Schools told to improve by Ofsted under the current inspection framework could have their progress assessed under the new framework, the watchdog has confirmed.
The decision has been called “wholly inappropriate” by a union leader, who says the two frameworks are incomparable.
Schools that received an overall effectiveness grade of “requires improvement”, or have an “requires improvement” grade in any key judgement, are subject to a monitoring inspection, which judges whether a school is making sufficient progress to improve.
The inspectorate has told Tes that, from November, monitoring inspections will be carried out under the new framework, including for schools identified as needing to improve under the current framework.
“Where possible”, it will finish monitoring inspections that were held under the old framework before November.
Don’t compare frameworks, union boss warns
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, said that “inspection outcomes are not comparable between different frameworks because inspection is a snapshot based on the methodology used at the time.”
“To monitor the areas identified under one framework using a different framework would be wholly inappropriate,” he warned.
Ofsted has proposed to inspect schools in 11 different areas across a five-point grading system.
It has yet to release a response to its consultation on the plans, even though inspections will start from November.
Media reports earlier this week suggested it was planning to make significant changes to its original proposals, although Ofsted declined to comment on this when approached by Tes.
Monitoring visits set to increase
The number of monitoring visits that Ofsted carries out will increase under its new framework.
The watchdog has proposed that all schools with an identified need for improvement would receive monitoring calls and visits “to check that timely action is being taken to raise standards”.
This would include schools “causing concern” and schools with any evaluation area graded as “attention needed”.
Ofsted confirmed that it will have further announcements on monitoring inspections in September.
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