A headteachers’ union has defended producing a template response for its members to oppose Ofsted’s plans for new inspections.
The NAHT school leaders’ union said Ofsted’s consultation on its report card proposals shows a “complete disregard” for the workload of school leaders.
The union has produced a document of members’ responses to the consultation questions that suggests headteachers strongly disagree with a range of Ofsted’s key plans, including the layout of the inspection report card, a new five-point grading scale, the areas that Ofsted plans to evaluate, its inspection toolkits and its plans to create a new grade, “exemplary”.
In an article based on an interview with Ofsted chief inspector Sir Martyn Oliver, the Sunday Times reported that he was “particularly irked” by the union’s response.
School leaders challenge Ofsted plans
When asked by Tes, Ofsted said Sir Martyn was emphasising that he would prefer to hear the opinions of individuals - parents, headteachers and teachers - rather than receiving hundreds of copied-and-pasted versions of the NAHT response.
An Ofsted spokesperson added: “We want to hear the varied views of teachers and headteachers, not what any one organisation suggests they should think.”
But Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT, defended the union’s approach, saying that it would be “naive to think that proposals that perpetuate and are likely to increase danger to workers would be left without an organised response”.
Mr Whiteman said the design of Ofsted’s consultation was “flawed and misguided” and “showed a complete disregard for school leader workload by effectively asking them to spend hours and hours writing free text responses to a range of questions in addition to completing the Department for Education’s own separate consultation”.
He said the union had argued that the design of the consultation was flawed, but “to no avail”. “We can hardly be blamed for doing our job as a consequence,” Mr Whiteman added.
A snap poll by the NAHT earlier this month revealed that 92 per cent of its members rejected Ofsted’s proposals.
“Ofsted set up a consultation that deliberately avoided the sorts of questions that would allow people to give clear and unambiguous feedback,” Mr Whiteman said.
He added that the NAHT had warned Ofsted “repeatedly” about the way the consultation questions were designed, but claimed that Ofsted “chose to completely ignore” the union.
“Our members have asked us to find a way to make sure their message is clear, and this is what we intend to do,” Mr Whiteman said.
The NAHT has produced a guide for its members on responding to the consultation. It says: “As busy professionals, many of you won’t have time to write detailed answers. If that’s you, our policy team has drafted question by question responses below.
“You can either adapt these as you choose or simply copy and paste then into the relevant box as you work your way through the consultation website.”
Ofsted is currently consulting the sector on its plans to introduce five-point graded inspection judgements across up to at least eight different areas in its new report cards, with a binary judgement of “met” or “not met” for 51.
Tes revealed earlier this month that six in 10 headteachers think that Ofsted is proposing to inspect “too many” areas.
Ofsted’s consultation on its new framework and inspections runs until 28 April.
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