On the Reliability of OFSTED Inspection of Initial Teacher Training: A case study

Jim Campbell · Chris Husbands

39 citations0/0 files storedBritish Educational Research Journal

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Educational Assessment and Improvement Education and Public Policy Teacher Education and Assessments

Abstract

ABSTRACT Inspection has been an increasingly important feature of central monitoring of education in the 1990s. This article examines the technical reliability of inspection processes in initial teacher training, drawing extensively on methodology and procedures adopted by the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) between 1996 and 1998. A definition of reliability is advanced and tested against the procedures of inspection, especially by examining the security of internal and external judgements at the pass/fail borderline and the moderation and training procedures deployed by OFSTED. The methodology of inspection is found to be insufficiently reliable for the consequences which flow from it. Tensions are explored between the technicist model of inspection underlying OFSTED initial teacher training procedures and the ‘informed conoisseurship’ model hitherto deployed by members of Her Majesty's Inspectorate. In consequence, there are unresolved tensions between the expressed aspiration for ‘improvement through inspection’ and the use of inspection to police compliance.

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1996Monitoring Education: Indicators, Quality and Effectiveness 1996Inspecting Schools: Holding Schools to Account and Helping Schools to Improve 1990Performance Management in Local Government 2006Performance Management 1997OFSTED, Criteria and the Nature of Social Understanding: A Wittgensteinian Critique of the Practice of Educational Judgement 1995>OFSTED: inspecting schools and improvement through inspection 1997HMI and OFSTED : Evolution or Revolution in School Inspection

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2010Literature Review on Teacher Education in the 21st Century 2014The Front and Back Stages of Swedish School Inspection: Opening the Black Box of Judgment 2002Making Better Connections 2016Effects and side effects of school inspections: A general framework 2001The Validity and Reliability of OFSTED Judgements of the Quality of Secondary Mathematics Initial Teacher Education Courses 2018Ofsted and Children’s Services: What Performance Indicators and Other Factors Are Associated with Better Inspection Results?

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