12 December 2008
By Alex Klaushofer Ofsted’s chief inspector Christine Gilbert has denied that the false information that misled the inspectorate about children’s services at Haringey could be widespread. ‘My impression is that most councils around the country will have completed their returns with integrity,’ she told members of the Commons children, schools and families select committee. Earlier this week, Gilbert told the Guardian that Haringey council had supplied the agency with ‘false data’, leading to an official rating of ‘good’ in its Joint Area Review by Ofsted in 2006. She admitted that children’s services in other authorities could also be manipulating inspection ratings. But at the parliamentary committee on December 10 she rejected MPs’ suggestions that sanctions should be imposed on public service professionals who provide misleading information. ‘It’s very hard for people who are completely involved in a case to sit back and critique themselves and be completely objective,’ she said. ‘I really don’t think that when we look at the serious fraud reviews people are being deliberately misleading.’ Nonetheless, she said that she had written this week to all local authority chief executives asking them to confirm that the data they had submitted to the inspectorate was accurate. The agency head told MPs that the case of Baby P had confirmed the need for planned reforms to its inspection regime proposed in its consultation document in September. The inspectorate — which is moving to three-yearly inspections with annual checks — is to include unannounced visits to children’s services in the wake of the Baby P case. In future, the approach will focus more on feedback from frontline staff and less on desk-based information gathering, said Gilbert. ‘We know that you can’t just rely on the data,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to get underneath what someone else is telling you.’ The government is to set up a taskforce to improve the training of social workers, headed by London Borough of Camden chief executive Moira Gibb.Ofsted’s chief inspector Christine Gilbert has denied that the false information that misled the inspectorate about children’s services at Haringey could be widespread. ‘My impression is that most councils around the country will have completed their returns with integrity,’ she told members of the Commons children, schools and families select committee. Earlier this week, Gilbert told the Guardian that Haringey council had supplied the agency with ‘false data’, leading to an official rating of ‘good’ in its Joint Area Review by Ofsted in 2006. She admitted that children’s services in other authorities could also be manipulating inspection ratings. But at the parliamentary committee on December 10 she rejected MPs’ suggestions that sanctions should be imposed on public service professionals who provide misleading information. ‘It’s very hard for people who are completely involved in a case to sit back and critique themselves and be completely objective,’ she said. ‘I really don’t think that when we look at the serious fraud reviews people are being deliberately misleading.’ Nonetheless, she said that she had written this week to all local authority chief executives asking them to confirm that the data they had submitted to the inspectorate was accurate. The agency head told MPs that the case of Baby P had confirmed the need for planned reforms to its inspection regime proposed in its consultation document in September. The inspectorate — which is moving to three-yearly inspections with annual checks — is to include unannounced visits to children’s services in the wake of the Baby P case. In future, the approach will focus more on feedback from frontline staff and less on desk-based information gathering, said Gilbert. ‘We know that you can’t just rely on the data,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to get underneath what someone else is telling you.’ The government is to set up a taskforce to improve the training of social workers, headed by London Borough of Camden chief executive Moira Gibb.
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