The minutes linked to below are long but worth a read if you’ve got kids in school or early years settings and have any concerns as to the focus on tests, the consequences of them and the impact Ofsted has towards raising standards.

Or maybe for those that don’t like Ofsted much and who might be pleased to see them put on the spot.

minutes of evidence taken before the children, schools and families committee.

…neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record. The transcript is not yet an approved formal record of these proceedings.

I have picked out below what I consider to be some of the juicier bits.

On Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Ofsted, Christine Gilbert’s failure to prepare properly for this committee -

Q. 114 Chairman: Chief inspector, before we move on to the next topic, you know that our report on testing and assessment came out yesterday. Has anyone giving evidence today read it, in the day you had to read it? Has none of your staff, in the full day you had before coming to this Committee, read our report on testing and assessment?

Christine Gilbert: I think we got a PDF copy yesterday evening at about 7 o’clock.

Chairman: It was available from early yesterday morning.

Christine Gilbert: We will read it, Mr. Chairman, and there are several references to Ofsted which we will look at in detail

And in closing -

Chairman: Thank you. Chief Inspector, it has been a really good session. You seem to have a rosier view of what is going on out there than we have. Sometimes, I wish that we were following you into the cutting edge area, rather than your following us. I am a bit disappointed with some of your responses today about our report that came out yesterday on testing and assessment. I am very disappointed that not one member of your staff got an early copy and read it. Thank you.

Ofsted’s Director of Education, Miriam Rosen and the Early Years provision -

Q. 141 Chairman: But Miriam, as Chairman I worry a great deal about the quality of the care and stimulation in early years, and I do that because early-years employees are still the lowest paid and least trained section of the education work force. You know that and the Committee knows that. I am surprised that when Ofsted inspects early years, it never seems to say anything about that. Everybody knows that people are on minimum wage-plus in that area, that there are not enough graduate teachers and that the whole area is under-resourced. I hear that you do the inspections, but I do not hear your voice criticising anything.

Miriam Rosen: Are you talking about a particular sector?

Chairman: I am talking about the whole of the early-years field, which you now are responsible for inspecting, and about which you seem to be mute.

On Ofsted’s discontented workforce -

Q. 199 Chairman: Chief inspector, you are always very convincing when you come before the Committee, but a little voice out there sometimes says, “What on earth is going on in Ofsted?” You are facing an imminent strike by your employees. There was unhappiness about the degree of bullying in Ofsted. What is the explanation for that? Perhaps we can bring Vanessa in on this. Is it because you have been tightening the screws financially following Gershon? Why does Ofsted not seem to be a very happy ship? Is it because you have been cutting budgets? Is it because you have been following Gershon? What is going on? There is a strike on the one side and allegations of bullying on the other. Why do we not get a warmer picture of what is going on in Ofsted?

Vanessa Howlison (Ofsted’s Director of Finance): Clearly, we are making savings, and we have more savings yet to make. However, the pay award that Ofsted has negotiated with the Treasury is above the average that has been awarded this year. We are using some of that money to ensure that there is true equity among our staff so that people who are doing the same role will in future be paid the same amount. Moving to that equity position will probably mean that some people will go through a transition for a short period, and that could be a factor. However, the pay award that Ofsted has negotiated with the Treasury is above average for this year, so this is certainly not a straight money issue.

Q. 200 Chairman: Is it your style of management? Last time, when we had the chair of the Ofsted board here, we were told that things would improve. Has the Ofsted board improved, or is your management style still lacking, given that you have this unhappy group of people working for you?

Christine Gilbert: I should say that the survey about bullying happened just before I arrived, Mr. Chairman. It also related to the former Ofsted. That said, we have become one organisation from four, and two of those former organisations did not want to join the new organisation. We have achieved a lot in a year, and I could give you all sorts of details about what we have done to engage staff. We had an assessment by Investors in People a fortnight ago, although we will not know the formal result for another week. Generally, however, the feedback about what had been put in place was very positive. The assessor said that he did not think that the organisation could do much more than it was doing to treat its employees fairly and engage them in the developments ahead.

On teaching to the test and ongoing low standards of literacy -

Q. 162 Mr. Slaughter: …To play devil’s advocate, you have been accused, if that is not too strong a word, of two things this morning. One relates to an excess of formal teaching to four and five-year-olds; the other, which comes out of this week’s report, is turning a blind eye to widespread teaching to the test and to a narrowing of the curriculum, with a focus on a few subjects-principally those to do with literacy, numeracy and so forth. Yet, the most telling comment that you have made to me this morning is that 20 per cent of children at age 11 have some form of functional illiteracy. That does not square with me. If there is distortion in the system-I am not sure whether you are admitting that there is one or whose fault it is-that puts a great focus on learning to read and write at an early age and on constant testing, why do we have a rather scandalous situation in which there is that degree of illiteracy?

Christine Gilbert: It is not an either/or. Children and their parents have a right to know that they can feel safe and protected when they go to school. That is an absolute precursor to effective learning. That said, we need to do more to improve academic performance in schools. We also need to do a number of things right across the five outcomes to improve children’s well-being more generally. I really do not see them as opposing and contradictory.

I’ll leave it at that. Enough there perhaps to get a flavour of how the session went. If that piqued your interest read through the entire transcript. Loads more examples of the committee gunning for Ofsted and of Ofsted failing to put up an adequate defense.

If you want to know more about the work of Ofsted, The Guardian has done a pretty good overview of where Ofsted is at across the range of it’s remit and scope in a special report here.

Perhaps the time is coming for Ofsted to be put into special measures!