Until September 2005, parents had an opportunity to complete a questionnaire giving their views of the school and to meet the lead inspector before the inspection. These meetings were rarely well attended, but the opportunity was there, and there was a generally good return on questionnaires. Children's views were also sampled via questionnaires, as well as interviews with children from each year group.
New Labour's political ofsted has changed this. Parents no longer know if or when a school is to be inspected, so the only views that are taken into account are likely to be complaints - Ofsted has no mechanism to establish what parents think. Similarly, there are no more questionnaires for pupils - this was partly, no doubt, because of the frequent response of over half of secondary pupils that behaviour was poor. Of course inspectors meet pupils during their visit - usually a hand selected few - but they don't have time to talk to them in depth, and no longer have the depth of evidence provided by the questionnaire.
Ofsted claimed to give more account to parents' and pupils' views at precisely the same time as it was removing the mechanism needed to keep in touch with them. This is entirely typical of the way the whole exercise has been presented. In other words, Ofsted tells lies. And if it lies about one thing, why not another? Parents and governors should not believe a word Ofsted says unless they have corroboration from a more reliable source.
