Yesterday Ofsted announced proposals for fairer education inspections and new, more detailed report cards.

We welcome the intention of Ofsted's proposed reforms to its inspections and reports but have concerns about whether they will make a lasting contribution to a fairer education system. We have long called for a greater valuing of inclusion and consideration of a school's context in the accountability system, and it is a positive step that the new proposed Report Card explicitly lists inclusion as a key area for inspection.

We're also pleased that Ofsted will include more contextual data in inspections and reports of the type we've consolidated in our own Ecosystem Map. This data helps to paint a picture of the strengths and challenges of a school's local area, and we look forward to working with Ofsted to share the work we've done on this and the data we have on members delivering locally -- a key piece of school support.  

However, we do have some concerns that the new Report Card will create an additional workload for schools and that the new range of inspection areas will fail to address the root causes of the disadvantage gap, the workforce crisis, and the attendance crisis. The proposal does little to ease the pressures school staff currently feel, and the five-point scale across many measures may still result in reductive judgments that drive patchwork, short-term solutions.

We hope that Ofsted considers longer-term measures of success, staff wellbeing, and the belonging of all pupils across the full spectrum of needs. Ofsted needs to ensure the views of a diversity of students meaningfully inform their inspections, and we are keen to support the inspectorate in working with young people to design this process. There are positives here to work with, and we look forward to discussing how to strengthen these proposals.