Under pressure: inspection regimes and the institutionalisation of failure

Blog post about news that a group of teachers from Kent and Medway has written to Ofsted, the regulator for the education sector, follows the suicide of headteacher Ruth Perry, whose death in March 2023 has been linked to an impending Ofsted judgment.

Perry’s death has revived long-standing criticisms about how various parts of the education sector are regulated. Critics argue that that bodies such as Ofsted are not themselves as effective as we might like: in a recent article (Beighton and Naz, 2023) we discuss how inspections can, in Further Education contexts, be “gamed” by those involved. Often, our data suggests, inspections represent a chance to display artificial practices honed precisely in order to meet expectations while having little or no impact on the substance of the teaching and learning taking place.