorities, I would say it makes it impossible for them to know, other than in terms of a generalised report, why they are succeeding or failing. Unless a percentage or a rate of improvement is given for the speed at which children are assessed when they are referred to the local authority, or for the number of children placed in foster care or accepted for adoption, it is difficult for the authority to know what is happening.

Ofsted is failing in terms of inspectors’ basic task of enabling those who want to hold it to account to do so. One does not have to be too cynical to say that in Rotherham, Rochdale and, previously, Haringey, and a number of the other terrible situations we have seen in many of our towns and cities where children were not properly protected by the local authority, the police and others who should have been looking after them, Ofsted had given virtually all the local authorities involved a clean bill of health. After Rotherham was given a clean bill of health, we found that 1,400 children had been abused. From memory—I did not look it up—Haringey had been given an excellent rating before the baby P case.

[Mr Chope]

The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point. Does he share my hope that the Minister will be able to explain how Ofsted was held to account for its manifest failures of judgment in those cases?

[Graham Stringer]

I am looking forward to the Minister’s reply to the hon. Gentleman’s contribution and mine. After those awful events, I am led to the conclusion that, when Ofsted raises the bar, as it puts it, without giving quantified criteria, it is engaged in an exercise that is about not inspection and the accountability of child protection services, but the protection of Ofsted. If Ofsted says that Manchester city council or some other local authority is inadequate or requires improvement, and something terrible happens—I sincerely hope it does not—Ofsted is not to blame, whereas it clearly could be blamed for the reports it gave on the authorities I mentioned earlier. What we are seeing is not an inspection regime that helps us to understand whether our children are being protected, but one that puts out a lot of propaganda for its own protection. I look forward to the Minister’s response.