Draft Education (Exemption From School and Further Education Institutions Inspections) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2020

Wes Streeting Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2020 General Committees

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure for me, too, to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Ms Fovargue. I know the result everyone is waiting for today is to find out whether this Committee will agree the regulations, which have already been agreed in the other place. We do not want to detain anyone for too long.

It will come as no surprise to the Minister that we support the regulations, not least because they reverse the legislation that was incorporated in the Education Act 2011, which we opposed at the time. We agree with the case set out by the Minister: schools can change rapidly due to a wide range of factors, which makes another inspection necessary. As we have just heard from the Minister, the Ofsted framework has changed significantly, particularly in relation to, for example, greater emphasis on the importance of pupils’ emotional and social development and relationships within schools. It is right that that element is inspected in order to give the public confidence in the judgments that are applied to the school by Her Majesty’s inspectors.

As we saw from the consultation, the changes are widely supported by the people who responded. On stakeholder views, we absolutely agree with Geoff Barton from the Association of School and College Leaders, who said:

“We support plans to remove the current exemption from inspection of schools that are rated as outstanding by Ofsted. The exemption has resulted in parents going too long without the assurance provided by an inspection, and this situation is untenable.”

That view was shared by Nick Brook from the National Association of Head Teachers. He made a broader point that we would also endorse:

“To boost educational standards the government needs to rebalance holding schools to account with helping to improve.”

Over successive decades, there have been significant advances in educational standards in our country, and it is right that we are working with all schools to raise those standards even further and to get the very best out of those who are responsible for educating children and young people in our schools and adults in further education settings. That view is shared by the chief inspector of Ofsted, who has also called for the exemption to be lifted. We agree with all of that.

As we are here this afternoon, and without wishing to detain the Committee for too long, it seems like a good opportunity to probe the Minister on the Department’s view on the resumption of routine inspections in January 2021. We can all see the circumstances in the country at large. The fact that we are going into a new national lockdown tomorrow reinforces in everyone’s minds the challenging circumstances that the pandemic continues to place on all of us.

It seems highly unrealistic to believe that Ofsted inspections will resume as normal from January. We have to go back to first principles and ask ourselves what the purpose of inspection is. What is it that we expect inspectors to find? How do we ensure that the inspection provides a judgment that is fair to the school and the staff within the school, and which is informative to parents and others who use inspection reports? These are not normal circumstances. The idea that normal inspections would take place as usual from January seems not just highly improbable but undesirable. I wonder what thinking the Department is doing on that subject and whether it has any plans to make any changes.

What consideration is the Minister giving to how we might best use Ofsted during this period? Ofsted thematic reviews have been widely accepted and respected as valuable, right across the education profession. Might we better use the considerable resources and expertise of Ofsted to conduct thematic reviews during this period, particularly looking at issues such as remote learning? That is obviously at the forefront of our minds, given the challenges facing schools and families where children are isolating at home.

I am thinking particularly about the way in which, in the current climate, schools are having to rethink the curriculum they provide. The Government have also commissioned a wide range of providers for catch-up learning for pupils. Conducting a thematic review of those catch-up programmes would be a good use of Ofsted resources, to identify weaknesses and, more importantly, best practice. I fear that, as a result of the considerable disruption experienced by children and young people in their education this year, we are going to be talking about catch-up for many years to come.