If Ofsted's published response to its Big Listen consultation has come as a welcome step from the teaching profession, which we are led to believe it was, the loudest cheer would probably have been reserved for the announcement that they are doing away with single word judgments; the previous system where the performance and functioning of schools was narrowed down to a single word.

These headline grades – also known as single word judgements had been used to summarise the overall performance of schools.

However, in so doing, this rating system created what many schools felt was an inaccurate and unhelpful label, which was not a fair representation of what was within (the tin). It was felt that these (imposed) ratings did not fairly consider or communicate conditions or context but instead created cultures of fear and anxiety as professionals worried about inspections and what the implications might be.

As we reflect on this change that many feel is long overdue, as an organisation we also are mindful of other instances in education where there is yet some ground to be covered and work to be done, regarding language, its uses and the subsequent unwanted/unwarranted labels that can created.

I’m sure all would agree that there is a need for a classification system, just as there is the need for an inspectorate to ensure standards are reached, maintained and upheld.

The question is not therefore solely about rightful or wrongful judgments of schools, but instead what the most useful system/s are for conveying where schools are in their levels of performance, what areas are functioning well, and which ones need to be better.

Or to put it another way, what parts are outstanding, good, requiring improvement and (of course) you will know the rest (but probably not thank me for reminding you).

To disband with one system does not automatically mean the next will be better or that there will not be elements of the old, which may yet be useful that might not be recycled and in some way be incorporated into the new.

This will be the great work of Ofsted going forward and we sincerely hope that they will continue to honour the consultation process they have started as they seek to rebuild trust and create a system that will work with and not against school, whilst also creating clear and accurate representations of the schools they inspect.

Unreliable labels

In the aftermath of this landmark decision, we would do well to recognise that changes, which seem right and appropriate, especially with new and emerging insights, are often the same ones that were once fiercely defended as being justifiable.

The changes Ofsted have introduced have not come about without a cost, not only in the tragic death of Ruth Perry but also for many other teachers and staff who have either left the profession or worked in extremely pressurising situations.

They would be amongst the many professionals and schools across the country working in immensely challenging conditions to teach, support and help to develop the potential of children and young people.

Many of these schools have not only fallen foul of the one-word judgements that we have already spoken of here but also to another use of language that appears repeatedly in Ofsted documentation.

Our own research as an organisation, incidentally, also involving Ofsted, made us aware of another context in which limited language is intended to convey a breadth of issues taking place in school.

In 2023 we undertook some research to help us to gain insight into the current trends concerning the emotional presentations of children and young people in schools throughout the UK.

Initially, our reasoning was that we could achieve this by searching the ONS (Office for National Statistics) and School league tables. We planned to use this as our starting point, potentially identifying where these issues were most prevalent. From this we planned to dig deeper into the data to the specifics of those problematic emotional presentations.

On reflection, we quickly concluded that a better starting point would be to look at the place where children congregate, which is in schools. This led us to the Ofsted reporting systems, which we thought might be a better place to find out how emotionally based issues are impacting on schools and the learning environment.

A dataset of 180 schools in the West Midlands was created using the Ofsted ratings of requires improvement (RI) and inadequate (I). Schools rated as good (G) and outstanding (O) were also selected.

We then used the 26 key words below, according to the patterns we have seen in our own professional practice as well as a few terms, which were geared towards neuro diversity and different diagnoses.

Feelings, mood, mental health, emotions, emotional wellbeing, behaviour, disruptive, disruptions, challenging, off task, disengaged, disengagement, concentration, focus, and then feelings-based words, such as anger/angry, anxiety/anxious, self-esteem, sad, happy, settled, ASD, ADHD, Autism

We were interested in finding the presence of those key words listed and any comments made by Ofsted that gave an understanding of why the schools were given their ratings. We wanted to know to what degree these ratings were influenced by behavioural problems that the schools perhaps struggled to manage and then what connection this had with emotional difficulties.

Most of the key words we had chosen had minimal presence in the reports except for the word behaviour. The presence of this word was emphatic over every other term used.

As such, there was no context or distinction to what the application of the term “behaviour” meant or whether there was any distinguishing between the schools. We therefore concluded that this term was likely being used to cover a huge spectrum of presentations and situations.

We know and accept that all those variations couldn’t be captured in the reports, and it probably is not the place to do so, but it still left us wondering what was specifically meant in the term “behaviour “and whether there is an over reliance on that word that needs to be explored.

It is our view, as we welcome this new age of revisiting and rethinking language that ‘behaviour’ in the sense of what it meant to convey within Ofsted reporting is also reviewed.

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