9th October 2009…

“Simon… it’s THEM… THE call… They want to speak to you…

I’d played this moment over and over in my mind. It had tormented me at 3am as I gazed at the ceiling on countless dark nights of the soul.

You see, I’d been Headteacher (the youngest in the county) at my struggling school for under three years and now we would find out whether our impending guests would raise a thumb of salvation (good OFSTED) or lower a thumb of damnation (bad OFSTED). And in the noughties, failing Headteachers were dispatched in a matter of days (‘called to tea at county hall’ being the rumoured dispatch ‘invite’).

With a mortgage and two young children I’d literally bet the farm on a thumbs up.

The usually unflappable School Business Manager, Sharon, had bowled into my office holding the phone tightly.

Time slowed.

“OFSTED? Why thank you Sharon.” I announced confidently, straightening my best Burtons tie and high fiving the deputy who had herself strode confidently into the room. “It’ll take the call right away… please call the vicar, get the OFSTED plans out of the safe… and get me a coffee – it’s going to be a HELL of a day!”

And with that I strode manfully and purposefully over to Sharon, grabbed the phone and said ‘Hi! It’s the Headteacher!’

At least that’s how I’d played it a million times in my mind.

“Simon… SIMON… IT’S OFSTED ON THE PHONE… NOW!”

Apparently I stared blankly at the Business Manager for a good thirty seconds without saying a word. Eventually my frontal lobes wrestled control of my consciousness from my inner chimp/ limbic system which was going completely nuts.

“Th..thank you. I’ll take the call now.”

9th October 2026…

“Sorry to interrupt Simon… Bowsland have been ringing your mobile. They’ve had the call and need you to get over there.” the Administrator announced, pulling me aside from a parents’ tour at Blackhorse.

I arrived to a scene which could have just as easily been me, my SLT and my struggling school 17 years to the day: a young and talented and capable (and ever so slightly nervous) Headteacher, a new bombastic KS1 leader ready for the fight and a new battle-hardened Deputy who had just moved from a school which had also been inspected in the past year.

And for the third time in a year I, as Executive Headteacher, had the privilege to stand, along with my Trust colleagues, shoulder to shoulder with them as they went through this (oft career defining) experience.

A tale of four (of 7) inspections…

This, exactly 17 years since my first (by some cosmic coincidence), was my seventh inspection as the person with their name on the report.

However, this is really a blog about the new OFSTED framework and how I have witnessed it in action over three inspections as an Executive Headteacher: first at Blackhorse in November (2026), then Emersons Green in June (2026) and then (just three days ago) at Bowsland Green (October 2026).

So if you’re only interested in serious OFSTED analysis, skip down until you see a picture of Gandalf holding a sign entitled ‘serious OFSTED analysis’…

But, for me, a blog about OFSTED alone would be frightfully dull, so I will add some of the colour which accompanied each tale – if only for my own entertainment and catharsis.

I will be clear from the outset – I have no problem with the concept of school inspection. If you want to know what happens when inspection and testing is removed, look over at Wales. I am very aware that this may be an unpopular view, so please forgive me if my views don’t align with your own. I’m sure we can (as Alistair Campbell puts it) ‘disagree agreeably’.

That said, I had a very big problem with how OFSTED managed the Ruth Perry tragedy, something I wrote about here. I also had some misgivings after Blackhorse volunteered for the early inspections last November. But, having experienced three in a year – and my Trust’s leaders a total of 12 in the same period – I do feel that there are some observations which may be worth sharing…

Silver. 25th November 2025 – Blackhorse

Despite volunteering the school for this early inspection, I was impossibly nervous.

The school was in the best shape it had been at any time during my 15 year tenure. The self-imposed weight of expectation was crushing, as everyone, including my SLT and I, saw anything short of at least one shiny blue as failure. We’d twice missed Outstanding by a whisker, in 2015 and 2018; the inclusive schools’ tax often paid by way of attainment outcomes.

A fortnight before, my left eye swelled up – for no reason at all – as if I’d been punched in the face.This impending inspection was literally etched into my face.

The week before, another excellent school in our Trust was mauled by a team hell-bent on applying the ‘secure fit’ to the point of incredulity, which rattled me and the team even further.

I won’t share the conversations between my team and five HMI’s. They acted with integrity but within the scope of the toolkit and training they’d been given. But when Achievement, Teaching and Leadership fell like skittles to Strong’s ‘all children all subjects’ mantra (the inspectors having exclusively spoken to children with complex SEND), ‘exceptional’ for inclusion fell soon after.

Don’t get me wrong, the report is lovely, and captures our school brilliantly.

Quotes adorn banners.

But…

Gold. 9th June 2026 – Emersons Green

The news of this second inspection affected me less. I knew what was coming and, as Soraya (the Head of School) loved to point out, Emersons was my ‘troublesome second-born’…

Becoming the Exec HT of Emersons Green in 2022, I was reunited by the bombastic (and in 2009 clever but very underqualified) KS1 leader from Christ Church who had become the Head of School at Emersons following a stint as Deputy. It was great to ‘put the band back together’ alongside the leaders (and friends) at Blackhorse who’d been with me since 2012. High trust is crucial in any leadership team dynamic.

Blackhorse and Emersons are partners, at the time with me as Exec HT, so by June we’d spent seven months perfecting counter-arguments for the toolkit pitfalls which had tripped up Blackhorse. The two schools taught English and Maths using identical planning and an identical teaching methodology. The lessons in the wider curriculum were structured using the partnership’s ‘principles of expert tuition’. The proportion of children with SEND almost identical. The outcomes were about the same, with Emersons just a shade lower than Blackhorse at KS2.

We knew, that if the school was to have a shot at Exceptional for inclusion, then we would have to first secure Strong for Achievement, which would also unlock Strong for Teaching and Leadership (the holy trinity of OFSTED required for any Exceptional grade).

I told the lead inspector on the initial phone call that I would make the point then, and every 20 minutes during the inspection, that a school’s achievement data, where 20% of children in any given cohort eventually headed to special school, could not be compared with national or ‘what strong+ looks like’ datasets. We were determined that this time the inclusion tax wouldn’t be applied.

The school was judged Strong in all areas except Inclusion, which was judged Exceptional.

This is absolutely deserved, but the arguments needed to arrive at this point were made easier by the nature of our children’s need. As one of only six resource bases for children with physical disability or visual impairment in the UK, inclusion is visual. Adaptation is easy to spot and point at: children brailling, physio sessions, whole school makaton, communication devices, and a team of highly specialist TAs who could physically show inspectors what an adapted art, science, geography lesson for a blind child looked like. This did make it easier to evidence the exceptionally high bar needed for a blue dot. Something which was much harder to do at Blackhorse where the children (who are equally well included) are largely neurodivergent and support is more nuanced and harder to physically point to in the moment.

But both inspections proved that high numbers of children with SEND isn’t always a barrier to Strong+ judgements as has been widely publicised, although the toolkit initially seemed to define achievement as purely attainment.

Fair. 9th October 2026 – Bowsland Green

By the time the third phone call came, I was much more relaxed again about the whole inspection process, knowing what to expect and how to present the school’s work. Here, one could make the argument for more frequent, but lower stakes, inspections, if money would allow – which sadly it doesn’t.

Indeed, after each inspection the number of documents I felt were important for the school to create purely for OFSTED’s benefit reduced. As with the other two, it was more important to be able to narrate the school’s work, so our prep had been largely focused on getting into class and coaching the staff on agreed teaching approaches. We also adopted tried and tested maths planning from the Blackhorse & Emersons partnership and curriculum approaches developed by the Trust and other individual schools within it who had done interesting work (such as a highly successful handwriting approach from Willow Park Primary). Indeed, the MAT dividend was a significant factor: experienced and able middle leaders seconded in for the year, the whole executive team providing support and coaching on the run up to (and throughout) the inspection – including the CEO being on-site throughout. This significantly accelerated school improvement.

The inspection itself was very similar to the other two: friendly and open inspectors and an emphasis on the lived experience of pupils. So again, leaders ability to narrate this was crucial. As we all knew the school well – not least the Headteacher who had a detailed understanding of the families and the needs of the children in all 7 classes – this narration was never difficult and the inspectors actively listened and asked sensible questions, as they had done in the previous two inspections.

I can’t say much more about this inspection as the report is not yet published. But, again, I cannot fault the inspection team and I feel their judgements were fair. They took into account the school’s context and certain events which had slowed some improvements in the preceding two years but which were entirely beyond the school’s control.

So what have I learned from the three inspections?

1. The shift in inspector behaviour is notable and welcome.

In all three inspections the inspectors went out of their way to be friendly and approachable. This is a significant and welcome shift from the ‘don’t ever smile – it’ll give false hope’ mantra which I’d once had communicated to me on inspector training of old. I also saw first hand inspectors show care and consideration for leaders’ well-being, which went beyond asking us if we were okay every 15 minutes – which became a running joke at the Blackhorse inspection.

I therefore struggle when I see inspectors vilified on social media. I’m sure there are a few who show less care than others, but my experience is of people doing a job as kindly as they can, whilst understanding that their job is to judge and that these judgements may not always be welcome.

2. Inspection activity is largely consistent.

It is also clear that the methodology and inspection activity used to make judgements is more aligned and more consistently applied than in previous inspection regimes. The toolkit is more transparent in this regard and the operational guidance makes everything from the initial phone call to the inspection activity predictable.

Learning walks, which take the lion’s share of inspection time, are also carried out in a very similar way with leaders asked to narrate the school improvement decisions made and what impact this is having in the classroom. Here, the inspectors have all had the manners to leave the room before making any notes and have all spoken to staff and pupils with warmth and respect.

My only criticism here is that leaders have to remember and narrate a wide scope of school activity simultaneously: teaching approaches, curriculum approaches, the needs and provision of all disadvantaged children in each class etc. It may be the case that it is me who has over-egged this and less prep is possible and desirable. However, given the pace of inspection activity, I did feel it necessary to practice my lines repeatedly until I had the information at my fingertips – especially where judgements beyond expected were being sought.

The pupil conferencing was also similar in all the inspections: a group of children experiencing disadvantage and single sex groups. However, this seems to have softened in the last year, as at Blackhorse only children with SEND were spoken to, whereas a wider group was included in the following inspections.

3. Context is increasingly taken into account.

The application of the toolkit seems to have developed since the first inspection I experienced in November 2025. Understandably (but frustratingly) back in the earliest inspections, HMI’s interpreted the toolkit literally – and to the letter. This led to some decisions which seemed devoid of context – both at our early inspection at Blackhorse and at the one the previous week at another Trust school.

Since then, context seems to have quietly added greater nuance. Achievement in particular has become more informed by SEND numbers (in our experience), with the very rigid achievement = attainment early methodology replaced with a greater understanding from teams.

Don’t get me wrong, the ‘we have lots of children with SEND’ defence is likely to be carefully scrutinised – with many schools using this line often over-playing actual percentages. But when you’ve 20% of Y6 headed to special school, then the SATs results do seem to be interpreted with greater understanding.

4. You’re safer in a Multi-Academy Trust

It’s simply a numbers game.

The current toolkit stretches leaders – especially in small schools where a 210 primary will have three inspectors on day 1 to manage with a leadership team which is mainly classroom-based. In our Leaf Trust, the moment the phone rings, the Education Director for the Hub, the CEO and the Deputy CEO (all of us successful current or former Executive Headteachers with decades of experience in successful school improvement who know our schools extremely well) will appear within 30 minutes and not leave until the inspection is over. And having been involved in (on average) an inspection every week throughout 2026, these people know the toolkit inside out.

This number of bodies who know (and most importantly can talk knowledgeably about) the school, allows leaders to ‘mark’ every inspector all the time. It gives the additional capacity needed to coach and calm leaders and staff throughout the entire inspection. And with our CEO a very experienced inspector themself, it allows inspector to inspector conversations which can avoid any misunderstandings or misdiagnosis of school issues.

Now, I’m sure that there are a number of excellent local authorities who can muster a similar number of people to support an inspection – but not many. And a SIP who has visited the school once or twice is unlikely to have the same knowledge and motivation as a Trust leader who feels a deep professional accountability for the school.

Again, I suspect this will be an unpopular opinion – but am I wrong?

5. The toolkit is a ‘work in progress’

I do think this is the best iteration of OFSTED which I’ve experienced in the last 20 years over 7 inspections.

But it’s not perfect.

It is certainly more transparent and less open to the peccadilloes of individual inspectors. But you simply can’t create a toolkit which doesn’t fall victim to personal opinion or (more often) conformational bias. The pace at which inspectors need to work means that once a narrative (both positive and negative) is established it is very hard to shift. This may be a problem which is simply part of the human condition and which we will never be able to fully resolve.

But please don’t pretend that every judgement is free from this human malaise.

9th October 2009: Betting the farm.

For those who feel that inspection pressure is new – I’m sorry – but it’s not.

Back in the noughties all headteachers knew at least one fallen comrade who had ‘lost at OFSTED’ and then been ‘called to tea at county hall’. If anything the culture was even more brutal when there was a ready supply of wannabe headteachers to fill the ranks. Sadly, the Ruth Perry tragedy was at least a decade in the making.

The next two days were a blur. Fighting to keep a positive narrative to overturn the one which had seen the previous Headteacher ‘called to tea at county hall’.

Much of the ‘evidence’ was more about presentation and misplaced confidence. But it became the dominant narrative.

The thumb went up and so did my stock in the LA. Within a month the school’s SIP/ LA political commissar had asked me to support another struggling school – Blackhorse Primary.

But that’s another story – available at all good sellers of books… 😉