This is the project page of the Nuffield-funded project ‘Inspecting the inspectorate: new insights into Ofsted inspections’, by Christian Bokhove (Southampton Education School, University of Southampton), John Jerrim (UCL) and Sam Sims (UCL). More information about the project is on the Nuffield website. Outputs and media engagement are posted on this page (scroll down please). Scripts and data available via this repository.
PUBLICATIONS
Final report (30 March 2024)
Published on EdArxiv:
Bokhove, C., Jerrim, J., & Sims, S. (2024, March 30). Inspecting the Inspectorate: New insights into Ofsted inspections. https://doi.org/10.35542/osf.io/hr3u5
Fourth working paper (27 March 2024)
Published as a pre-print:
Bokhove, C., Jerrim, J., Phelan, D., & Sims, S. (2024b). Do inspection reports change over time? Pre-print. https://doi.org/10.35542/osf.io/hy365
This press release for this paper was published on 27 June 2024.
A blog with the findings is here.
Third working paper (27 March 2024)
Published as a pre-print:
Bokhove, C., Jerrim, J., Palma Carvajal, M., & Sims, S. (2024a). Testing for sequential bias in school inspections. Pre-print. https://doi.org/10.35542/osf.io/vnq28
This press release for this paper was published on 9 May 2024.
A blog with the findings is here.blog with the findings is here.
TES wrote this article on this study.wrote this article on this study.
Second working paper (19 October 2023)
Published as a pre-print:
Bokhove, C., Jerrim, J., & Sims, S. (2023b). Do schools that employ an inspector get better inspection grades? Pre-print https://doi.org/10.35542/osf.io/2bj3q
Published on 17 May 2024 as:
Bokhove, C., Jerrim, J., & Sims, S. (2023). Do schools that employ an inspector get better inspection grades?. British Educational Research Journal. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.4025
First working paper (2 February 2023)
Published as:
Bokhove, C., Jerrim, J., & Sims, S. (2023a). Are some school inspectors more lenient than others?. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 34(4), 419-441. https://doi.org/10.1080/09243453.2023.2240318
Download the paper ‘Are some school inspectors more lenient than others?‘.
Read the press release ‘Male school inspectors award more lenient grades than female inspectors‘
See the slides of the press presentation.
We have created a few blogs with a summary of the paper, which will be published elsewhere (links to be added).
Blog 1 ‘Do Ofsted inspection outcomes differ between male and female inspectors?‘
Blog 2 ‘How do Ofsted inspection judgements vary between OIs and HMIs?‘
Blog 3 ‘The relationship between Ofsted judgements and inspection team size‘
Blog 4 ‘What is the joint impact of all the characteristics of Ofsted inspectors that we examine?‘
Blog 5 ‘How do inspector characteristics link to short school inspection outcomes of primary schools?‘
Some answers to frequently asked questions are here.
TES magazine published ‘Male Ofsted inspectors ‘give primaries higher grades’’.
Schoolsweek published ‘Female Ofsted inspectors hand out harsher grades, study suggests’.
Christian wrote the column ‘How reliable are Ofsted inspections?‘ for TES magazine.
Sam wrote the column ‘Ofsted reform should focus on inspection reliability first‘ for Schoolsweek.
MEDIA ENGAGEMENT
In March 2023, shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson MP gave a speech to the ASCL conference, drawing on our research to argue that Ofsted inspections are “high stakes for staff, but low information for parents”, before announcing that under Labour single word Ofsted judgements would be scrapped (https://schoolsweek.co.uk/labour-proposes-report-card-to-replace-ofsted-grades/). Labour cited our research on inspection consistency. The press release accompanying the announcement noted “research which has found significant inconsistencies in the headline grades Ofsted inspectors have been awarding to schools”, citing a Schools Week article written about our research (https://schoolsweek.co.uk/female-ofsted-inspectors-hand-out-harsher-grades-study-suggests/). In September 2024, the new Labour secretary Phillipson used the same wording to then formally announce this policy change soon after Labour came to power (https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/ofsted-single-word-school-ratings-scrapped).
Our team has also submitted formal written evidence to the inquiry, with our work also cited by several other submissions to the inquiry. Sims provided oral evidence to the inquiry in October 2023 (https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/13741/html/). Our work was subsequently cited in the final report of the inquiry as well (https://committees.parliament.uk/work/7761/ofsteds-work-with-schools/publications/). The results of Ofsted’s Big Listen (https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/ofsted-big-listen) includes several changes that we recommended in our work.
In April 2023, Amanda Spielman was interviewed on the BBC’s flagship Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg TV programme. In this interview Kuenssberg quoted verbatim from our research to challenge HMCI Spielman on the lack of relationship between Ofsted inspection judgements and pupil outcomes (https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001l8ml/sunday-with-laura-kuenssberg-whats-going-on-in-our-schools).
When we released the papers, we released an accompanying blog series hosted by Education Data Lab (https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2023/02/how-do-inspector-characteristics-link-to-short-school-inspection-outcomes-of-primary-schools/). We also produced accompanying Twitter threads (https://twitter.com/DrSamSims/status/1630951056514375680 ,
https://twitter.com/DrSamSims/status/1621141425340690439) which have been viewed more than 60,000 times. Bokhove and Sims have also written multiple Op-Eds for Schools Week and TES (e.g. https://www.tes.com/magazine/teaching-learning/general/how-reliable-are-ofsted-school-inspections, https://schoolsweek.co.uk/ofsted-reform-should-focus-on-inspection-reliability-first/, https://www.tes.com/magazine/teaching-learning/general/school-choice-do-ofsted-judgements-really-matter) while Sims has also co-produced podcasts with important sector groups (https://www.edsk.org/inside-your-ed-podcast). A summary article in the Conversation (https://theconversation.com/ofsted-school-inspections-arent-consistent-research-shows-freelance-and-male-inspectors-are-more-lenient-238036) by Bokhove in September 2024 was read more than 7,000 times on the first day. The Confederation of School Trusts (CST), which represents around a third of all schools in England, publicly endorsing our call for further research to be conducted into the reliability and consistency of Ofsted inspections (https://cstuk.org.uk/knowledge/guidance-and-policy/cst-discussion-paper-reforming-inspection-10-proposals/).