How will Ofsted’s inspection overhaul affect children with SEND? And why you need to respond to the consultation

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Last week, Ofsted announced its proposals to overhaul how it carries out some of its education inspections. So what changes are Ofsted proposing, and how might it affect the world of SEND?

Firstly, there are two main ways that Ofsted inspects SEND provision:

Education inspections: these inspect early years, schools and colleges. This is where last week’s proposed changes are focused, and this article will concentrate on the changes that Ofsted wants to make to school inspections.
Area SEND Inspections: these inspect education, health and some social care provision at the local authority level. These inspections are about the SEND services provided by a local authority, plus the NHS SEND activity that takes place inside the LA’s boundaries. You can read more about area SEND inspections here. This type of inspection is going to be overhauled—again—at some point, but we don’t know how yet.

The education inspection proposals aren’t a done deal. They’re at the consultation stage, and you can find a link to the consultation (and its supporting documents) here. The deadline for consultation responses is 28^th April. If implemented, the changes are due to start in September.

Report Cards

You’ll probably be familiar with Ofsted’s current school inspection grading system, running from Outstanding through to Inadequate. Since the Ruth Perry tragedy, Ofsted has moved away from using a single grade to label schools. It’s now proposing to implement something finer-grained: a report card, rather than an inspection report.

At the moment, schools are graded across four different categories of school performance. The proposed report card system would expand these out to at least nine, and (depending on the age of the pupils in the school) up to 11 different categories.

In the report card (which looks a bit like it’s been designed by Nando’s) each of these categories would be graded according to a new evaluation scale. The Outstanding-to-Inadequate grading ladder would be binned, and replaced by a five-rung ladder running from Exemplary at the top, down to Strong, Secure, Attention Needed, and Causing Concern at the bottom.

The only category that would be a binary ‘met’ vs ‘not-met’ judgement would be safeguarding.

One of the things that Ofsted wants opinions on in its consultation is whether this new report card structure is the right one, and if not, how it could be improved. It also wants to know whether you’d want to see contextual data published in each school’s report card—for example, things like the number or percentage of pupils with SEND, absence rates, or attainment scores.

The Toolkit

So what are these 9-11 categories? Ofsted is an organisation that rarely misses an opportunity to patronise parent carers, and has told us we can choose to skip this bit of the consultation if we want. We strongly advise that you don’t skip it, as this is where most of the changes are buried that’ll affect the education that your kids will get.

Ofsted has listed these categories in a draft school inspection toolkit, which you can find here. In short, they are:

Leadership and Governance
Curriculum
Developing Teaching
Achievement
Behaviour and Attitudes
Attendance
Personal Development and Wellbeing
Inclusion
Early Years (if the school has this provision)
Sixth Form (if the school has this provision)
Safeguarding

The toolkit sets out what sort of performance or organisational behaviour would lead inspectors to choose a particular grade across each of these categories. Some of the descriptions are very finely shaded. Many descriptors in different categories cut across each other, and in some categories it’s very hard to see what would get the school a Strong versus a Secure grading. Have a go at this quiz, which illustrates the problem well.

Ofsted wants this toolkit to apply across the range of schools that it inspects, including includes special schools and alternative provision settings. If you think that one-toolkit-to-rule-them-all is the right approach, or if it’s not going to give these settings a decent shot at a fair inspection, then let Ofsted know in your consultation response.

What about Inclusion?

You’ll doubtless have spotted the Inclusion category, which Ofsted is very proud of. This category isn’t just confined to SEND, but includes all socially and/or economically disadvantaged pupils too.

If you’ve read this far, you’ll be well aware there is (as yet) no universally-accepted definition of inclusion, or even what good “inclusive behaviour” by a school and its pupils looks like. There is no official guidance from the Department for Education yet on what inclusion is or what’s best practice, but this is the definition of inclusion that Ofsted is working from:

Inclusive providers are at the heart of their communities. They have high expectations and aspirations for every child and learner. They are particularly alert to the needs of those who need the most support to achieve well, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities.

Leaders set a clear and ambitious vision for inclusion at the provider. They communicate this to children, learners, staff, and parents and carers. They create a culture in which every child and learner belongs, and feels safe, welcomed and valued. They make sure that all children and learners access a high-quality education, taught by experts with high ambition who strive to develop every child and learner’s potential.

Leaders work in a close and effective partnership with parents and carers and other agencies to secure the best possible outcomes for every child and learner, regardless of their starting points. Inclusive providers are relentless in identifying and removing barriers to participation and learning, so that all children and learners can achieve and thrive.

In the consultation, Ofsted wants to know what you think about this definition, so if you want to see something different, tell them.

Within this Inclusion category, there are four main sub-categories of things that Ofsted education inspectors would check:

Identifying and meeting needs, and removing barriers;
Supporting disadvantaged pupils;
Supporting pupils with SEND; and
Inclusive practices (this is a catch-all category that examines how well these practices integrate with the other things that Ofsted will inspect across a school).

What is “Secure” Inclusion?

So what sort of inspected practices, behaviour and performance would see a school get the bang-average ‘Secure’ grade for Inclusion? It’s things like this (this language is from the toolkit):

Leaders quickly and accurately identify pupils who face barriers to their learning or well-being that might make them vulnerable.
Leaders make sure that any use of alternative provision is suitable, safe and in the best interests of pupils.
Leaders quickly and accurately identify pupils’ emerging or changing SEND. They make sure that pupils receive effective support, drawing on specialist guidance where necessary.
An appropriate, graduated approach meets pupils’ SEND effectively. Staff receive suitable training and support to implement the graduated approach well.

What is “Causing Concern”?

And what type of failings would lead an inspector to award a school ‘Causing Concern,’ the lowest grade for Inclusion? (Again, quotes from the toolkit)

Across the school’s work, leaders fail to meet pupils’ needs.
Inclusive practices do not ensure an acceptable standard of education and/or care for disadvantaged pupils and/or those with SEND.
Support for disadvantaged pupils and/or those with SEND is ineffective.
Leaders do not identify pupils who are disadvantaged or have SEND, or pupils who may face barriers to their learning and/or well-being.
Leaders’ use of alternative provision is not in the best interests of pupils, and/or they have not taken all necessary steps to make sure that the provision is safe.
Leaders fail to meet the statutory expectations of the SEN code of practice.

There is a general section of the consultation where you can feed back your opinions about the toolkit. Don’t hold back – but also make sure that you look at other parts of the toolkit as well, where the proposed structure and grading system will also affect the way that the education our kids get will be inspected.

This looks like a good thing – is it?

It’s too soon to say if it’s a good thing or not. The trouble with this type of consultation is that it’s hard to tell whether a system such as this would work on the ground.

Ofsted needs to consult on the underlying principles of inspection, and that’s what it’s doing here.

But the documents that really determine how Ofsted inspections and gradings work – the inspection framework, handbook and evaluation schedule – aren’t ready yet. It’s these documents that drive inspectors’ practice on the ground, and it’s these documents that schools respond to when preparing for inspection.

Ofsted’s proposals have generally met with a very hostile reception from school leaders who fear drowning in workload. Some academics are also sceptical that this approach can generate reliable inspection results.

From here, it looks like there are a few key issues…

Clash of approaches

The proposed school inspection approach clashes with the Area SEND inspection approach. Under these proposals, a school would get the lowest ‘Inclusion’ grade if its leaders fail to meet the statutory expectations of the SEND Code of Practice. It’s not entirely clear what that means: not everything in the Code of Practice is a statutory duty, and if they’re talking about law, then that should be a non-negotiable duty, not an ‘expectation’; the road to SEND hell is paved with those.

But this is a very different approach to the one that Ofsted takes with inspection of local authority SEND services. Under its area SEND inspection handbook, Ofsted explicitly says that it won’t check all aspects of a local area’s compliance with its statutory duties. And when they do check, inspectors don’t often act when they find things. There are numerous examples where inspectors have gone in, seen LA SEND services fail to meet their statutory obligations on an industrial scale, and yet decided that it didn’t amount to a significant weakness demanding urgent action.

Schools would be held accountable for things they have no control over

Schools would be on the hook for the failings of the local authority and NHS. School leaders are expected to make sure that pupils with SEND “receive effective support, drawing on external specialists, as necessary.”

That sounds sensible, and it should be non-negotiable in a basically functional SEND system. But we don’t have one of those. There are many decent schools out there where the quality of their SEND provision is fettered to the corpses of their local authority and NHS services. You can’t always draw on external specialists if the LA or NHS won’t give you access to them, or if you cannot recruit them directly, or if your efforts to secure that support are tied up in a never-ending EHCP process. And for pupils with EHCPs, it’s the local authority who hold the ultimate responsibility to make provision.

Promoted

Still room for avoidance

There’s still room for skulduggery! It looks like these proposals dodge an issue that genuinely inclusive schools have complained about for years – how can hard-charging mainstream schools be stopped from manipulating their intake to avoid admitting pupils with SEND?

Most of us have experienced mainstream school open days that operate as deterrence by denial. You know how these work—a sharp-suited leader of Patrick Bateman Academy who completely changes tack when they learn that your kid has a particular type of special educational need. They operate by euphemism, but communicate through every available limb and orifice that their school isn’t for you, and that you’d be better off trying Jigglypuff Community School down the road who have much better SEND provision.

Everyone knows this happens but it’s hard to catch for inspectors—and parents can’t use the Ofsted Parent View system for example if you’re not registered with the school. With a careful approach, it’s entirely possible for the school inspectorate to identify, report on, and deter this behaviour. It doesn’t look like they plan to.

What does good or bad inclusion look like?

How do inspectors know what good or bad inclusive practice looks like? That’s partly a definitional problem, but it’s also deeper than that. The Ofsted inspectorate is made up of former and current school leaders of all stripes; some will know what it takes to make a school a safe and welcoming place where children with SEND can thrive. Others won’t—particularly those who earned their spurs in the data-driven early 2010s.

Ofsted school inspections have tended to have a very specific approach to evidence gathering, one where an absence of evidence is taken to be evidence of absence. That approach won’t work when inspecting inclusion. The more inclusive a school is, the more seamless its approach is—and seamless approaches tend to be invisible unless you really know what you’re looking for.

Paradoxically, that can mean that highly inclusive schools won’t automatically generate much explicit inspection evidence that what they’re doing is working. The risk here is that whether schools are doing a good job of inclusion or not, they’ll end up generating attractive-looking, but superficial examples of practice that are just designed to be catnip for Ofsted inspectors. This blog (written by a SENCO who’s sceptical of Ofsted’s proposals) illustrates the problem well.

All the same, we’d strongly recommend that you respond to this consultation. Ofsted’s work is happening whilst the government is still thinking about the major surgery it wants to perform on the SEND system. It’s likely that Ofsted’s new inspection process will be the first major change that’ll impact the way that support for your kids is delivered on the ground.

If they get it right, then families of children with SEND will no longer have to consider a mainstream school’s Outstanding rating as a North Korean-sized red flag. If they don’t get it right, then it’ll trigger a lot more daft and dodgy behaviour by schools.

Find the consultation here

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Matt Keer

Matt (he/him) has two deaf children. He has over 20 years of experience grappling with the SEND system as a parent, and he’s seen the best and the worst that the SEND system offers.
Matt specialises in SEND stats, data analysis, and in-depth investigations of policies. He has given evidence to several Parliamentary Select Committee inquiries, and his articles for SNJ on SEND funding, local government policy, and the SENDIST Tribunal have been quoted in Select Committee inquiry reports and national media.

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