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Whenever I visit a school, one of the first things I do is download its Ofsted report – those pages of A4 with their brisk summary of achievements and challenges. Despite my better self, I’m inevitably drawn to their brute headline verdicts of Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement and Inadequate, even though I know how often they fail to give us a true picture of the school in question. None of this is new. Thoughtful critics of Ofsted have long called out the limitations of remote national inspection. Others have patiently drawn attention to the way in which Ofsted penalises schools in poorer areas, as well as the way it regularly shifts its judgement criteria, harvesting yet another crop of buzzwords. This often leaves school staff confused, while doing little to reduce the punishing and often soulless workload of England’s teachers, who still put in longer hours than their European counterparts. Toxic accountability So what hope is there for reform? With this current government, sadly very little. In its last election manifesto the Conservatives decided to make support of Ofsted a key promise, in contrast to Labour, which boldly pledged to scrap the regulator. The Conservatives have in fact threatened to make Ofsted even tougher, floating the idea of ‘no-notice inspections’. Given their subsequent 80-seat majority, this looks like clever politics (although Brexit may the heads of powerful academy chains who have the government’s ear. Nuanced strategy For those wanting to see a more fundamental shift in school accountability, it’s clearly going to be a long haul, both within the education profession and across the broader political world – including the Labour opposition, which will elect its new leader in April. Reformers will need to pursue a careful and nuanced strategy based on firm evidence and effective public persuasion. They will need to patiently collate examples of clear failures by Ofsted and other accountability measures. After all, how can we bring about sustained improvement when heads of schools in deprived areas are, in effect, being punished for teaching poorer children? And in what way is Ofsted helping, rather than aggravating, the endemic teacher recruitment and retention issue? Reformers also need to develop robust, alternative proposals for holding schools to account. One approach might include setting up a supportive local inspectorate composed of newly retired heads and senior leaders. Finally, and most importantly, it’s vital to win the battle of public opinion. It’s not school leaders and teachers that need convincing of Ofsted’s inadequacies, but rather the general public, which can often have an instinctual scepticism which it comes to large scale changes. I’ll end with one small suggestion. Whatever shape these proposed reforms take, I vote that we keep those easily downloaded, lucidly presented school reports. Just make them more rounded, update them more regularly – and ditch the misleading headline judgements. Melissa Benn Ofstedmight currently have the government’s full backing, but as a growing number of influential voices line up to criticise the existing schools accountability system, its position shouldn’t be seen as unassailable have had a tiny bit to do with that). In any case, it doesn’t look as if the ‘toxic accountability’ problem is going away any time soon. Weeks after the election Ofsted was back in the news with a vengeance, amid reports of loud complaints from schools marked down for particular failures, including a jammed fire door and the presence of an inflammatory leaflet in the school library. But a much more significant argument has since started brewing around the consequences of the new Ofsted inspection framework, which stresses the necessity for schools to have a role in building students’ ‘cultural capital.’ In short, some schools now find themselves downgraded for having an extended GCSE period of three years. According to Ofsted, this risks damaging pupils’ broader education. The schools’ retort is that this three-year period is intended for those pupils, many of them disadvantaged, who need extra time to prepare for exams. They insist that on top of their intensive test preparation, art, music and so on are still being taught. Both sides are holding firm for now, though it’s significant that Ofsted’s current critics include S C H O O L O F T H O U G H T Melissa Benn is a writer; her latest book is Life Lessons: The Case for a National Education Service , published by Verso teachwire.net/secondary 20