THERE IS ONLY ONE F IN OFSTED

In response to the suicide of a devoted headteacher Ofsted have announced that they intend to shift from simple labels to reports with more words in them.

In his book, Kind of Blue, Ken Clarke tells us he was proud to have set up Ofsted.

He did it to ensure that teachers concentrated on producing the results, the levels, that he told them to aim at. He engaged in no research whatever before deciding on those levels. They came out of his unqualified and unprofessional head.

There was plenty of research, but he ignored it. The Education Department of the University of Leeds had been carrying out research across the country on the performance of seven year olds. It was great to be involved in that research and to share with young people the fun of learning.

Thatcher did not see how assessment could be fun. Testing, measuring and labelling was how she saw education. That suited Clarke when he became Secretary of State for Education.

At the time there were ten levels of assessment in the National Curriculum, each of them came with a descriptor. I remember a seven year old girl in Leeds reading from an unseen passage a piece with many exclamation and question marks and multicultural nicknames. I thought to myself that not even the best BBC announcer could have done any better. What level might we give her?

Clarke told us. For Key Stage One, seven year olds, we could only use the bottom three levels of the ten and, he told us, the average performance would be in the middle.

This mathematical genius later became Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The results for the English SAT showed twenty seven percent achieving Level One.

Clarke was outraged and told the press how disgraceful it was that one third of children were illiterate. Twenty seven equals thirty three and a third?

As for ‘illiterate’ the descriptor for Level One said “Can read with some assistance”. Rather like many politicians.

That girl I mentioned would, like others, have been banging her head on the ceiling of Level Three.

And then Clarke created Ofsted to make sure that teachers stuck to his unresearched levels in future, or else!

A year later Clarke’s successor allowed young people at Key Stage One to go up to Level Four. Naturally, those who would previously been held down went up. Their performance was no better, it was simply that the scoring system changed.

Government of course announced that the apparent improvement was entirely due to their wonderful education policies.

The shame of working for Ofsted!