At the end of last week the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee published a report on their concerns about the failings of OFSTED or the OFfice for STandards in EDucation. The Chair of the PAC, Meg Hillier stated:

“Cuts to Ofsted’s budget have undermined families’ ability to make informed decisions about schools. It is not encouraging that Ofsted also misinformed Parliament about the inspections it had carried out—a mistake that further calls into question its effectiveness. We expect to see evidence that action Ofsted says it has taken to address this failing is working. If the level of inspection continues to be eroded there is a risk that Ofsted will come to be perceived by parents, Parliament and taxpayers as not relevant or worse, simply a fig leaf for Government failures on school standards. Should this happen, its credibility will evaporate.”

This was of course simply a statement from one MP and it is possible to miss words out. However the statement was published as part of a larger web page that stated amongst other things :

“Ofsted now inspects good schools through just a short one-day inspection and, under legislation, outstanding schools are exempt from routine re-inspection altogether. Ofsted is therefore not providing the level of independent assurance about the quality of education that schools and parents need.

As well as reporting on individual schools, HM Chief Inspector’s role includes advising ministers about the quality of schools. Championing standards is an important part of any independent inspector’s remit, and we were disappointed that HM Chief Inspector seemed reluctant to offer her views about wider issues affecting the school system.

For its part, the Department needs to be clearer about what the purpose of inspection is and where responsibility for improving underperforming schools lies.”

This posting suggests that Parliament views that OFSTED should be focusing on parents and the Government as well as Schools themselves. There is nothing in this whole web page that refers to the organisations that provide oversight for schools and are therefore in a position to change the way they operate. A few years ago this would have been almost exclusively Local Education Authorities, and now it is a mix of LEAs and Multi Academy Trust bodies. To argue that the point of OFSTED is to inform the consumers and the strategists, but not to refer to the one set of bodies that is in a position to change the way the Schools are run seems completely ridiculous. Of course the LEAs and Trusts do spend hundreds of hours responding to OFSTED reports, but if the PAC does not realise this or have not identified this as an important element, they are failing just as much as they claim OFSTED is. Unlike OFSTED, the PAC is not faced with “budget has been cut significantly in recent years, and the amount it spent on inspecting the schools sector fell by 52% in real terms between 1999–2000 and 2017–18”

This suggests that Parliament has both denied funding for OFSTED but also is ignoring one of the most vital audiences for their reports.