By Lucy Phillips
28 May 2010
Top-performing schools in England will no longer be routinely inspected, the coalition government announced today.
Education Secretary Michael Gove said the 2,000 secondary schools, 600 primaries and 300 special schools currently rated ‘outstanding’ by education inspectorate Ofsted would be ‘free of the burden’ of inspections, allowing the watchdog to concentrate more on failing schools.
The best schools are currently inspected every five years. Schools that perform badly are inspected more frequently, according to need.
Gove added: ‘Outstanding schools will be freed from inspection, [but] if there are certain indicators that “flash” danger then it will be triggered, and there is always the parental request for an inspection if there are problems as well.’
The government had pledged to simplify the regulation of standards in education in its coalition agreement. A spokesman from the Department for Education said they were currently putting ‘flesh on the bones’ of the proposals, and further details would be set out in a white paper this summer. An education and children’s Bill will legislate for the new inspection framework in the autumn.
An Ofsted spokesman said: ‘Ofsted already focuses inspection on where it will have the greatest impact for children and learners. We will work with the government on what this means in practice.’
The National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teacherssaid the union wanted all schools to be freed from the current inspection regime, but was sceptical about the government’s latest move. General secretary Chris Keates said it was ‘nothing to do with “freeing” schools’, but merely to encourage more schools to sign up for academy status.
‘Sensible governing bodies will immediately see through this transparent attempt to boost interest in a strategy to dismantle state education.’
The announcement came as Gove closed another education quango in an attempt to cut his department’s budget by £670m this year. The schools technology agency Becta was the first to be axed, and the education secretary has now written to the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency to say it will be closed down in the autumn.
Keates condemned ‘the seemingly arbitrary way’ in which quangos were being culled.
