Ofsted is pushing the bigotry of low expectations

Every few years, schools inspectorate Ofsted publishes a new inspection framework. This usually prompts a lot of frenetic activity on the part of school leaders and others, but little else.

This time, however, the scramble in response to Ofsted’s new offering, implemented in November, is more than a bureaucratic refresh. Ofsted’s emphasis on inclusion, adaptive teaching and ensuring that disadvantaged pupils are ‘not falling behind’ marks a fundamental shift in what it believes education to be.

Spearheaded by former education secretary Michael Gove, previous Conservative governments had promoted vigorous curriculum reform in England. Their aim was to raise standards for all, and push back against the poisonous idea that lowering expectations was a way to be kind. It meant that all pupils, regardless of background, were entitled and expected to learn demanding subjects. Difficulty was not to be seen as a safeguarding issue. Struggle was not failure. And education was not therapy. The whole point was to ensure that all children were academically challenged.

The new inspection framework effectively dismantles that settlement. Under the banner of inclusion, Ofsted’s new guidelines reintroduce an older, far less confident view of education – one in which socio-economic disadvantage permanently limits what achievements should be expected of a child. Ofsted now asks schools to prove that they are ensuring pupils are ‘not falling behind’ – as if anyone would be for children falling behind.

The language here conceals just how low Ofsted’s and the Labour government’s ambitions are for young people. ‘Not falling behind’ is not a vision of education – it is a risk-management strategy. It tells schools to worry less about pushing pupils to greater academic heights and more about adapting to their perceived limits. The universal promise of education is replaced with a conditional offer: access to knowledge, adjusted according to class background.

This way of thinking has been around for decades. Its roots lie in the tradition of the Fabian Society – a group of late 19th- and early 20th-century reformers whose sympathy for the poor was matched only by their scepticism about their capacities. The Fabians did not hate the working class. They ‘worried’ about them.

Though the language may have been tweaked for the modern ear, the underlying messages are all the same. Where the Fabians spoke of poorer people’s moral weakness, Ofsted speaks of disadvantaged pupils’ limited ‘cognitive load’. Where the Fabians were concerned about poor habits, Ofsted identifies unmet ‘needs’. The message is clear either way: some children need permanently lowered expectations, for their own good.

We are assured the new Ofsted framework is about outcomes for pupils, not excuses. But outcomes are no longer related to pupils demonstrating what they know and have learnt. Instead, outcomes are adjusted to pupils’ backgrounds, processed according to the ‘systemic’ barriers they have faced. In this system, the definition of success becomes elastic – it’s all relative to pupils’ starting points. The more disadvantaged the background, the less that should be expected of a child.

This collides directly with the previous focus on promoting a challenging, knowledge-rich curriculum for all. Now, teachers, facing an attainment gap, are being encouraged to slow the pace right down for every student, to ensure ‘none are falling behind’ – to lower the bar, as it were. While the Fabians believed the poor could not be trusted with autonomy, today’s ‘progressives’ seem to think disadvantaged kids cannot be trusted to deal with academic difficulty.

There is a deeper moral failure at play here. Inclusion frameworks are increasingly treating poverty and disadvantage as destiny. Pupils are encouraged to understand themselves not in terms of their potential, but in terms of their background. The possibility that disadvantaged pupils might excel, that they might outstrip expectations, is apparently unthinkable.

Schools should be the place where background matters least, and children encounter ideas that lift them beyond the circumstances of their birth. Instead, under Ofsted’s new regime, schools are being encouraged to limit children according to the circumstances of their birth.

In the end, an inclusion-focussed Ofsted is not promoting compassion. It is limiting and holding young people back. This brand of ‘progress’ is very backwards indeed.

Neil Davenport is a writer based in London.