24th September 2013 9:00
By Blue Tutors
One of the country’s top academics has said that there is no evidence that methods used by schools inspectors Ofsted are at all effective. Professor Robert Coe said that the lesson observations which form the core of Ofsted evaluations do not necessarily lead to valid judgements. Coe, who is based at Durham University’s Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring, presented evidence to an education research conference that suggested Ofsted’s inspections were unreliable. He went on to say that Ofsted should be asked to demonstrate that its methods were valid and backed by research evidence.
Millions of pounds are currently being spent on the schools inspectors in order to improve educational standards, but little evidence has been provided that their methods do improve the system. Coe cited studies which have shown that schools often take a long time to recover from Ofsted inspections, and that the damage in morale caused by the process has a significant effect on the standard of teaching. He presented further evidence which demonstrated that a report based on a lesson observation is often not an effective marker of the efficacy of that teacher’s lessons. He noted that if Ofsted deems a lesson to be “no good”, it has a very significant effect on the teacher and the school, yet there is often little evidence to support the findings. A particular issue is the number of subjective variables that inspectors are asked to comment on.
Ofsted have responded by saying that the claims are “nonsense”, and dismissed the Professor’s report as an attack on the system. In an interview in the Times Educational Supplement, Ofsted Chief Michael Wilshaw said that most schools believe classroom observation is helpful, and does improve school performance. He said that the recent rise in the number of schools judged to be outstanding was proof that the inspection system worked, and claimed that their observation methods had galvanised schools into performing better.