One-word grades for schools to be scrapped

One or two-word Ofsted inspection grades for England’s schools are being scrapped immediately.

Overall grade categories of Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement and Inadequate will no longer be issued.

Ofsted will still inspect schools against the same standards, and reports will continue to give details on specific aspects of how a school is performing, as they do now.

The government said the change, which follows the suicide of head teacher Ruth Perry in 2023, was needed to reduce the high stakes for schools and give parents a better picture.

There has been fierce debate for years about whether one overall grade can sum up the complexity of a school.

The argument in favour is they give parents an overview at a glance, with more detail available in the longer report, which is usually a few pages.

Ofsted’s former chief inspector Amanda Spielman said parents appreciated the “simplicity and clarity” of the overall rating.

However, an inquest in 2023 found that an Ofsted inspection contributed to the death of head teacher Ruth Perry. Coroner Heidi Connor said the “transparency and ease” of the overall grading system was not weighed against teacher welfare.

Mrs Perry’s sister, Prof Julia Waters, who has campaigned for the one or two-word judgements to be scrapped, told the BBC her entire family was “delighted”.

She said Mrs Perry’s two teenage daughters in particular had said “well done” to her for helping to bring about the change.

Prof Waters described how the single word judgement had affected her sister’s mental health.

“It was the main thing that preyed on her mind. She had a really bruising inspection that left her very fragile, and that word ‘Inadequate’, she went over and over it, writing it down,” Prof Waters said of her sister.

“She’d just had the trauma of an unexpectedly bad Ofsted but she was still anticipating the public humiliation that would come with that.”

On Monday, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said the need for reform to drive high standards was “overwhelmingly clear”.

She told Radio 4’s Today programme that “accountability is non-negotiable but we have to be better than this”.

“I think parents are capable of understanding a wider range of information, not just having everything boiled down into one word,” she added.

Early next year, school improvement teams will be set up in every area, and the government said it would continue to intervene in struggling schools.

By September 2025, parents will be able to view a new “report card” describing what inspectors have found at a school.

Ms Phillipson also told the Today programme the changes would be funded by plans to remove tax breaks for private schools.

For inspections this academic year, parents will see grades across the existing sub-categories: quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, and leadership and management.

The Department for Education said single-phrase grades “fail to provide a fair and accurate assessment of overall school performance across a range of areas and are supported by a minority of parents and teachers”.

Parentkind chief executive, Jason Elsom, said it was important to make sure the report card gave parents “greater clarity” about the performance of schools.

Paul Whiteman, the leader of the National Association of Head Teachers, said one-word judgments were “harmful”, while the National Education Union’s Daniel Kebede reiterated his calls for Ofsted to be scrapped completely.

Former Chief Inspector of Schools for England Amanda Spielman told the Today programme that, despite their simplicity, overall effectiveness ratings had become “more of a problem than a help”.

But shadow education secretary Damian Hinds said the headline inspection outcome was “a vital indicator for parents” and scrapping it is “not in the best interest of pupils or parents”.

Mrs Perry, the head teacher of Caversham Primary School, took her own life in January 2023.

She was waiting for the publication of an Ofsted report she had already been told would grade the school “Inadequate”, after inspectors raised concerns about systems and training for keeping children safe.

An inquest later heard that no child had come to any harm and, despite this, Mrs Perry had been tormented by concerns she had let the local community down.

Under the current system, concerns about safeguarding lead to an automatic bottom grade, and often the head teacher losing their job.

The senior coroner for Berkshire, Heidi Connor, issued a formal Prevention of Future Deaths report, setting out the concerns that needed to be addressed to avoid a similar suicide.

In it she questioned how the same one-word judgement could be used to sum up both a school with issues that could be fixed quickly and a school “dreadful in every respect”.

A separate inquiry by MPs into Ofsted’s work with schools heard the inspectorate had lost the trust of the teaching profession, and parents wanted change too.

It led to the Education Select Committee calling in its report for single-word judgements to be replaced, while still keeping a mechanism for the government to step in when a school was truly failing.

At the start of 2024, a new chief inspector took over and Sir Martyn Oliver promised Ofsted would learn the lessons from Mrs Perry’s death, announcing mental health training for inspectors.

Ofsted now revisits a school graded Inadequate over safeguarding within three months and an inspection can be be paused if a head teacher is in severe mental distress.

An independent review of Ofsted’s response to Ruth Perry’s death is expected to be published on 3 September alongside further details of how inspections might change.

Prof Waters said the organisation needed to show it had the capacity to change its culture.

“It really shouldn’t have been like this – it shouldn’t take a bereaved family member to push for change for such a long time but yes it’s a relief that no other head teacher will have to go through what Ruth went through.”

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