In April 2024 the Department for Education announced that there were “no plans” to change single-word Ofsted judgments. These give schools inspected by the education standards regulator an overall rating of outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate.

In doing so, the government has decided to ignore a consensus of heavyweight opinion in favour of abolishing single-word judgments. These include the House of Commons Education Committee, which has said in a recent report that the Department of Education and Ofsted “should work together as a priority to develop an alternative to the current single-word overall judgement”.

The voices against single-word judgments are also made up of teachers, headteachers and a former Ofsted chief inspector, as well as the family of Ruth Perry, a headteacher who tragically died by suicide following the downgrade of her school from outstanding to inadequate.

The government’s decision may seem hard to fathom. I am a former Ofsted inspector and now carry out research on school inspections, and talk to serving and former Ofsted inspectors. My view, too, is that these judgments should be abolished. And I believe that the government’s choice........

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