Commenting on the Education Secretary’s response to a Prevention of Future Deaths report issued last month, which followed an inquest at which it was found that a school inspection was a contributing factor to the tragic death of head teacher Ruth Perry, Daniel Kebede, General Secretary of the National Education Union, said:
"The Department for Education presides over a high-stakes accountability system, and there is abundant evidence that Ofsted is doing more harm than good. Inspectors' judgments - which are inconsistent and often unfair - have serious consequences for schools and careers. This is the basic problem of the system. Nothing announced by the DfE or by Ofsted today will change it. A government which wants to make a difference to the wellbeing of teachers and school leaders will need to go deeper than the announcements we are currently hearing.
"The DfE appears to take the stress of an inspection as a given, and much of the support outlined is for inspections which have already damaged wellbeing. That is not a serious proposal, when the whole problem lies in the system of inspection itself. We need not only pre-emptive measures, but root and branch reform."