I welcome you to this session of the Education Select Committee. This is an accountability session on Ofsted with Sir Martyn Oliver, His Majesty’s chief inspector, and Dame Christine Gilbert, the chair of Ofsted. I welcome both of our witnesses and ask you to introduce yourselves and make any short opening statements that you would like to, starting with Dame Christine.

I am Christine Gilbert. I am the new chair. I have been in post for five or six weeks. I will leave the statement to Martyn.

Thank you, Chair. I am Martyn Oliver, Chief Inspector of Ofsted and I have been in post since January 2024. I have a very brief opening statement of about 60 seconds, if I may, Chair. At Ofsted, we do what we do for children. Our job is to make sure that all children are safe and getting the high standards of education and care that they deserve. It is through our education and children’s social care inspection and regulatory work that we advocate for children and learners, particularly the most vulnerable. That is why inclusion—and I am proud of this—is a central tenet of our work. We recognise the strengths but also draw attention to areas for improvement in the services most under pressure. Since I became chief inspector we have made significant changes to the way that we work. However, while our approach may have changed, our focus on children has not. Raising standards for all children and making sure that they get the best start in life has remained at the heart of what we do. Last month we published our response to the consultation about changes to education inspection. Some of those changes include a new-look report card, new toolkits that show each remit and the evaluation areas and how we will focus and assess and grade providers, and a renewed focus on inclusion to help break down barriers to learning and wellbeing for all children, especially those most disadvantaged and vulnerable, including those with SEND. The new framework is one of the most significant developments in Ofsted’s long history and that is why it is brilliant to now have Christine here as our chair because she has a crucial role in offering support and challenge to me and to Ofsted. I look forward to working with her and the board as we move forward with these changes.

Thank you very much indeed. I will start our questioning by picking up some of the themes that we explored with you at the last accountability session and the progress that has been made on some of those themes subsequently. The last time we met we spoke about Ofsted’s response to the prevention of future deaths report following the tragic death of Ruth Perry. That report set out seven areas of concern, as you know. Can you update the Committee briefly on the progress that has been made since our last accountability session on each of those seven areas of concern?

Last time, on 7 January, I covered six of the seven in the prevention of future deaths coroner’s response in quite some detail—the seventh being an action for the Department for Education, not for Ofsted. To save time I will not go back over those again. We committed to 28 actions in total. We went beyond just the six that were directed at Ofsted, and I am pleased to say that we have now completed all 28 of those actions set out in our response. We have published all of those. We have published something called the Big Listen action monitoring report. When I undertook the Big Listen last year, to look at preventing future deaths, I responded to Dame Christine’s independent inquiry, which I commissioned as part of the Big Listen. One of Christine’s recommendations was to combine the recommendations of the predecessor to this Committee on preventing future deaths, the Big Listen and her own recommendations into one entire report. We had 132 actions, and we publish that every time we have a board meeting. We currently show that we have completed 68 of the 132 actions. We will soon publish an update that will show we have done 88 of the 132 and we are on track for all the remaining ones. A vast majority of them will be achieved once we begin inspecting in November. The remaining ones are all on track because it is changes to children’s social care and they are the next frameworks that I will start to work through.

Thank you. There has been a lot of activity and a lot of changes, and we will get into some of the detail of those. It was really clear from all of those reports and reviews that you have managed that there is a trust and confidence issue that Ofsted needs to address. At our last accountability session, you expressed the view that the inspector who undertook the Caversham inspection—which the coroner determined had played a role in the tragic death of Ruth Perry—had not done anything wrong. I want to give you the opportunity to reflect on that statement. In light of all of the work that has subsequently taken place, but specifically the need to build trust and confidence in the reforms that you are delivering, do you think that that statement is helpful in the question of building trust and confidence?

This is a really good opportunity for me to try to correct that record slightly. The coroner made it very clear that the fault was not about any individual inspector, it was an action for Ofsted as a whole, but clearly the coroner found concerns about the conduct of that inspection. My 7 January response was to say that the actions rested with Ofsted and clearly there were lessons to be learnt. We have undertaken to learn from those lessons. Learning reviews when they are related to safeguarding or non-safeguarding incidents are now a part of Ofsted’s main response to how we deal with incidents that happen across our whole organisation. I am very happy to say it is for all of our inspectors to take forward inspections with professionalism, courtesy, empathy and respect. I have done an awful lot on that, including last week, and I hope to get into some of that detail shortly. That inspector has reflected on the conduct and preventing future deaths, but Ofsted is taking responsibility for all of its actions. That is why I happily accepted the entirety of the coroner’s recommendations.

One area of concern focused on schools that are otherwise doing well but have some safeguarding concerns, which is a very broad category that can be remedied quickly. Can you explain how this will be handled under the new framework? What steps will Ofsted take under the new framework in the event that safeguarding is evaluated as not being met?

Building on what I said last time, as part of the prevention of future deaths, which is the coroner’s first response, school A and school B being treated the same, which you are alluding to, we still have the suspend and return policy in place. Where leadership is graded to be at least good in our current framework—not the new framework and I will come to that in a second—but safeguarding is not meeting the expected standard, we can suspend for up to three months and monitor that school as long as they complete those actions. There is a whole series for safeguarding. We make sure that parents are told that that is the case. We make sure that the local authority, the Department for Education know. We had to use that only once last year, as I referred to last time, and it was the right thing to do. I want to be really clear that safeguarding is never just a paperwork exercise. Beyond the serious paperwork and the undertaking of records of enhanced safeguarding checks or making sure that staff know how to report concerns, working together to keep children safe in education, these are very serious matters, which we learnt plenty of lessons from when the Bichard review took place with the Soham murders, for example, when it came in. We have carried on that approach. In the new framework, the renewed EIF, which we will start inspecting against on 10 November, safeguarding is now separate. It is a completely separate area. Currently it is a part of leadership and management; it will be a totally separate area. While all other areas will be graded on a five-point scale, safeguarding is a “not met/met” area. I think it is nonsense to try to persuade someone that you can have “better than met”. You are either doing it, children are safe, or they are not by the system. The safeguarding criteria of the toolkit, as with all the other toolkits, are built entirely upon the statutory and non-statutory guidance that schools must follow anyway. In this case, there are two main documents: “Keeping children safe in education” and “Working together to safeguard children”. We have teased out all of the most salient points, and we will make sure that schools meet those criteria. If leadership and governance are meeting the expected standard but safeguarding is not met, the same suspend and return policy that I have in place in now will continue. Of course, if safeguarding is not met and leadership is not at the expected standard, rightly we will call that out.

Good morning. Sir Martyn, you have now set up a complaints’ hub within Ofsted, and you say the aim of that is to bring all of the complaints into one place. Could you tell us a bit more about the impact that that has had on the way that complaints are coming in and how they are handled?

Even before a provider complains, we have a provider contacts helpline during an inspection. We recognised again from Dame Christine Gilbert’s review, as part of the Big Listen, the power imbalance between the inspector and those being inspected can make it very awkward sometimes for those conversations to take place in an open and transparent way. Having the provider contact helpline was a crucial part of that and hoping to try to resolve as many issues as possible before they turn into a complaint. It is probably best if I try to explain what will happen under the new framework as fast as possible, but currently if a complaint comes forward it goes into a complaints’ hub. Rather than being tackled regionally by the same people who were part of the complaint in the first place, a central team now looks at the complaint and checks consistency across the whole of the nation. Different teams from different regions will undertake an evaluation of the complaint and, if necessary, we can go back into the school with a different team from a totally different region to undertake an additional inspection. We have a series of processes from quality assurance reviews to evidence-based reviews. We try to undertake as many of these to get to the root of the problem before it turns into an official complaint. We still have ICASO, the Independent Complaints Adjudication Service for Ofsted, that people can go to. We recognise the limitations of that approach because it can only look at the complaints policy to see whether we have followed it. That is why as part of Sinéad McBrearty’s wellbeing review into the consultation for the new framework and Dame Christine’s own review—I am delighted that Christine is now the chair of the board because I am sure that she will hold me to account and take a real interest in complaints going forward. As part of the new framework, I have gone even further. In further education inspections currently we have nominees. That is someone from the provider who becomes a part of the inspection team because many FE colleges, particularly general FE colleges, are very large, very complex providers and the nominee can help to understand and explain the process. I thought that was such a good idea that I have made nominees part of the schools’ process from November. That will make a very big difference. Furthermore, in full inspection I have made it very clear to my lead inspectors, who are all now a part of Ofsted, that all schools and all FE inspections will now be led by one of His Majesty’s inspectors or a recently retired His Majesty’s inspector who is contracted as an Ofsted inspector. Everyone will have been an HMI or is a HMI, and that is a humongous difference. I would like to come back to that later, if I may. The training of their methodology going forward is as they see a standard they will talk to the provider and explain what they are seeing. Rather than revealing at the end of day 2 the grade that someone has achieved, I expect the inspectors to say, “I can see that you are at the expected standard. We are now moving to look at evidence for the strong standard” or conversely, “We can’t find evidence to say you have met the expected standard during the inspection. Can you help point us to where we might find this evidence?” We have always tried to give a “done with” rather than “done to” but this methodology moves it, and it removes that “gotcha” moment out of inspections. I think that that will allow complaints to surface during the inspection rather than at the end when they are allowed to fester and be a part of the issue of trust that the Chair talked about. Interestingly, there is an article in the TES today by a primary headteacher who had a pilot inspection last week and they talk very much about this new approach being far more “done with” rather than “done to”. I am greatly heartened by that.

Are you satisfied that everything you have just described deals sufficiently with what came out of the reviews in the first place and ensures where there was the absence of a clear path to raise concerns during an inspection, there is now a sufficiently clear path?

I am very confident that we go as far and if not further than almost all of the regulators in this country in dealing with complaints. We have a very sophisticated position now. Do I think we can go further? I think we can. Having Christine’s experience and the challenge that she will bring to me will be of great use. I am looking forward to how—and I am sure with more time Dame Christine can think about it—we surface that position and try to build transparency and trust into our work. Of course, it can be difficult. Sometimes people complain for genuine and very good reasons; sometimes people complain because they don’t like the outcome. That makes our work very hard and that is why I started my statement with we do what we do for children, and we shall always put children first.

Do you think that the moves towards independence might be some of the further work that you are talking about? Correct me if I am wrong, Dame Christine, but I am sure in your review you recognise the lack of clear independence or sufficient independence in the eyes of some was a problem. Do you both want to comment on whether the further work later on should include moves to greater independence of the complaints?

Let me follow that. I looked at the complaints process because one of the recommendations in my report was that Ofsted did not accept about the independence. It is a far better process than it was when I did my report. I was chief inspector many years ago and it is a far better process than when I was chief inspector. It is better at raising understanding of the process, transparency and so on, but I have not yet got underneath the degree to which what I am seeing inside is felt outside. I believe that I should look at a number of options about independence. I have made this clear in starting, and I think that is what Martyn is alluding to. I will look at the options for greater independence in the process and will come back to that by about February, March. That is a really key thing for me.

That will be monitored ongoing, and we might want to pick that up next time we come back. Thank you.

I will quickly add that I think that is the right thing because it would allow the new inspection and the new methodology to become embedded. We are better off designing a complaints process around that rather than something historic that will no longer be used.

It is a much more human process than previously. I had terrible tales when I was doing the review. That happens now. You can talk to a body, a person, which was not there before.

On your very salient comment about moving to understand how this is perceived outside, and whether people who are at the other end of this process find it more human, that is what all of us hope for. Dame Christine, I will go on specifically to a couple of questions about your review. It is now well over two years since Ruth Perry’s death. The coroner and this Committee have made a number of recommendations for reform and your review also stressed how Ofsted’s actions needed to be really swift. Can you say a little bit about how as the new chair your role will ensure that the momentum on this is not lost and we don’t just settle into, “Here is the new thing and we are just going to go with it and whatever”? Can you say a little bit to reassure us on that?

Certainly. The recommendations from my review have been built into the broader monitoring report that Martyn referred to a few moments ago and several of them have been done. Several waited for the new chair. The corporate governance framework—which sounds very boring but is really important because it is about the role, impact and powers of the board—was signed off at the first board meeting. That waited for me. There was a strategy document that I felt needed more work and so I will come back to that in the new year. The work is going on. I will pick up the work about complaints, other than the point that there was not an acceptance of the independence, for reasons I understand, and so on. There are internal things that could be presented in a slightly different way, a clearer way. When you have a volume of activities like this—I think you said 132—you get focused on ticking off the actions and forgetting why you had the action. Sometimes you can do actions; sometimes you don’t do them; sometimes you are bad at doing them; sometimes you do them really honourably and they don’t have the effect that you want. The big point about the actions for me is the point the Chair made at the beginning. I believe passionately that inspection is a force for good, could be a force for good. The people I talk to, and people I guess you talk to, feel that too but they feel that we need radical change. I will be focused on whether these actions are leading to some change in the system. Are we seeing them as adding value to education and care more generally and, if not, why not? That has to be a focus. I could tick off and tell you that they are all being done, but we need to remember why they are there. It is really important that the people that we inspect trust us, that the people who look at the outcomes of inspection—parents, the public, the Government—trust us. That has to be a focus now. It is quite a slow process to effect a huge change. The board has done a number of things, but the board is really clear that we need to be focused on strategy for Ofsted—what is Ofsted, where is it going—performance and assurance. We have some of the processes in place. We need to find a set of processes that gives us a clear what I would call a line of sight—I think that is the phrase I used in my report—to what people think and feel. From the way the board is behaving, people are less worried about saying things than they were. There was a lot of being afraid to say things out loud. We need to be on top of the voices in the system, all the voices, not just the ones that are loudest, and the board will be very involved in that as we go ahead. As the revised frameworks are being rolled out, we will be picking up, as a board, what is going on through the ordinary metrics and so on but also personal engagement at grid level with some of those and, I should also say, with those undertaking the inspection. That was really fruitful when I was doing the discussions, small discussions online with a group of eight or nine inspectors about what was occurring. We are on it and will be on it even more in the year ahead.

It is very helpful to hear about the various bits of progress being made because your initial assessment of Ofsted’s response to Ruth Perry’s death was that it had been very much defensive and complacent rather than reflective and self-critical. If I am hearing you right, is it your assessment that things have sufficiently moved on from that response and there is a better grip and acceptance of what needs to change and the pace at which it needs to change?

I think there is an acceptance of the need for change. I don’t know yet the degree to which it is embedded across the organisation or is felt outside the organisation. The focus outside has obviously been on the revised frameworks and what is happening there, so I need to do more work before I can give you a confident answer on that one, but people are using the right words. I just need to see what is actually happening.

The strong challenge you are talking about has certainly been the Secretary of State’s description of what you are bringing to the role. There will be strong challenge as well as support. How do you intend to ensure that you are providing that robust challenge to Ofsted’s leadership at a crucial time for the organisation and ensuring that all the reforms that we have been talking about, which are very necessary and long awaited, can be successfully delivered as soon as possible?

That is why it was so important to get something that sounds boring, the corporate governance framework, established. The core of that is holding His Majesty’s chief inspector to account, and that means the executive board, and to set up a system of processes. Some of those have started, so the board before I arrived had set Martyn a series of objectives, targets and monitors at each meeting and we will refine those as we go ahead. There needs to be a new strategy for the organisation and some engagement with that strategy. There needs to be a close focus on performance of the organisation, both hard and soft. We need to give assurance to the system in education and care that we are listening, responsive and fair in what we are doing.

I will return to the question of the response to your review of Ofsted in the aftermath of Ruth Perry’s death. It was a feature of the response that I think did not sit very well with lots of people—including Ruth Perry’s family—that there was no individual accountability for members of Ofsted’s staff who were directly involved at various layers of Ofsted in that inspection. We spoke about that with the chief inspector at the last accountability session. Are you confident that those staff members have fully comprehended the need for culture change and have learnt any personal lessons? The reason for asking this is because you are reliant on those staff to deliver the culture change and the reform that is needed and that Ofsted is seeking to bring forward. Some of those staff members have been promoted in Ofsted currently. The question of personal responsibility versus wider culture change is a really important one for external confidence in Ofsted. I want to press you on your personal experience in the short time you have been in post. At the time, was that balance effectively and properly struck and is there more work to do to build trust and confidence?

One of the things that Martyn has heard me say before is that I was pleased— the family was less pleased—not to have been commissioned to look in detail at the inspection. That was not part of the review. I looked at it in the round and across the piece, as you would look at a critical incident. I am sure that there are processes in place to hear the voices now. I do not know yet, but there is the outline of radical performance management, and I need to know and understand how that is operating in the organisation. You could not possibly talk about an individual case here in that way, but you could talk about whether processes are in place. On paper, there are processes in place, but there were processes in place on paper for a number of things I looked at before. I think that a lot of effort has been made on consistency across the organisation, because it was operating as separate units and so on. Inspectors themselves told me that they were not clear. Some of them did not know if a complaint had been made about their work and if their work had not been good. Somebody had found criticism about her work on some sort of external web, and she chased it up herself. Those are the sorts of things that would normally be standard in the organisation that Martyn or I would run where you are clear about what your job is, what your targets and objectives are, what support you need to do things well and so on. They are standard things when operating and I need to see if they are operating now.

Just a slight tiny clarification that no one has been promoted. People have been taken out of their existing roles and have taken on a different role with a different challenge. There has not been a promotion of any of those members of staff. This call to change has been a big part of my entire focus in the last 21 and a half months. It is rather difficult. I remember responding to this predecessor Committee’s priority to look at the single-word judgment and to bring in a report card. The reform has been seen by some people to be too quick and yet all of the urgency has also been there. That is the difficulty of the balance: how do I ensure that I retain the confidence of parents, make sure that we put the interests of children first but also keep the balance of those that we inspect and those who work for us? That is why the reforms are very significant. Last week I was in Birmingham with all of our lead inspectors across early years, further education and schools, the education part of the new framework, and I was completely struck. I walked into the conference centre for the HMIs and recent HMIs for schools and—for as long as anyone can remember in Ofsted’s 33-year history—that was the first time that every single lead inspector had been in one room being trained at exactly the same time. That is momentous in how you turn and shift the culture of an organisation. I can look at all 350, soon to be 400—because we are recruiting, and previous HMIs are applying to return, chief executives of multi-academy trusts are asking to come and work for us now as HMIs. We are inundated with people who want to be Ofsted inspectors as well as His Majesty’s inspectors. Having all of those in one room and being able to train them, not just once-off in a one-off year, but because of Monday notifications to schools, Tuesday, Wednesday you inspect, Thursday you write the report, on the Friday I can put all of that training back in place, which is why I created the Ofsted Academy, all the things that I talked about on 7 January. The culture is changed and it has changed inexorably. It is now a question of, quite rightly, Dame Christine holding me to account to see that that is having the desired impact. An example of that—and to go back to Darren’s question—as part of the renewed framework, I also have commissioned an independent researcher to look at the rollout of this from a baseline and then see what the intended and unintended consequences of the framework are. Quite rightly, as Christine the new chair has already said, the board must own that independent research. That is an example of the challenge, which I welcome, because it will help me shift the culture. Together, I think we will achieve that.

Just on that particular one. This was another recommendation that was not really accepted, though the wording did not always suggest that. There was a real gap between what people were saying in their post-inspection surveys and what the Big Listen identified a huge gap in, and so people were saying things they thought officers want to hear. There was 85% of people think inspection is a great thing; that figure is not accurate; it is just they give you the gap. Then the Big Listen was hugely different. I used to use those big stats because I believed them when people filled in those forms, and that is not the way that we need to go ahead. This is a great initiative, but I want to make sure that the detail of it follows through to do some of the things we want to do ultimately in terms of cultural change.

The wellbeing impact assessment Ofsted commissioned makes clear that the new framework, “Does not reduce the pressure on leaders to achieve a desirable outcome and is likely to increase stress and workload.” A key driver for the reform of the current framework was to reduce burden on school leaders following the tragic death of Ruth Perry. Has Ofsted failed to deliver on that key aim and what actions have you taken to address the recommendations of the wellbeing assessment?

I commissioned that wellbeing assessment and so I was delighted to receive it as part of the consultation. One of the reasons we took from the consultation responses, and from that wellbeing review where we delayed our rollout of the consultation response, was to reflect upon all of those things that we heard. Sinéad McBrearty, who leads an education welfare charity supporting mental health and wellbeing in the sector, has made strong, clear recommendations. Sinéad has been and remains a part of my expert reference group, so she will continue to hold us to account on all of the challenges as well as our own recommendations going forward. We have made very significant changes both to what we launched on the consultation as a result of her wellbeing report and the whole methodology. For example, the operating guide, the technical part about how you inspect behind the toolkit, was all written post her wellbeing review where we have considered all of her points. I cannot make inspection entirely stress-free any more than exams or tests can be stress-free, but I am doing all that I can to make them manageable, constructive and, above all, useful to leaders. One of the things that Sinéad pointed out was that any change whatsoever brings about stress. I understand that, and so we are working hard to socialise, to get as many messages as possible out. Of course we do not want to be seen to have a hand in that because it is important that people speak independently and for themselves, which is why I was really pleased to see a headteacher write, completely independently of us, on their inspection under the pilot last week in such a positive way. In terms of making it manageable, all of the toolkits across all areas have been written against the statutory and non-statutory standards that exist for schools anyway. It is what they are supposed to do. For example, if you look at the teachers’ standards, the standards that you qualify to obtain qualified teacher status are statutory, they have a core minimum standard that teachers are legally expected to work at. I use those—the headteacher standards and all the other statutory documents—to write the expected standard in the toolkits. We often would judge people on what the public should rightly expect of them anyway. That expected standard does not demand perfection. It asks for things like what can we typically see. Of course we move on to a higher standard because this is the office for standards. We want to raise standards and improve life chances, and so we move towards a strong standard where we will see generally, as a phrase, and practice being more embedded and then we will find the most exceptional out there. However, we will still call out unacceptable practice. Part of this place’s Education Act in 2006 requires me by law to identify schools in the category of concern. You could argue that the two grades, those that require special measures and significant improvement, enshrined in law that I have no choice but to offer, are the highest stakes. Which is why I was equally delighted that the Department for Education, at the same time as our consultation, did a consultation and accountability alongside the regional school improvement teams, the RISE teams. The way that they will manage stuck schools, all of that, has been transformed to be far more proportionate, far more reasonable, but still call out where practice is unacceptable because children only get one chance at childhood.

We recognise that what is coming looks very different to what was there before. We recognise there is significant change. Obviously neither you nor the sector nor we want to change just for the sake of change. What it has to do is ensure that there are schools where the best standard of education can be accessed by every child, and that those school environments are a place where teachers can excel in the vocation that they are following. How concerned are you that the new framework, different though it is, does not yet have the confidence of three of the main teaching unions who are focused on that question, among other things, of wellbeing? What would your response be to that?

It does concern me. I have tried hard to work with them. I continue to work with them and will continue as much as I can to work with them going forward. I take my confidence from those who have experienced an inspection as opposed to those who are theoretically looking at the toolkits. Those in the test visits, all of the challenges that they raised, which allowed us to refine our approach for the final consultation, have come forward and said, “This feels better.” Yes, it still has grading as part of it but that is what parents clearly told me in the Big Listen. We presented in the consultation as one of our options—we were predisposed to the idea of having grades, but we had not predetermined any part of having those grades—while we heard big concern back. One of those trade unions wanted a narrative-only response. By law I am required to offer the determination of schools in a category of concern with those two grades I just mentioned, but I felt that a narrative-only response—and from what we heard in the consultation and what parents clearly told us in a nationally representative panel by YouGov—was not what would give them the information that they wanted at a glance about a provider and the school and the setting. Ofsted’s job is the office for standards. We are not just there to hold the system to a met standard. We should push on and see where we can raise standards. If I look at the reforms that have taken place—from which I freely admit I benefited as a multi-academy trust chief executive before I became His Majesty’s chief inspector—for the last 14, 15 years identifying inadequate and identifying outstanding has led to major improvements in the system of putting those two together, to push forward and to improve life chances of children. It is absolutely right that Ofsted identifies the exceptional practice in the country for others to learn from and it is absolutely right that we go beyond a met/not met standard, which equally one of the other trade unions wanted. That is a dreadful standard. I explained to them carefully that having a met/not met would present a cliff edge. You are either meeting, or you are not meeting and there is nothing in between. If you only have a met standard how do you find the very best practice in the country to point to for others to learn from? We have tried to find the most sensible way throughout all of this, and I think the new report card does that. It has an at-a-glance grade, and it has the narrative, which the trade unions have pushed for. It has the data, it has the context, it has all of those in the round. I am trying to please as many people, and I hope I do not end up pleasing no one as a result. My confidence comes from those who have actually experienced it and from His Majesty’s inspectors who were out there undertaking the pilots. I am being shadowed by one today, who has come to follow me around for the day and was on the training last week. Going out on those pilots, that is where I am taking that feedback from them. I also personally committed to the steady and assured start, and we have volunteers who have exercised their legal right to request an inspection. We went past 100 of those in September. We are now close to 200 I think—172 last time I looked—who have come forward and said, “We want to be inspected against this new framework.” I have committed that I will personally call a sample of those to get feedback directly from them because equally I could never understand how Ofsted was relying upon these post-inspection surveys. However, as Dame Christine has just alluded to, what people told us on the ground was that the two were a massive mismatch. That is something that I am determined to fix. That is why we need to let this new methodology, the nominees, the provider contact helplines, all the things that I have put in place, just settle so we can see and measure them and measure the impact of that work.

As you go from pilot phase to full rollout, are you assuring us that you will be looking for that feedback, be it through the new framework and your calls and so on? That you will be looking to match that precisely with Dame Christine’s review, with the recommendations that were found, and with what perhaps trade unions and the schools are telling you to ensure that the wool is not pulled over anyone’s eyes in future?

Also from the independent research organisation, which I have already contracted and commissioned, which the board will now take a keen interest on. Even yesterday, quite rightly and understandably, we are focused on schools, but if you look, 23,000 schools compared to the 96,000 that we inspect and regulate, plus 65,000 early years providers, the response from them has been positive from their system leaders. If I look at the National Day Nurseries Association, the London Early Years Foundation, the Early Years Alliance, we have had positive feedback from them and their toolkit, which of course was one inspection framework that fit everyone from early years schools to FE; everyone had the same. They now have their own. Theirs is built on the Early Years Foundation stage and they can see the sheer positivity of that. I find that quite remarkable because if you consider that a childminder is someone who is operating a business in their own living room or many nurseries are private finance initiatives, they are businesses. That is high stakes because we are the regulator as well as the inspector. We literally can and do shut them down if they are not operating safely. Yet the response from that sector has been markedly different. It goes to the Chair’s point about the trust in the schools and going to Sureena’s point in the wellbeing report. Sinéad McBrearty also highlighted something to me about Ofsted has a primary problem; we have to think about primary headteachers far more. We are really doubling down on that. My national director for education in charge of policy, who wrote with me the toolkits, was a primary headteacher, a primary leader. We are focusing far more on primary as a part of this. I have my secondary expertise and background that I shall rely upon for the secondary.

Could I just add quickly to that? To give an assurance to the Committee that the board will be looking at this separately. It just will not be taking reports, nodding and saying, “Well done.” We will be looking ourselves at doing some of this, the work and engaging with the sectors.

Can I just push on the response to Sinéad McBrearty’s report? Sir Martyn, you have said that you commissioned the report, that you were very pleased to receive it. With that question of trust and confidence in mind, will you publish a response to it, and will it be clear what actions you are taking directly in relation to it, so that schools, other stakeholders, members of the public, can monitor progress against the criticisms that she had of the new framework?

Within that consultation response, there is an entire section, which is dedicated to her report, and to our response to that. It is already on gov.uk.

And there are actions within—

Yes.

Some critics, including the National Foundation for Educational Research, have made it clear that grading six complex areas on a five-point scale in a two-day inspection is unlikely to produce consistent or reliable outcomes. Given these concerns, how will Ofsted ensure that the judgments are both fair and robust without undue variability in the time allocated?

That is a comment made against the previous framework, imagining what it might be like without understanding the methodology of all the changes that I have put in place, from all of the national bodies bringing training nationally as opposed to doing it regionally. Ofsted operates across eight regions: when I walked into the role 22 months ago I was surprised to understand that almost all training, while it was created nationally, was delivered regionally, which inevitably led to eight types of variants as you push it out across all of the regions. Centralising all of that, having His Majesty’s inspectors lead inspections in schools and further education, bringing them all together to be trained, going from a few times a year to training to weekly consistency training, weekly reviews, all of these measures will massively make a difference. As will the methodology about explaining what we are finding on the ground, talking to the providers, the leaders in settings about what we found as we are going through the inspection, not leaving it to the end of day two for that big reveal moment. All of these changes need to embed now so that I can measure the intended consequences that I wanted from those, and I can also keep an eye on any unintended consequences that come from that. Alongside all of that, I am also making it clear where we have senior His Majesty’s inspectors. Roughly something like this, each senior His Majesty’s Inspector has about eight to 10 His Majesty’s inspectors, each HMI will then have a cadre of Ofsted inspectors, the ones that we contract and employ in. They will all work together in teams. Those consistency meetings that we have on Fridays will all be managed to review and compare and to contrast people’s work. Those senior HMIs will be dropping into HMI inspections, shadowing them, undertaking shadow tests and shadow inspections, checking those grades in those areas. Every single Friday since I arrived—all Friday afternoon—my national director and I, and all of my regional directors, go through all inspection reports that are deemed as outliers. We have a consistency tool that manages risk, and I go through them personally looking at all of those inspection reports. We have a whole host of things that we have done. That is one of the challenges as the chief inspector. We moved early years from six-year to four-year inspections going forward, which was one of this Committee’s recommendations, and I am very grateful for the Children’s Wellbeing Bill and the commitment of the Secretary of State. So some people are thinking from inspections four to six years ago that that is what Ofsted is like. What it is going to be like in November is not what it was like yesterday. We need to see now these changes embedded, we need to see what people think about these changes, how these changes feel and, as hard as it is, I need to try to pay more attention to that than I do to the ones who say, “But my inspection last year, two years, three years, four years ago was like this.” It is what I am building is where my confidence is coming from, not what was.

The pilot schools that your teams have been in, how have you measured variability and the unintended consequences of any new framework, and will that work be published?

We have a series of work. I need to get back to you on the publication of that. I think we have committed to that already. I cannot remember if we have or not, so that is one thing I will come back to you on. We have had shadow visits and dual inspections. As part of the steady and assured start and as part of the pilot, the national director, who is the principal senior responsible officer for design of this framework, has personally—and then his deputy directors have personally—approved all the assistant regional directors and all the senior HMIs out on an inspection. Only when they have met that standard against the fidelity to the new toolkit—because they are all expert inspectors, it is just understanding the new methodology and a new toolkit—are those senior HMIs then doing that same quality assurance in a cascade model to all the HMIs as we make sure that people have that consistency and that fidelity. Inconsistency is an accusation that is often aimed at Ofsted, and it is an easy one to make. Consistency of experience depends on who the inspector is. That is one that we hear that comes through all of the time. I think that will massively reduce because of the fact that all inspections will be led by an HMI in schools and in further education. An HMI will be doing 20 to 25 inspections per year as well as all the other work that is undertaken to look at complaints. Not just complaints against Ofsted but the thousands of complaints against schools that are received. That consistency will come naturally as a result of that. There is so much that we have done that I think it is important I just let it embed, and see. Again consistency of grading; 98% of early years providers at one point have been good or outstanding. In schools it was 75%, when we dropped the overall effectiveness grade, were good; three-quarters of schools were one grade. It was 90% that were good or outstanding. When you are only giving two grades it is hard to understand where the inconsistency of grading is coming from When I genuinely talk to people, quite often what I was faced with is, “I am good but that school down the road is not as good as me, how could they also be good?” One of the criticisms that the Secretary of State made and challenged me about, when she talked about introducing a report card, was that we had schools in the bottom 1% of attainment and achievement getting a good and schools in the top 1% getting the same grade. That is remarkable. I keep reflecting on this, and I think that this Committee has had the evidence, or your predecessors have. When Dame Christine was His Majesty’s chief inspector 68% of schools were good or outstanding. In the next five years it jumped to 86% under a different framework. In the next seven years it jumped to 90% when I turned up. This new report card is different, which is why I have introduced new phrases, because I must not have people try to map the new phrase to the old. You cannot compare. There is no more overall effectiveness grade, and so I agree that we need to have a collective agency as part of reducing the high stakes nature and say, “This is a reset moment.” You can have areas that need attention, and you can have areas that are strong. That is quite likely in any setting. Even when I had nearly 100 inspections and nine or more Ofsted outstanding inspections, even where, as head of one of the largest schools in the country—I do not think it was in your time, Dame Christine; I think it was in Sir Michael’s time—it was made outstanding again, I thought to myself the very next morning after the euphoria of celebrating the outstanding, “Everything is not outstanding. This is a nonsense; there are loads of things I need to do to make them better.” I hope that this framework would say in that case some things might have been exceptional, some things might have been strong, and some things might have still needed more work. That is the point. That is the nuance that I think this Committee asked for, and that is what the trade unions asked for, and that is what I am delivering.

I go back, the publication of the data will be important of your findings during the pilot before rollout.

If I look at some of the further education—that is closest to my mind—we have gone and done a number of pilots across training providers, general further education, and sixth form colleges, where they have even had the overall effectiveness grade of a good. Then when we looked at the grades that they are getting here on this framework, it is fascinating to see how they are coming out and how well people are receiving them. There is going to be a difficult moment if you have been outstanding and then suddenly you are a mix of perhaps—I will make it up—exceptional, strong and expected where that will feel different to people. I could say on the banner outside the fence that I was an outstanding provider. Now I am this range and this mix, this complex area of grades. It was how I delivered that balance to give parents that overall feel without an overall effectiveness grade. That was also a key part of the toolkits. Previously under the framework, one area can lead to double and triple jeopardy. Going back to the Chair’s original question, an example would be in safeguarding. If safeguarding fails leadership fails, and before you know it other areas start to fall down as well. It might also be attendance and behaviour that might fail, or personal development and wellbeing might fail. In this report card we have been very clear to say that you can have completely separate judgments in one area. One area could be strong, another area could need attention, and the two cannot affect each other because that is the point of removing the overall effectiveness grade. That is where I think the fairness will come in.

The publication of your new framework was delayed until September, but your new inspections are still due to start in September as planned. Given that schools have a limited time to prepare, could you tell us why Ofsted decided not to adjust the rollout timeline?

I was very sorry, and I apologised for that. Of the consultation responses, the wellbeing review, all the things that we heard, we needed to take more time to respond positively. It would have taken us right up to the edge of July and I thought it was irresponsible to publish a response just as people are going into the summer holiday break. It then forced me into a September publication. I had already committed and sought the approval of the Secretary of State to suspend routine inspections in further education schools and initial teacher education throughout the beginning of the autumn half-term. But I think it is important that we get back to regular inspection. While the vast majority of providers are currently—to use current terminology—good or outstanding, we still do uncover practice where children are not getting what they deserve. I am worried that we are not out there doing routine inspection. We are doing urgent and monitoring inspections; that still takes place. I know some are happening just today, for example, in the country. As part of that, we committed and worked with the Secretary of State to do what we called a steady and assured start, which is part of the rollout. We have had volunteers or those who have exercised their legal right to come forward. I am confident that we already have enough people to take us through all of November before we get to December until we begin routine inspection. Even then, we will still be a part of that steady and assured rollout, making sure that every one of my inspectors is delivering to this toolkit with fidelity. I have also committed to not inspect in the last week of December, something that primary schools have asked for for a long time. I cannot commit to it every single year because I have a legal duty to inspect schools by a certain period. I have made so many changes in 22 months that I need to see them settle down. I would like to think that I could always not inspect in the last week before Christmas. I just cannot commit to it until I am assured that we can meet our volumes, otherwise you will be asking me why I am failing to deliver on my statutory responsibility to inspect in the timeframe. Having that last week will allow me to do a review, and it means December becomes just a few short weeks of routine inspection and then it is into January. So we are back to the two half terms, one whole term, that I had committed to anyway.

Are you still planning to start the regular inspections from 1 December?

From 1 December, unless I get more. As I said, the last time I looked—I get a report every Friday—so last Friday it was 172 that had come forward to volunteer. If that number carries on growing, it will go beyond November into December that will go through those schools. Just to be clear, everybody who volunteers will not get an inspection. They have to meet certain criteria when they were last inspected and so on. We are not giving people months of notice; everyone gets a half day’s notice. So we will randomly sample from a larger group those that we actually call.

Thank you. It seems fair enough to me to not be inspecting schools the week before Christmas. You have done your consultation on the new framework and there has been an alternative consultation run by two former inspectors and over 700 school leaders, teachers, governors and parents took part in that consultation, many of whom will have responded to your own consultation as well. Only one in 10 of them thought that the new framework would be an improvement, which seems to be a pretty damning verdict on the new framework. However, you have chosen not to publish the responses to your own consultation so I would just like to ask you: was that because you got a similar verdict on the new framework from your own consultation and do you have any plans to publish the responses?

I think we have published the views that were expressed to us in the consultation response openly and transparently. It is there in black and white. We set out clearly the negativity that we heard against what we proposed to consult on, but we have considered them all very carefully. That is why what we presented on consultation to the delivered consultation response is so different and changed in so many ways across the board. As I just alluded to, that is one of the reasons we ended up delaying our response in the first place. We pushed it forward from what I hoped would have been a June position to September. I think they asked for a more granular breakdown. From some people it is a fundamental misunderstanding of what a consultation is. It is not a plebiscite or a vote. We are working to the Government’s Gunning principles of what a consultation is. We have set out very clearly everything that we have heard and how we have responded, and the consultation was far more than just an online survey. My National Director and I and others in Ofsted undertook hundreds, talking to tens of thousands of people. We had polling, national representative samples, we commissioned independent reviews, independent reports, not just into wellbeing but also into areas such as inclusion that we responded to. We had test visits. I have been in sessions, blind test visits, where parents have been looking at report cards and telling us what they like and do not like. All of this is the big, rich tapestry of information that we received as part of the consultation and that is what we have tried to respond to, and it is there in our consultation response as clear as day what was positive, what was negative and how we have responded to each and every single one of those things that we heard.

Under the new framework you have added an extra inspector for school inspection teams. How are you going to assess whether this has any impact on the quality of inspections?

That was really interesting. As Darren mentioned before with some of the trade union responses I offered the trade unions to undertake test inspections that we did during the consultation, the test visits, the inspection terminology we used between now and starting a pilot. When we undertook a test visit I undertook it at the school of the then vice president of one of the trade unions. He wrote a really articulate article about how it felt fairer, it felt better but he was concerned with the sheer number of areas that we consulted on, which we have reduced as part of the consultation response and that it would be hard to get the consistency that Sureena Brackenridge asked me about in the inspection. Alongside His Majesty’s inspectors leading, I was absolutely delighted as a part of the consultation response to be able to offer an additional inspector in those teams. It was very hard work, and I am incredibly grateful to the Secretary of State and to Treasury—which is another of this Committee’s recommendations—and we were well supported in the spending review to be able to offer that. I was utterly shocked when the trade unions came back and said the additional inspector would just be more pressure. I admit that surprised me. They said, “How can you undertake all this activity in this short space of time?” My answer was, “Here is another inspector.” Now, “That is just more pressure.” I think that goes to the trust and to the mindset and how I must carry on working hard with those trade unions to demonstrate that this will be a fairer process going forward. On the day that I started in this job 22 months ago, I wrote to all my senior staff saying that I wanted it to be HMI-led and I wanted the HMIs to have the freedom to be able to manage the process, manage the team and to hold the relationship with the leaders that they are inspecting. I wanted them to have Ofsted inspectors—the ones that we contracted in—remembering that these Ofsted inspectors are head teachers and deputy head teachers who are working in the schools anyway, and they are members of these trade unions. I am desperately trying to build an inspection that is of the system, by the system, for parents and children. It is a professionally organised peer-led inspectorate that I am trying to build, and I think that that additional inspector will free up His Majesty’s inspectors and allow them to have that consistency, and through that constancy of practice, you get consistency. The more you do something you have better fidelity to the work because those Ofsted inspectors are coming in now six times, in my plan going forward that will be fewer, but it will allow those Ofsted inspectors to ensure that they are with fidelity applying the framework and the toolkits, and the HMI will have the freedom to manage that whole process in that two-day period. I think it will have a tremendous impact along with the reduced number of areas that we responded to compared to what we put out at the start of the consultation.

That is it. I do get the rationale that you have explained there as to why an extra inspector will be useful and why it will potentially have that impact. I also understand why the trade unions have flagged that concern. How are you going to assess the impact? You talked about it having a tremendous impact. How are you going to assess that?

That goes back to the challenge, which I think the board will have. That is that moment where I think that is right because despite the intention that I had when I came into the organisation, the longer that you are embedded in delivering the changes that you have been instrumental in coming to, you do need someone to see it from the outside and hold a mirror up to you and ask how that is going. That started I think with the predecessor chair, who was part of commissioning Dame Christine’s review at the same time as I did. With Dame Christine’s experience as a previous chief inspector, she knows the questions to ask and how to get underneath the surface, and I think together we will get there.

The focus in my report has been on the very tragic death of Ruth Perry. The fear of Ofsted has been building in the system for years so I was not at all surprised—as Martyn saw—that not just the unions but people would not have been pleased with an additional inspector being on site. That is the level of change that needs to be made and the level of trust that needs to be built. It is really difficult. It has an unhealthy, compliant hold on the system and I hope that we can move forward and break that.

My career has been built for 30-plus years—certainly the last 15 or 16 of them before I became the chief inspector—on going into some of the most broken schools in the country, once, twice over special measures. I will tell you what high stakes is. Getting up in the morning knowing that, despite your very best efforts, behaviour is not good enough, attendance is not where you want it to be, dreading your SATs results or your exams in August knowing that they will not return the level. That is high stakes. The accountability response that the Secretary of State has put out, and the regional school improvement teams alongside the reforms, can move the system into collective agency to talk about the complex, more nuanced report card in a better way than just saying somebody is inadequate but looking at the strengths. People say it has more areas to fail, but it has more ways to show the strengths of an organisation, and it is not just more ways to fail. It absolutely is not. I can think very clearly of some of those really tough schools that I used to run in tough circumstances, 60% or 70% free school meal students working really hard. I would like to think that this report card will show all their strengths rather than just bluntly saying that is not good enough. I think that is where it will get better. At the end of the day, with that feeling that you are turning up and it is not good enough, you want help and if Ofsted is the catalyst, the agent of change that says, “Despite your best efforts, something needs to change” that needs to be seen very differently. I think I am right in saying that even under academisation the vast majority of head teachers that are supported as academisation still retain their job or stay within the system. People do not just inexorably leave as a result of academisation. They certainly did not in my trust or not in all circumstances. This must be about getting those leaders help but, more importantly, those children only get that one chance at school and Ofsted has to call it out and we have to find the best provision for the regulator, the Department for Education, to do that matching exercise.

Sticking with the theme of inspectors, the new framework does state that at least one of the inspectors will have experience of working in a similar type of provision. Can you expand on how closely this is going to be matched? For example, will certain types of special schools get inspectors with experience in exactly the same type of school that they are inspecting?

That is certainly my intent. Again, I have to be very careful. For those of you who have been teachers and can remember, if you put too many constraints on a timetabler you can no longer schedule your lessons. I must be very careful not to create an impossible circumstance because of so many changes that are introduced for my regional business managers who schedule those inspections. You will hold me to account if I fail to deliver in that timeframe. I have gone from saying anyone can lead to only HMI, for example, can lead, so constraint after constraint. Yes, my people group have undertaken what they are confident in saying is the largest data set on civil servants to match their experience and expertise. We have something like 2 million sets of data on all our HMIs so we can go back and look at primary in primary, secondary in secondary. We have some brilliant people who work on special educational needs. One of them came to give evidence to you previously on your inquiry into SEND but I got some additional expertise. I contracted a gentleman called Mark Vickers who chairs the AP and SEND network nationally. He was seconded into Ofsted. Susan Douglas, who is recognised as one of the leading special school head teachers and chief executives in the country, co-chairs one of my expert reference groups to hold us to account. We are working very hard to develop that level of expertise. Incredibly, when we now advertise for Ofsted inspectors or HMIs it is now not just a blanket, “We want an HMI.” Now all the adverts say, “We want a primary”, “We want special,” “We want alternative provision.” Each region has looked at its strengths and deficits of experience, and it is advertising to fill that pool. We are on to it. My next job is to get the thousands of Ofsted inspectors who are not employers and get all of them matched. I want to go as far as I can, primary to primary, secondary to secondary, special to special. I remember a previous Minister who is the chair of a trust was incensed that he was running a free school academy for science and maths, and the lead inspector had a modern foreign languages background. I want to go as far as I can to do that matching. I just must not kill my timetablers in the meantime.

Understood. Thank you for that answer. That answers my next question too. Thanks, Chair.

In our inquiry into the SEND system we heard that the current Ofsted framework encourages exclusionary practices for children with SEND including things such as off-rolling and exclusionary admissions practices. How is your new framework going to address this and how will you monitor progress to ensure that these exclusionary practices are still not happening?

I am most proud in my career and in the work that I have done as HMCI to introduce inclusion, both as a stand-alone area and it is embedded into every single element of every toolkit. Inclusion sits on its own in all areas but, for example, in curriculum and teaching we look at inclusive practices in curriculum and teaching. In leadership and governance, we look at inclusive practices of leadership and governance. We are determined to ensure that schools are risk aware but not risk averse, and I could say the same about children’s homes and in any area of provision. We want people to not fear that taking the most complex children with the most complex needs will lead to lower outcomes or lower data and, therefore, a poorer Ofsted inspection, which is why data is only the beginning of an inspection. We have changed the data sets that schools and colleges receive. They have always received this. It is called the internal data summary report, IDSR, and in further education it is a FESIT, I will not bore you with the terms behind them, but those data sets now present a trend over a period of years as opposed to a one-off last set of data, which will feel more proportionate and will be fairer. Some people have been calling for Ofsted to look at admissions. Ofsted does not have the power and does not want the power to look at admissions. That rests with the ombudsman. That is not for Ofsted to do. They are mistaken in my statutory duty. As you know we do not make up what we do. This is based in the Education Act of 2005 and 2006. We will be careful around that. Again I think the report card, having the ability to look at achievement separate to inclusion, separate to curriculum teaching, without double and triple jeopardy of one area dominoing down to the other areas, will support that practice. I will be monitoring it carefully, looking at the outcomes from those data reports. It is one of the ways in which we do risk assessment compared to the grades that are given as part of the report card. We will be looking for outliers, and we will be challenging them. That is part of the mindset with HMI-led. My professional inspectors must welcome quality assurance and see that not as an affront to professionalism but as something that professionals should encourage just as I am encouraging the Chair to hold me to account, and I know she will. We should welcome that. That is what being a professional means.

A few times this morning in your evidence you have talked about behaviour. We know that behaviour is a form of communication for children and particularly children who have been victims of early trauma. Their behaviour might not fit in with what you would describe as good behaviour in the classroom. We have recommended that mandatory SEND training be introduced for all Ofsted inspectors so that they can understand things like that. Will you be implementing this?

Yes. I read with great interest all your recommendations in your report on solving the SEND crisis and particularly your mandatory SEND training for inspectors. Just to be clear, I am not sure, but I seem to recall that it was a request for the Department for Education to train Ofsted inspectors. The DfE does not train Ofsted inspectors. Ofsted is independent. We train our inspectors and via the Ofsted academy, yes, that is what we are doing. Having people like Mark Vickers, Susan Douglas, having the experts out there in the system, that level of training will take place to all our inspectors who often bring with them—as I said they are senior leaders having worked in the system anyway, or head teachers, so they should be bringing with them a lifetime of experience of that work regardless. A bigger part is Ofsted calling out and looking at where there are deficits in areas, so the lack of special schools, the lack of alternative provision. It is equally important. Inclusion is to make sure that mainstream schools are welcoming to all the children in their community, but it is not inclusive to have one child permanently disrupting the behaviour of 29 others in the classroom. I am also a big believer in the balance of a head teacher in their autonomy to apply their statutory responsibility for exclusions and suspensions but to do it proportionately. That is why our attendance and behaviour toolkit is written entirely on the statutory responsibility of suspensions and exclusions and a non-statutory guidance that the DfE gives on how to manage behaviour in the best possible way.

It is interesting because when we went to Ontario as a Committee we met a head teacher who was almost in tears describing to us the one child that she had had to expel and how she felt that she had failed that child. Expulsion does not happen. It is not part of their culture. Yet here it is seen that suspension and expulsion must be part of the regime to maintain behaviour. I would like some kind of indication from you about whether your inspectors are properly trained in the effects of early childhood trauma, particularly when we are looking at children who have experienced care.

Yes is the answer to that. That is part of the beauty of Ofsted not being a silo inspector, which most inspectorates in the world are of just looking at, say, education or just schools. We go into the children’s homes, we go into the youth offending institutions, the prisons, we see all the range of provision from children’s social care to education across all those remits. Absolutely within either the education side or in my children’s social care side we have the whole host of experience that there is to offer. That training can and now will be brought to bear on all my inspectors going forward because of the academy, because of the Monday notifications, because of the way that we are looking at training and all the modules that we are pushing out. Bear in mind, every bit of that training is being published as well, so people can hold us to account. We have already published some of it. It is part of my drive to be open and transparent.

To reinforce our recommendation about training, why we made a recommendation for Ofsted inspectors—but also for senior leaders within schools, new head teachers, teaching staff, teaching assistants and support staff as well—is because our report and our inquiry found that there is a need for transformative change in the SEND system. I was a little bit concerned. We recognise the experience of your inspectors because they have spent a lifetime in education. Our report is clear that that experience is not sufficient at the moment to deliver the transformation in SEND inclusion and SEND practice that is needed to get the system to be sustainable. I wanted to be very clear with you about that, that there is a need for extra and additional input but that is with no disrespect to the experience that existing practitioners across the sector have.

Just to be even clearer then, I was trying to recognise that in swelling Ofsted ranks we have social workers; we have people who have a tremendous amount of experience. As I was saying to Mark Sewards earlier, we are also recruiting HMIs who are coming from the special school background, so we have specialism, we have specialists. One of them came to give evidence to you on the SEND inquiry himself.

Something Caroline Voaden said reminded me of our trip to Ontario. The Canadians have two forms of special educational need. They have the special educational needs we are more familiar with in the UK. They also have another group—and I cannot remember what they call it—who are children who have very high academic ability or potential based on the testing they do when they are quite young. How will your new inspection measures ensure that children from our country who have that higher level of talent prediction are getting all that they need to make sure that they thrive as well?

I am very proud of the fact that talking about inclusion has shifted the dial. If you now listen to the system talking you hear about inclusion, directors of inclusion. There is probably not a day goes by where there is not a report about it. We have managed to already move the dial forward very significantly. By talking about inclusion I mean all types of inclusion, so children with special educational needs. I am very proud to try to champion young carers as an example of a vulnerable children’s group, those who are looked after, previously looked after. It is understanding not just the attainment, high, low, middle, prior attainment but all types of vulnerability, all types of disadvantage. Behind all of Ofsted’s reform and renewed framework is this simple point: how well do leaders in whatever provision know each individual child and how are they helping them to achieve, belong and thrive? That is at the heart of everything that we are doing. To your point, whether that is somebody who has special educational needs and high attainment, prior higher attainment, how well are you helping them to meet their needs and to go on to have even higher levels of attainment? For those with low prior attainment, how are you filling in the gaps to help them reach their potential? It is about meeting the needs of each individual, not seeing them as a blanket descriptor of SEND.

Perhaps I did not explain myself very well. They have two groups. They have the special educational needs group that is the same as the UK, and they have a different group who perhaps in past English history would have gone to grammar school and still do in some counties such as Lincolnshire. Some people have criticised the Government in removing things such as the Latin programme, saying they are chopping off the tall poppies, and bringing down people who would have done particularly well. How does your new inspection programme support the more able child and ensure that the more able child academically is getting all that they need to thrive as well?

That goes back to the context. Having been born and bred in Lincolnshire and run schools in Lincolnshire—and I ran one of those Latin programme schools in Scunthorpe in a school that I took over that was in special measures that we got to outstanding—I fully understand that concern. It is about context. If I think about where I was born in your constituency, if you go into St George’s or you go into the girls’ high school or the boys’ Carre’s Grammar School those are three very different schools with three very different backgrounds. With this framework, with the experience of my HMIs, they can go in there with the data and the context, and they can hold them to account for the high academic attainment, the inclusionary practice, the vocational curriculum, the breadth to which they are meeting the national curriculum and the whole myriad in between. I am confident that with the data, the framework, the training and experience that they can go from the Carre’s Grammar School to a secondary modern school of old, a comprehensive school and everything else in between, to a special school, to alternative provision and meet and inspect with fidelity and hold those schools to account for their provision, high achievement or making sure that everyone has a chance to thrive.

Of the 152 local authorities, to put it into context, we have done 69 of the area special educational needs inspections so far. I think it is worth saying that Ofsted is holding the system to account but we agree with you in your recommendations that—without putting words into your mouth, I will use my own words—there are systemic failings in the system because 15 of those 69, 22%, were typically positive experiences but 34, 49%, had an inconsistent experience in outcomes and 20, or 29%, had widespread and systemic failings. That is 78% being not good enough of the 69. We are nearly halfway through the 152 and that is what we found. When we do those area special educational need inspections, parental engagement is there. Of those 69 inspections, which only began in January 2023, we have surveyed over 60,000 parents as part of those area SEND inspections, but I receive thousands of complaints from parents about provision, and it is heartbreaking. It is hard to look at an area and talk about systemic strengths and systemic weaknesses but if an individual parent says, “It is not working for my child” you can understand the frustration that they have had. As I think you recognise, sometimes these parents quite desperately feel as if they have been battling the system for the entirety of their child’s life. I am looking forward to the Department for Education’s White Paper. The way that I have built all of our toolkits and the way I intend to build all of the toolkits going forward with all of the reforms that I will make to children’s social care, the ILACS, the Inspection of Local Authority Children’s Services, the SCCIF, the Social Care Common Inspection Framework, all of the changes to area SEND will all be based upon the regulations that come from the DfE or the statutory non-statutory. As that White Paper comes out we will change our toolkits including in schools. I will not be changing them all the time because I think the system would quite rightly be in uproar if it changed every week, but we update our frameworks periodically—say every year, regularly—and have always done and those changes will come. Alongside that, as part of the consultation work with the Nudge Unit as it was called, I also engaged the Behaviour Insights Team, David Halpern and his team. They have made some clear recommendations to Ofsted about parent view, parental engagement. I was absolutely delighted working with Parentkind to recognise that in our schools’ toolkit, for example, we mentioned parents 21 times. I think previously we mentioned them either none or once. Parents are a big part of the toolkits going forward.

Yes, absolutely. Ofsted currently does not have the statutory responsibility for some of that. When we go into a school we can only inspect those who are on the roll of that school. Again there are those who are saying there is off-rolling or never on-rolling by putting them off from even coming in the first place, but we do not have the authority to look at those children. We inspect the school.

Can I just push you on that? Our recommendation was about area SEND inspection, so it is about looking at the SEND provision within a locality, and we were specifically recommending that as part of doing an area SEND inspection Ofsted should gather the views of parents across the locality. That is partly about the point that Jess Asato is raising about children who are not in school. It is also about what I think all of us as constituency MPs see, which is children not being offered places at schools of their choice because of their additional needs so that you can get a sense across the locality of whether there is exclusionary practice at work in some of those schools.

Absolutely. Apologies, I was getting to the point. That is why I welcome the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill with the elective home education register, which will be a requirement for local authorities to maintain. I think an intended consequence of that is that when Ofsted does an ILACS inspection we will be able to look at that register. In our annual report last year—and I think again this year when it is produced in December, I will be talking about those children missing education, electively home educated, remembering that some children have very successful home education, but I think we are talking about the ones who do not. The ones who are forced out of the system or feel that the system is not welcoming to them. All of that will become a part of it. Let me give you all the confidence here. As fast as I have changed the schools’ toolkit, I am looking forward to making the changes in the SCCIF, the ILACS and the area SEND inspection. It would clearly be daft for me to have made those SEND inspection changes ahead of the White Paper. That would be nonsense. I need to wait for the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, that White Paper, to kick in and then I intend to get on with the area SEND update. It is a mighty big ask to survey all those parents and I will have to consult with the DfE on whether I can afford to do it. I am funded for what we currently do, not for something I might wish to do in the future, but again, from David Halpern’s work and the challenge it gave back to me we have thoughts. However, I want to spend time checking with the board and having them challenge me on how I need to engage every parent in the country. The only confidence I can give you, Jess, is that parents are mentioned more than ever in my schools’ toolkits, in our toolkits. The last chair of my board, when I was the chief executive of a large trust, regardless of the outcomes, regardless of anything, held me to account by saying, “Are you doing what parents in the community want?” It is how I have been brought up to run the system, so they are at the forefront of my thinking.

We have had good conversations with the Secretary of State regarding removing the overall effectiveness grade and then introducing much wider reform to the ILACS as a two-step process, rather like we did with schools, removing the overall effectiveness grade and then bringing in the report card. As you know, as part of the machinery of government change, there are new Ministers. I am very much welcoming and looking forward to working with the new Minister, Josh MacAlister, who brings with him a wealth of experience in this area. Going back to some of your points, I think Josh’s focus in the review that he wrote on early family support and kinship care, is very important. There are far too few children’s homes. There are far too many unregistered children’s homes, and there are far too many children with deprivation of liberty orders. There are far too many issues in the system that are very similar to the issues that you are calling out on SEND and I think it is right that I meet with the new Minister and that we bring his thinking along with the Secretary of State’s ultimate direction to me. Ofsted retains its independence by saying, “That is how we will inspect” but in this place we are both a regulator of the DfE’s regulations and the inspectorate so there is that relationship. It is coming. I just need to work with the new Minister.

I would love to banish it right now. No child should be in an unregistered alternative provision, an illegal school, in an unregistered children’s home. They should be in registered everywhere. But of course I must be very careful. Quite often these children are placed in unregistered children’s homes via a court order because local authorities have nowhere to put these children. If I get the chance in a moment, I will try to get you some of the figures. It is deeply troubling to me that too many children are in unregistered children’s homes, too many of them are in areas in the north of England. There are far too many children being placed in children’s homes that are more than 20 miles from where they live. We need registered children’s homes with the right experience and the right expertise to take children with these complex needs and to run them. One of the criticisms that we heard—and I have worked with my national director for Children’s Social Care on this—is that some children’s homes were saying that it was Ofsted that was putting them off from taking children with complex needs into registered homes for fear of the impact of an Ofsted inspection. We have changed as a result of that. I demanded that we change our Social Care Common Inspection Framework. Yvette Stanley, the national director, and I have been out on stages talking to these remits, saying to be risk aware but not to be risk averse. Ofsted will not penalise them for taking risky children and keeping them safe in registered children’s homes. What we cannot do of course is accept that children can be in a children’s home where they do not have the skillset to meet that child’s needs. That is the difficult balance. Unfortunately there just simply are not enough children’s homes and there are not enough children’s homes in the right places, or with the right training, to meet all the complex needs that are coming their way. It is utterly ridiculous at the moment. If I try to give you some data you might find useful, in March 2024 67% of children in children’s homes were placed outside their own local authority with 49% placed more than 20 miles away. As I said, there is a mismatch between supply and demand for places. Private providers are currently responsible for 84% of children’s homes, which is I think is staggering. To undo that, if that is what people want—again, to be clear, we have stood on stages and said that Ofsted is not against people making a profit, but we just do not like people profiteering on the back of vulnerable children and we will call that out. My annual report this year will highlight some of this 84% when it comes out in December. Although the number of children’s homes has increased by 63%--an incredible 63% increase in the number of children’s homes between 2019-20 and 2024-25—the number of children in residential care increased by just 10%. These newer homes on average have fewer places and they are not where they are always needed. Between 2021 and 2024 the number of children reported to Ofsted as being placed in an unregistered children’s home rose each year from 147 to 982. Local authorities are not obliged to tell Ofsted when they place children in unregistered care even though operating such homes is illegal. In 2024-25, of the 152 local authorities, at least 86% of those local authorities used an unregistered children’s home. These DCSs do not wake up in the morning wanting to place a child in an unregistered children’s home. They find themselves desperate because of deprivation of liberty orders—they do not want a child to be out on the street homeless. They are desperate to find provision. It is absolutely essential that we sort this out, which is why we go back to thinking about early family support, kinship care. We must put the plug in the bath. We must reduce the number of children who are coming into the system and, when they are in the system, we must provide better help and better care for them. I want everyone to be in registered children’s homes. I do not want any unregistered to exist. I am just not naive enough to imagine that we can wipe that out overnight because those children would be out on the street.

So on that point considering unregistered and unregulated settings, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill gives Ofsted the power to impose fines for those operating unregistered children’s homes. Is Ofsted prepared for the implementation of the Act? What steps will be in place before a fine is imposed and when do you expect to begin seeing fines?

We have already started. We currently have a case, which obviously I cannot talk about, where we are taking someone to court for operating and continuing to operate, despite warnings, an unregistered setting. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill as you rightly say increases our power. We did ask for an amendment to that because we still have to obtain a warrant and just to be clear I think it is absolutely right that we should obtain a warrant if we went into a domestic premises, but in non-domestic premises I am worried about the burden that may place upon us. We have a highly effective illegal and unregistered schools’ team that carries out investigations all the time. It is fascinating and I would welcome you to come and have a look at what we do. Some of those inspectors wear body-worn cameras when they go into these settings. It is quite impressive work that the team does. I have a legal team that is prepared and will litigate and hold the system to account. I think that new Bill will strengthen our powers, and I am looking forward to tackling that unregistered provision through those powers.

Are you prepared for when the Bill comes in, in terms of the rising demands and the proportions that you shared earlier, which is really alarming?

It is. Just to give everyone a sense of scale some of these cases will take one, two, three years from initial walking into a setting and bringing it through to court if that is as far as it goes. Of course there are only so many of those cases that we can have, but holding anyone to account will hopefully regulate the system and help encourage people to behave.

Another big part of the change that I have not been able to talk about yet is having monitoring inspections. So where someone is less than the expected standard in early years, an early years’ regulatory inspector will hold that setting to account and monitor the provision to improve. Of course in early years local authorities also have the opportunity through funding mechanisms to withhold funding for those who are not working at a currently good standard. Going forward each local authority will respond individually but likely to the expected standard. That is being worked through, and we are working really carefully with those system leaders such as the Early Years Alliance, the National Day Nurseries Association and so on that I mentioned earlier.

I just want to recognise the tragic death of Genevieve Meehan, and we have met a couple of times with her family and of course there is a coroner’s inquest going forward there. It is a dreadful circumstance. One of the things that those parents asked for was to move from a six-year to a quicker inspection. Therefore, I was delighted when the Secretary of State provided funding from the Department for Education, so that part of the Best Start in Life Strategy—which Ofsted was part of creating—is going from six years to four years. We will now be inspecting every four years going forward. It takes something like 30 months to do an inspection currently of a new registered setting. That comes forward to within 18 months, so we are moving faster. As a result of going from six years to four years I have currently tasked my early years team—just to give you an example, I cannot talk enough about the amount of change I have had to put in place—we now have a dedicated early years lead. In my opinion it was falling between regulation and education because it covers both. We are both the early years regulator, and we do early years education inspections. That is why I have created a team specifically led by one individual, so a deputy director, to bring forward that early years. She has been tasked with revising my workforce. So how many senior HMIs? We do not have any HMIs. How many senior officers, how many regulatory managers, how many early years regulatory inspectors and how many contracted in Ofsted early years inspectors will we have? That is currently going to be presented to me as I hold the system to account, and I have absolutely no doubt that Dame Christine will hold me to account for how well I deliver on that phase. It is a great opportunity. I am so pleased we are back sooner and quicker into these settings.

Regarding inspection of further education and skills, what impact will the transfer of apprenticeships and adult education and training to the Department for Work and Pensions have on Ofsted’s inspection of these providers?

I was pleased to meet with Baroness Smith when she first came into the role. We have regular contact with the DfE sponsorship team who are the officials who work most closely with me and my team, and we are working closely with them as the machinery of government change takes effect. At this stage I do not anticipate any significant change to our inspection activity resulting from responsibility moving from some policy areas to DWP. I think we will manage it carefully. We have a long history and if you think about our inspection of prison education, young offenders, we work very closely with the MoJ. We are well used to doing this. I think it will be fine.

On that point, are there providers within the quite complex landscape of further education and skills and apprenticeship providers and so on that you would regard as underregulated and under-inspected at the moment? Is there a need to think about any expansion of the accountability regime as the Government seek to place more of an emphasis on apprenticeships, for example, so that we can be assured that the quality is going to be there in every setting?

A great question and it is making me think. I think having a toolkit that is unique to FE and then within FE that one toolkit is then further separated out. There are areas—for example, leadership, governance, inclusion, and safeguarding—that are for all providers no matter the type of provision. If you are in an FE setting, which has young people, 16 to 18 year-olds, we look at curriculum and teaching achievement and participation slightly differently than we would if they were an adult learning provider, than we would if they have apprenticeships, than we would if they have provision for learners with high needs, so those who are up to 25 years old with special educational needs. I have built a toolkit for that sector that then refines even further. I am well aware that that has produced something like 16 areas in that space, but these are long inspections. If you think of some of the biggest general further education providers in the country, Ofsted is in there for a week or a fortnight with 20 or 30 inspectors. These are massive teams that are going in, and they will look across all of this. I was very pleased that when the Prime Minister made the announcement at the party conference about the apprenticeships it was followed up by No. 10 talking about the changes that Ofsted had made in its toolkit to support the accountability of high-quality provision. I think it matters. Again I was saying this—and this is not to panic anyone out there, this is in the FE sector—you have 100%, at one point we were 100% of general further education colleges being good or outstanding, there is no variation in the quality of provision. It is right that Ofsted holds the system to account to deliver, and that we find the best practice, and we find out where it is not good enough. I think this toolkit, because it does not have a blunt overall effectiveness grade, will give that nuance and complexity and it will help deliver on our ambition to provide the skills that are needed for an improved economy going forward.

Are you confident that you have appropriate expertise within FE? For example, I was on a call yesterday with one of the trade unions sharing some horror stories about apprenticeship training provided by an external provider of unqualified staff. Staff were looking up on YouTube what they needed to teach, and apprentices were emerging without the basics in the safety training necessary to practise in the relevant sector. That example was alarming to me. Apprenticeships are complicated because of the relevant professional standards and because of the relationship with employers, but are you confident that your inspectors, going into settings delivering that kind of complex and specialist training in partnership with employers, are able to drill down into what is going on?

Absolutely. I was talking yesterday afternoon to AELP, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, which looks after initial teacher training, initial independent training providers, ITPs. Just to be clear, ITPs provide some of the biggest amounts of apprenticeships in the country and have some fantastic quality, tens of thousands of apprentices doing fantastic work. You are right, there are those people out there and we hold them to account. There are recent trade articles, trade press where you can see that Ofsted does hold those people to account. One of the things that I think is different in our FE, which is what I learned from, from writing the schools toolkit, is that they have always been led by our HMIs. They have always had these nominees that I talked about. We have built upon that elsewhere. It is a very highly skilled workforce in our further education setting and because it is smaller compared to early years, 60,000-plus schools versus 23,000—and we are now talking just a few thousand—that team has always trained nationally. We have always seen better fidelity to consistency as a nation. That is the same inspiration I have taken for the changes I have made elsewhere. The answer is, yes, we will be in there and, yes, we do hold them to account. While there are brilliant ITPs out there, it is where we see the greatest variance in the quality as well, but there are brilliant ones out there.

Finally, we are seeing the Government, which are ambitious for education, delivering substantial reforms with reforms to come. How does, for example, the relationship of the new inspection framework relate to reforms that we do not yet have in SEND, reforms that we do not yet have in the Further Education and Skills White Paper, legislation that is coming but not yet on the statute book and further reforms that we understand to be in the pipeline? How are you ensuring that your process of reform is resilient and able to accommodate those further changes? Is there anything, by way of final comment, that you would like to make the Committee aware of that you believe we should have our eye on as we seek to scrutinise all those reforms and their relationship to your inspection regime?

Thank you. If I go back to scores, well, I could pick any of them but, as I have alluded to, scores in early years are a great example of this. We have published every single area and every line within every standard. We have referenced it back to a statutory or non-statutory or the very best evidence that exists out there. I have in front of me the teachers’ standards, which set high expectations that inspire, motivate and challenge pupils, and make accurate and productive use of assessment. Each of those lines—as it does for the head teacher standards, as it does for the statutory guidance and exclusions and everything else I have talked about—forms every line of the toolkit. As the regulations, as the statutory standards, as new powers are introduced and placed upon the settings, that will update Ofsted’s toolkit. We are still independent. We are always independent. We will hold the system to account but it is absolutely right that we do not place an additional burden because a chief inspector is sitting here saying, “I think the system should.” That I think leads to stress. I am holding the system to account for doing what they are supposed to do anyway via those regulations. My frameworks update and that way I am confident that we will stick to the very best practice, and we will not increase people’s workloads. I know it is hard for people to believe but we really are inspecting in this new framework against what you are supposed to do anyway. That I think will be a big part of making things better and fairer. Going forward, I think it is SEND: getting the inclusion right, getting special educational needs right, making sure that we do not have children who are going into the criminal justice system, making sure that we are getting children in the right places, in social care and into the right children’s homes. It is looking after—which I have always championed—the most vulnerable and disadvantaged. As a head teacher, as a country, if we get it right for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged we will get it right for everyone. We need to get it right for those children that we have talked about, and we know that everybody else, including the ones that Caroline mentioned, will get a better provision as a result of it. That is where I think we should keep our focus.

Dame Christine, any final comments for the Committee this morning?

Thank you for inviting me today.

Thank you very much for your time this morning. We will look forward to seeing you again in due course.