Source · Select Committees · Education Committee
Recommendation 19
19
Accepted in Part
Publish more data for researchers and all inspector training materials for transparency.
Conclusion
Ofsted must ensure that it is publishing as much information as possible to maximise the transparency of its work. In particular, it must make more data available to key educational research organisations to allow for high-quality research to be conducted. Ofsted must also publish the training materials which are available to their inspectors, with appropriate caveats where necessary to explain what they are, and are not, intended to be used for. (Paragraph 63) Ofsted’s work with schools 51 Following an inspection
Government Response Summary
The government commits to publishing all training materials unless there is a strong reason not to, explaining that some material is already public or withheld due to context. They also intend to publish training material and data wherever possible.
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).