Your report (New Ofsted inspection regime is damaging our health, headteachers say, 21 September) reflects what those of us supporting school leaders are hearing. As a volunteer with Headrest, a school leader wellbeing helpline, I cannot discuss individual cases. I can, however, describe the disturbing patterns we encounter.
We have spoken to headteachers whom mental health professionals considered suicide risks following their experience of the Ofsted process. We have spoken to leaders whose physical or mental health has been seriously damaged by inspections. We have heard from headteachers who successfully navigated inspections but then chose early retirement rather than face that level of stress again.
We have also heard from school leaders facing serious personal circumstances who have sought inspection deferrals and had their requests refused. Whatever the administrative requirements of an inspection system, there must surely be circumstances in which compassion and humanity take precedence over process.
These are not arguments against inspection. Schools must be accountable and children must be safeguarded. However, accountability without humanity serves neither school leaders nor the children whose education depends on them.
The death of Ruth Perry should have represented a watershed. The coroner concluded that an Ofsted inspection contributed to her suicide. Yet we continue to hear accounts that should be unacceptable to every politician and education policymaker.
Nobody should wait for another tragedy before asking whether the system has genuinely changed enough. Accountability is necessary. An inspection system that places those leading our schools at avoidable risk is not.
Pete Crockett
Royal Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire
School leaders are sounding the alarm about the mental health impact of the new Ofsted regime. As a researcher on accountability in the education sector, I have contributed to the parliamentary consultation on the work of Ofsted, and the evidence on the impact of poor Ofsted outcomes on teachers’ careers is overwhelming.
Although the new framework was designed to create greater nuance, it has not dealt with the underlying issues of validity: do inspection outcomes accurately reflect the quality of education? England has arguably the most stringent school-inspection regime in the world, yet little attention has been given to how well the system works. The lack of serious empirical scrutiny that Ofsted has come under is at odds with the power it wields. To make Ofsted truly fit for purpose, we need hard evidence on basic questions such as whether children gain more from enrolling at a school that is highly rated by inspectors.
Dr Iftikhar Hussain
University of Sussex
The education secretary, Lucy Powell, is proposing major changes to the education system. To achieve these, she needs the support of school leaders. There would be no better way to help secure that support than by agreeing to re-examine the Ofsted regime. It has lost the confidence of leaders in its overall direction and management, in its detailed operating procedures and, in particular, its ability to inspect schools without causing undue harm to the health and wellbeing of headteachers and staff.
The education secretary should welcome the National Association of Head Teachers’ proposals as a first step to reforming a deeply flawed inspection regime, but needs to go much further.
Colin Richards and Frank Norris
Former HM inspectors of schools
It’s a sad and shocking indictment of our school-inspection system when an article about Ofsted ends with the Samaritans’ phone number.
Toby Wood
Peterborough
