Ofsted School Inspections

Debate between Kim Leadbeater and Philip Hollobone

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hollobone]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising those concerns. I do share them, as do pupils at the school. I had the privilege of speaking to some of the pupils who engaged with the inspectors. They were expecting the inspectors to ask about the curriculum and their academic studies, but they were probed particularly about the Christian ethos. One pupil, very maturely, responded: “It is not so much about Christianity as about Christian values.” That was a very mature and sensible response.

[Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a really powerful and interesting speech, and I thank him for securing this debate. Does he agree that it would be more sensible if Ofsted inspections were not so narrowly focused on academic achievement? Although that is important, and the school clearly has a fantastic academic record, Ofsted should have a more holistic approach and look at things such as how schools work extremely hard to build social and emotional resilience in children and young people and to create a happy and healthy learning environment, which gives pupils the skills and values they need to be well-rounded citizens?

[Mr Hollobone]

I am most grateful to the hon. Lady for making that very sensible point. That is right. The school clearly has a Christian ethos. I am not saying that all the pupils and parents are Christians, but this is about Christian values and the key themes I mentioned at the beginning, which we surely all share: responsibility, compassion, truth and justice. Yet it seems that this inspection team regards those values as inappropriate for a school because they are Christian. The parents and I find that outrageous.

The pupil said that when they responded to the inspector’s question, “The inspector shut my comment down. He made me feel silly, embarrassed and a bit stupid.” Pupils described the interaction with inspectors as “intense”, “uncomfortable”, “tense” and “awkward”. Those are the pupils themselves telling me about their experiences with the inspectors. Something is not right here, and I want the Minister to take that on board.

The school complained about the judgment on sixth form provision. Ofsted said:

“Inspectors spoke to groups of students. They raised the point that they were well prepared for university, but other routes were not as well covered. While I agree that there is no statutory requirement for work experience, it was clear from the evidence that preparation for the wider world of work was not as secure as other areas of students’ wider development.”

That was Ofsted’s comment. However, 98% of pupils go on to education or go straight into employment. Nevertheless, this aspect of the complaint was not upheld. The school also complained about the overall inspection report, the overall judgment, and the inspection process, but all those complaints were not upheld. All the points that the school made to Ofsted were dismissed.

The breach of confidentiality point has not been addressed by Ofsted in any satisfactory way. Ofsted said to the school:

“It was explained that unless you were able to provide any further evidence, we would be unable to look into this any further.”

Yet the headteacher gave Ofsted the names of two local schools that had heard of the downgrade before the report was published. A serious breach of confidentiality has not been investigated properly and has effectively been dismissed.

On the comments about

“a white middle class school”

and

“walking upstairs when wearing a skirt”,

Ofsted said:

“There is no record in the evidence of the exact line of questioning from the team inspector that you referred to. Having spoken to the team inspector, they cannot recall asking the two questions that are cited.”

I have to say to the Minister that I spoke with the pupils involved and they confirmed what was said, so clearly something is not right here.

The headteacher wrote a measured letter to parents to reassure them on the back of the publication of the report, stressing the school’s outstanding academic performance. He said that

“student performance last summer was outstanding”,

and that that was based on the Department for Education’s own statistics. He went on to say:

“GCSE results place us in the top 3% of schools nationally. A Level performance data is still provisional, but with 43% of grades awarded at A and A*”.

On behaviour and attitudes, the headteacher rightly said:

“External visitors to our school almost without exception comment on the impressive behaviour and engagement of our students. On the inspection days themselves, students’ behaviour was exemplary, and the five members of the inspection team unanimously agreed that they saw no low-level disruption during the inspection.”

That is not what the report said. He went on to say, rightly:

“Unfortunately, this detail has not been included in the report, but we will be sharing with students that we were immensely proud of the way they conducted themselves and upheld our core values in the inspection—and continue to do so.”

I have to say to the Minister that since the report was published 500 parents have been in touch with the school to offer their support and basically they say that they do not believe what Ofsted is saying and do not respect the downgrade to “requires improvement”. However, I think there is a wider agenda going on here, because although I believe that Bishop Stopford has been picked on, recent information has come out that more than four fifths of “outstanding” schools inspected last year have lost their top grade after the exemption from inspection was removed. Also, the chief inspector herself said that the outcomes from the first full year of inspection since it was scrapped:

“show that removing a school from scrutiny does not make it better.”

A fifth of schools, including Bishop Stopford, dropped at least two grades.

The Minister will know that schools rated “outstanding” were exempt from reinspection between 2012 and 2020. The exemption was lifted in 2020 after Ofsted warned that over a thousand schools had not been inspected in at least 10 years. Ofsted itself has said that 308 of the 370 previously exempt schools had a graded inspection that resulted in a downgrade, which is 83%: 62% became “good”; 17% fell to “requires improvement”, including Bishop Stopford; and 4% fell from “outstanding” to “inadequate”. This is a power grab from Ofsted, saying to the Government, “You must let us inspect all schools all the time.” I am not sure that is appropriate, given the level of distress it can cause to excellent schools such as Bishop Stopford when an inspection goes wrong.

On behalf of the school, parents and local residents in Kettering, I ask the Minister to quash the report and send in a fresh inspection team. Let us have a proper inquiry into the leaking of the downgrade. If quashing is not possible within the Minister’s powers, can we have a reinspection of the school at the earliest opportunity? I would not want that grade hanging over the school for potentially the next 30 months. At the very least, can we have a meeting between the Minister himself, the chief inspector, the headteacher and myself as the local parliamentary representative, so that local concerns that the inspection went wrong can be relayed in the clearest possible terms to Ofsted?