Coffey with Camden: Spilling the beans on Ofsted reforms

As Ofsted unveils a raft of reforms following the biggest consultation in its history, FE Week deputy editor Billy Camden seeks insights beyond the headlines with the watchdog’s chief operating officer Matthew Coffey. 

• Why have single-phrase overall grades only been removed with immediate effect for schools?

We saw Labour’s manifesto commitment in the run-up to the general election, and once the result was known, Martyn [Ofsted’s chief inspector] met with the secretary of state, and they explored this [removing single-phrase judgments]. 

We were asked to see what was the art of the possible. Everything in Ofsted is built around systems and we’ve had the overall effectiveness judgment for many, many years. 

These systems are old and creaky. They work, but it takes a lot of people underneath the bonnet to keep them going. It’s every letter, every report has got to be changed, and all the templates needed to do that is a huge, mammoth task.

So the question was, what could we really do to unpick this really quite quickly? And we came back and said we can do all reports in all sectors together for September 2025. If the education secretary wanted to do it now, we could only do schools. We responded openly, and the decision rested with the education secretary.

• The Big Listen response talks about creating a “better tailored” inspection regime for the diverse range of provision in FE. Is Ofsted admitting that inspections are currently not tailored to different skills provision?

The public is telling us that the EIF [education inspection framework] doesn’t feel fit for purpose. I haven’t heard the strength of feeling previously that I heard in the Big Listen about it. So, I don’t think we’re admitting that it’s wrong. We didn’t hear people say this doesn’t look like it’s going to fit for us [during the EIF consultation in 2019]. If they had, we might have stopped and had a look, but we’re hearing it now. If you want something tailored, let’s have a look at how we achieve that as we start to consult. It will be massively helpful for FE people to engage in the upcoming consultation.

• Will there continue to be a unified education inspection framework across all remits, or will each remit get its own inspection framework?

I can’t predict the future, but what we’ve heard very clearly in the Big Listen is that people really do want us to focus on the things that make their type of provision unique and in a way that they clearly believe the EIF doesn’t. 

We’ve committed to listen to that and consult fully as we move forward. So, it’s an important question, but we haven’t got that far yet. The aim is to introduce the reformed framework by September 2025.

• Does Ofsted have enough inspectors, and can it recruit enough inspectors with specialist knowledge of the skills provision they’re sent to inspect?

We’ve got about 70 His Majesty’s Inspectors (HMIs) who come from a range of backgrounds including colleges and independent learning providers. We’ve got another 13 or 14 senior HMIs that oversee and manage them. We then have another 350 contracted Ofsted inspectors (OIs), and three-quarters of them are serving practitioners. They are people that work in the sector, they do their day job, and then they engage with us. This is how we get the specialisms. 

We’ve got a lot of people that are specialists. The challenge is getting them released from their day job. One of the big jobs of the Ofsted Academy here is to embrace that world of seeing the serving practitioners more fulsomely than we do now.

So in terms of just sheer numbers of people against the number of inspections, the answer is yes, there are enough. If it’s about wanting to get more and more, you know, kind of engagement with the specialist OIs and the precise nature of what they’re inspecting… that’s the issues that we grapple with.

• The Big Listen response states that report cards will also be ‘tailored’ for FE and skills. Could we see unique-looking report cards for each remit Ofsted reports on?

I see a lot of commonality with different types of education providers, but I could see the opportunity for there to be, two or three areas where there’s some real difference. 

We’ve talked about classroom-based versus on-the-job training, there’s a big difference there. I’ve not seen any designs yet, but my deep knowledge of inspection frameworks tells me that while there’s a lot that’s common, I can see some space for there to be some differences.

• Ofsted plans to introduce an area insights service, dubbed as an online portal that ‘captures the complexity of providers’ quality and performance’. Will this feature on Ofsted’s website and/or report cards? 

It is ambitious but it probably will. I want to see NEET figures in a local area, for example, which can lead to questions about whether there is a problem with careers advice in that particular area. Is there an insufficiency of provision of independent learning providers? Whatever it might be, I think it will help us to have a more grown-up conversation about the market, about the sector.

I hope the service is going to be designed to help providers in some of the decisions that they’re making about where there are gaps, where they could fill them, and where they could work more effectively.

• Ofsted has five-day notice periods for ‘large and complex’ FE providers. Will the watchdog introduce this for all providers and colleges regardless of size?

We will consult on the right notice period. I remember when I was on a pilot inspection team at Exeter College, piloting no-notice inspections, and they all said it was wonderful because it just took the stress out. So we’ve got to get it right. It’s not as simple as giving all providers more notice. I’m long enough in the tooth to know that you can’t change your provision in five days. We’ve got to act with courtesy, empathy, respect, and think about people’s well-being, and giving more notice isn’t necessarily compatible with that.

So I don’t know what the right answer is, but we’ve got different approaches within the organisation that give us the opportunity to really help find the right answer.

• You’re asking the government to allow you to inspect higher technical qualifications – why? Is this linked to what might soon see funded via Labour’s new growth and skills levy?

That’s not what’s driving our thinking here [the levy], it’s quite a separate thing.

HTQs are an important move introduced by the last government and we need to keep our eyes on them. When anything new, big and important is introduced, there’s every opportunity that it will either succeed or falter and potentially fail. If you’ve got an independent inspectorate that’s able to look at lots of other programmes that are similar in nature, we can tell government what is working well and what isn’t. We look at T Levels, we look at degree-level apprenticeships. We think it’s important to be able to look at HTQs as well.