The House of Commons Educationand Skills Committee: The Work of Ofsted

11 July 2007

Commenting on the Education Select Committee report The work of Ofsted Steve Sinnott, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, Britain’s largest teaching union said: 

“Ofsted has made progress in recent years in developing positive relationships with teachers. Yet while teachers believe that the new light touch inspection arrangements are an improvement on the past they still have concerns.

“The Select Committee rightly highlights that under Ofsted a satisfactory judgement is deemed to be unsatisfactory. In the dictionary satisfactory means what it says. Under Ofsted the word satisfactory means failure. This is an Alice in Wonderland situation. As the Select Committee says, at the very least, Ofsted needs to say what it means”.