I did enjoy Professor Ray Jones’ excellent article in Community Care on Ofsted’s children’s
social care inspections.
He speaks of ‘skewed judgement’ by a “belligerent, bullying,
battering and bruising” inspectorate that he compares to the Spanish
Inquisition. He concludes that Ofsted inspections are “hit and run” affairs
that create a climate of “threat
and fear” and have the effect of de-stabilising local authorities. This is strong
stuff, but he is right!
In similar vein is a recent report from the local government
consultancy group, Impower. This
argues that there is a "lack of clarity" in Ofsted’s social care
inspection framework and that the inspectorate has not been capable of working
out which approach protects children best. The report’s authors blame this lack of consistency for a
"catastrophic spiralling effect" on local authorities that are judged
‘inadequate’ by Ofsted. Often, it is argued, a negative inspection results in
increased volumes of work and a higher turnover of staff, resulting in reduced
levels of service to individual children and their families. The overall impact
is that children are left less safe than before the inspection took place.
Negative reviews of Ofsted’s children’s social care
inspection regime are now becoming widespread. Just before the election Labour’s
shadow Children’s Minister, Steve McCabe was quoted as saying that Ofsted “…
seems to pride itself on riding into town, having a press conference, and then
riding out.” He questioned whether the inspectorate had lost touch.
I believe that Ofsted has fallen into the role of the
purveyor of one-dimensional negative feedback. Rather than local authorities
seeing an Ofsted inspection as an opportunity for corporate learning, the
inspection process is has become a trial. If the outcome is not guilty a great
sigh of relief is heard. If the outcome is guilty, heads have to roll. Key
people resign or are sacked or see their careers blighted. The press and
politicians point fingers. The authority is named and shamed.
Does any of that destructive process help children and young
people? The answer is ‘no’. Even in ‘good’ authorities the
Ofsted inspection process is highly disruptive. The prospect of a sudden
unannounced inspection distorts priorities and hangs like a shroud over
practice. In authorities that are found ‘inadequate’ the clock stops. There are
widespread changes of senior management and other personnel. Other permanent
workers leave and the proportion of agency staff increases. Morale plummets.
The authority is left to struggle to pull itself up by its own bootstraps. The
problems can persist for years, as they have in Birmingham, which incidentally
is the largest local authority in Britain, with one negative Ofsted inspection
following another.
W Edwards Deming, who is widely credited as being the
inspiration for the revolution in manufacturing quality in Japan that started
after World War II, had strong views about inspection. The third of Deming’s ‘fourteen points’
states: "Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the
need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the
first place." Deming was not entirely against using inspection in all
circumstances, but he saw it as an inefficient and disruptive process that
absorbed resources, created rework and diverted attention from more effective
ways of achieving quality.
I believe the kind of inspection
children’s services and child protection require is not the pass/fail type that
characterises the Ofsted regime. What is required is a much more supportive
approach, that gives struggling local authorities the knowledge and skills to
improve their services, not simply punishes them for failing to come up to an arbitrary
mark.
Importantly inspection has to be
part of a learning process. An inspectorate should itself be a learning organisation that should be at
the forefront of learning about how to build quality into services in the first
place. And inspection events should be opportunities for both the inspected and
the inspector to learn how to do things better, not just brutal pass/fail
examinations.
Because the stakes of an Ofsted
inspection are so high it is hard for managers and practitioners to be frank
with inspectors. There is a natural tendency to give the best possible
impression. If the inspectors miss some negative aspects, who is going to draw
that to their attention? For all we know there may be skeletons lurking in the
cupboards of ‘good’ authorities that the last Ofsted
inspection simply missed. Who would be so foolish to shout about them?
But safe organisations are those
that search out and correct weaknesses and tackle ‘error traps’. Finding that
something is wrong in the design or management of a service should not be a
negative event. It should be a welcome opportunity to make the organisation
even safer.
The anonymous informant quoted by
Ray Jones is right to describe Ofsted as ‘dangerous’. The organisation is
fostering a dangerous culture of denial. It perpetuates a system that inhibits
honesty and improvement and leaves children at risk of harm. In short it is ‘inadequate’. It
should go.
