Bethan Marshall: A decade of loathing in school inspection

The Office for Standards in Education has been with us for 10 years. Introduced as part of the Education Act in September 1992, Ofsted was designed to be one of the chief mechanisms by which the Tories would hold schools to account and, as its title suggests, raise standards. Every school in England and Wales would be subject to inspection every four years.

What is important to note, in the rhetoric of the day, is that the need to raise standards had less to do with the idea that this was intrinsically a good thing but rather with the perception that standards were declining – and that this decline was directly attributable to a particular progressive philosophy of education. Nothing during the last 10 years has altered the nature of this debate.

In fact, no statistical or research evidence of this decline has ever existed, but the idea that standards had declined or were declining has allowed both the Tories and, later, Labour to argue for unprecedented state involvement in monitoring and regulating schools.

Ofsted's system of quality control replaced the older quality assurance model in which schools were overseen by local authority inspectors alongside sample visits by Her Majesty's Inspectors (HMI). Moreover, the shift from HMI to Ofsted meant that the regulatory body was no longer independent of the Secretary of State, as the HMI had been.

From its inception, then, Ofsted was not seen as a neutral organisation but an institution with political clout attached to a certain ideological bent. This significantly damaged its reputation among the teaching profession and to this day undermines any possible influence it might have.

The sense that Ofsted was a kind of Big Brother waiting to catch you out and throw you into your personal room 101 for having trendy ideas about education was compounded by the fact that for seven out of its 10 years, Chris Woodhead reigned as chief inspector. The word Ofsted became synonymous with his name.

Renowned for his attacks on the teaching profession in general and the educational establishment in particular, Mr Woodhead single-handedly ensured that a visit from the Ofsted inspectors would be seen as a totally negative experience. His capacity for prompting fear and loathing in equal measure was apparently infinite, his misuse of statistics legendary.

Most famously, he suggested in one of his annual reports that a quarter of all teachers were unsatisfactory. This was a complete misreading of the data, which was based on lessons observed rather than individual teachers. One bad teacher in a primary school could generate a statistic of up to 10 bad lessons if he or she was seen by a variety of subject inspectors.

But his legacy was more pernicious than the odd bad headline. As with the boy who cried wolf, it meant that schools ignored both what he and the organisation revealed. The effect has been twofold. To begin with, schools could have seen Ofsted as a positive opportunity, a weapon to use against the all-pervasive league-table culture. Part of the problem was that the same schools often appeared at the bottom of the pile in both measurement systems. Yet this was far from the universal truth.

Glance, for example, at the league-table position of two London schools – Hounslow Manor and the Oratory, which the Blairs' sons attend – and you appear to be in a different universe. Study their Ofsted reports, and you discover that not only does Hounslow Manor provide better value for money, but the school's management and teaching quality are also better. Yet the A- C rates differ by more than 60 per cent. This difference starkly reveals the damaging effects that class and the polarising effects of league tables have.

What is particularly significant about these two schools is that they were inspected by the same team. One of the justifiable complaints teachers have of inspections is their arbitrary nature. Ironically, unlike with the smaller more streamlined HMI, there has never been any consistent standardisation of Ofsted itself. With a metaphoric Magnum 45 pointing at their heads, it is no wonder so many teachers panic at the thought of the inspectors' visit.

The other downside of the Woodhead legacy is that his highly controversial style has given schools no one to trust. It has induced an understandable defensiveness that has had the effect of stifling rather than encouraging debate. Even if Ofsted were to say something pertinent, it is likely that teachers would not give it sufficient attention because "Ofsted would say that wouldn't they".

To make genuine improvements and to reap any benefit from the inspection system, there has to be a forum where teachers feel sufficiently confident to say "I wonder how we can do that better?" without feeling the accusatory stare of the politician or tabloid journalist. The tone of the first annual report by the new chief inspector, David Bell, looks designed to encourage this response. Essentially upbeat, it highlights work still to be done.

The question remains whether the utterances of a chief inspector will ever be sufficiently trusted to be listened to or whether the history of Ofsted has compromised the organisation's authority too much.

The writer is a lecturer in education at King's College London