Source · Select Committees · Education Committee
Recommendation 18
18
Accepted in Part
Paragraph: 62
Improve Ofsted's transparency by publishing comprehensive information and data wherever possible.
Conclusion
We have heard that access to training materials gives school leaders working as inspectors a disproportionate advantage over those who do not, and that Ofsted does not make enough data available to qualified researchers. While we accept that Ofsted publishes many other materials to support schools with inspections and that there are some restrictions in publishing personal data, we believe that Ofsted should improve its transparency by publishing as much information as possible.
Government Response Summary
The government commits to publishing all training materials unless there is a strong reason not to, noting that much is already public and some is withheld due to context or external ownership. They also intend to publish data wherever possible.
Paragraph Reference:
62
Government Response
Accepted in Part
HM Government
Accepted in Part
We will publish all training materials unless there is a strong reason why we should not. For example, the important mental health training our inspectors received is the property of an external organisation. A great deal of our training material is already published and well used by the sector. (Recommendation 12 in the Committee's report). Some of our training is not published because it builds on the expertise and experience of inspectors and so, as a standalone document or product, it could lead to misunderstanding out of context, and it would be counter-productive for schools to use it. In cases such as these, we run a range of sector-facing webinars, which often use many elements of the training materials, to help those outside Ofsted understand the approach inspectors take. Since these started in March 2022, we have had over 106,000 views of the live events and the publicly available recordings of these sessions. We also intend to publish training material and data wherever we can (Recommendation 12).