In an interview with The Observer ahead of her speech to the Labour Party conference yesterday, shadow education secretary Angela Rayner said that England’s school inspectors were fuelling a ‘crisis in teacher recruitment’ and Ofsted’s rating system does not give parents a ‘clear understanding of how good a school is’.
A Labour government would scrap Ofsted and replace it with a ‘two-phase’ inspection system, under which schools and childcare providers would be subjected to regular ‘health checks’ led by local authorities. Where concerns arose, more in-depth inspections would be carried out by full-time, trained inspectors.
Ms Rayner said, ‘I believe Ofsted measures poverty. It measures deprivation. It doesn’t measure excellence. I think Ofsted has to measure excellence. It’s driving these competitive league tables.
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