A Farewell to Curriculum?

The winds of change are blowing over Ofsted. Or at least that is the impression given by the recent TES report on the scrapping of the inspectorate’s dedicated curriculum unit. Before we announce the demise of Ofsted’s curriculum focus too soon, we should remember that the 2019 inspection framework, which enthroned curriculum in the first place, remains in force. Taken alongside the removal of subject deep dives in ungraded inspections and comments made by Sir Martyn Oliver before he became HMCI, however, it certainly looks like a change of direction.

Some will no doubt celebrate this shift in emphasis and others will mourn it. Even as a curriculum addict, I have felt somewhat conflicted about Ofsted’s curricular turn, although I can’t deny that my own career and profile have benefitted from it. As a senior leader in the secondary phase I like most of Ofsted’s current framework and I think the curriculum unit has produced some very good work which is useful to schools. The research review produced for my own subject by the specialist history inspector, Tim Jenner, is a particularly impressive example of this, pulling together a huge amount of expertise and giving voice to the history teaching community. Nevertheless I am inclined to worry about unintended consequences and there was always a nagging voice in my head wondering whether the production of reviews like this might be a case of the inspectorate stepping outside of its lane and asking how I would feel if I didn’t like the content. On the other hand, I have been hugely supportive of the much-needed subject-specialist training provided by members of the curriculum unit to other inspectors. In the absence of this unit, I am concerned that there will now be a gap, right at a time when schools are most in need of reassurance about inspector quality.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of Ofsted’s practice, I am left pondering the implications of the shift for the future, especially if further steps are taken away from curriculum under Oliver’s leadership (let alone what a potential new government in the next few months might prioritise). The optimist in me dares to hope that senior leaders up and down the land will become less inclined to demand curriculum artefacts like intent statements and road maps from beleaguered teachers, or to reach for the mock deep dive lever to reassure themselves that they are on track for a favourable inspection result. I have been open in my criticism of such practices throughout. It may also be that larger trusts become less inclined to appoint subject specialists to their central teams to write curricula and produce resources. I do not for a second think that such posts are necessarily a bad thing, and I am sure that, with care, sensitivity, and ideally a decent teaching commitment, they can be extremely beneficial. However, I do worry that they might represent a move of curricular expertise, agency and academic heft away from the coalface, if they are not done well.

For all that we may see some positive consequences of an Ofsted change, my inner pessimist wonders with some trepidation what will appear on the horizon instead. Certainly anyone in the profession who shares my memories of triple marking, intervention spreadsheets, tracking data and the like, all of which were done in the name of Ofsted, is likely to shudder at the thought of what might take curriculum’s throne in the minds of inspectors.

For curriculum enthusiasts like me, who were leading work in the field in schools before it was enshrined in the Ofsted framework, I am confident we will keep it to the fore whether or not Ofsted is looking for it. We will have to work a bit harder, of course, since we have been sailing before a favourable Ofsted breeze for the last few years, whereas now we might have to tack into the wind in order to make headway in schools, but I am sure we will manage. The real challenge will come if the Ofsted framework changes to the detriment of curriculum. In that event we will need to take up arms in the defence of a subject-based education, especially outside of the core.

The main impact is likely to be felt in schools and trusts where the senior leadership does not include somebody who really loves thinking about the curriculum and developing expertise in the field. In these settings, where curricular work may well have been done largely to prepare for Ofsted, and where things like roadmaps were most likely to be required, I fear that it is likely to be replaced by whatever else leaders think inspectors will be keen to see. We await what that will be.

Is it inevitable that a change in Ofsted focus drives leadership behaviour in this way? I was struck by a quotation from an anonymous Ofsted staff member in the TES article cited above about the scrapping of the curriculum unit, which struck me as a little naive. The staff member stated that previously ‘there was a very clear idea of inspection as a lever for improvement, not just as a check. And it feels like that’s changing.’ This may be how it looks from inside Ofsted, but I very much doubt that many people working in schools could ever think of Ofsted ‘just as a check.’ Indeed, it is hard to avoid the sense that Ofsted sneezes and the schooling system catches a cold in the form of increased workload (whether or not that workload leads to improvement is a different matter). This is essentially because Ofsted operates a high stakes model of assessment, and the washback effect is one of the most well-known features of such a model. In other words, the demands of the assessment influence the behaviour of those preparing for it (for good or ill). We see this every time students want a formula for answering the GCSE six-marker or whatever, and every time a teacher gives students a tip about what examiners are looking for. We can decry such practices as teaching to the test and injurious to a pure, authentic education in the subject, and we are probably right, but we might as well order the incoming tide to retreat. There is the same certainty of wet feet if we try to stop school leaders from adapting their behaviour so they can serve up what they think Ofsted wants (not that this has stopped me from doing my best Cnut impression).

To be clear I do not really blame inspectors for this effect, which is simply in the nature of high stakes inspection. To its credit, in recent years Ofsted has made a valiant effort to discourage leaders from producing inspection-focussed artefacts (for example this helpful blog on curriculum intent by the excellent former head of the scrapped unit, Heather Fearn), but many leaders do it regardless. The need to address their anxieties about inspection is more persuasive than even the most reasoned case for moderation, and nothing can stop the latest craze.

For all that I think the curriculum focus has had a patchy impact, the apparent direction of travel at Ofsted concerns me and I will be disappointed if further moves are made to relegate curriculum. This is partly because curriculum enthusiasts like me will have to work harder to focus attention in busy schools on what Amanda Spielman rightly described as ‘the real substance of education,’ with all its mind-opening and life-changing potential, but it is also because I worry about what will take curriculum’s place. By withdrawing its curriculum focus, Ofsted will not simply revert to some neutral state, but will prioritise something else instead (even if it is only what school leaders think inspectors prioritise), and this will have a knock-on effect on what happens in schools. It is easy to mock the unnecessary and often foolish things which have been done in the name of curriculum, but I do think it has been vastly preferable to previous Ofsted drives (although I am only speaking from my secondary experience and I recognise that it has presented more challenges for primary colleagues). At its best curriculum brought a renewed and welcome focus on what we want students to learn and why, rather than merely what activities we are doing with them. It also encouraged us to think hard about the coherence of our provision as a whole and whether our assessment was testing the right thing, as well as fuelling intellectual discourse within the teaching profession. Compare that with the data or marking obsessions, which I would argue were actively damaging to the quality of education, and curriculum takes on a very favourable light. We may come to feel this even more strongly when we know what the next Ofsted craze will be. I for one am not desperate to find out.