Ofsted’s menacing inspections are still disastrous. Schools should answer to the communities they serve | Simon Jenkins

For all the supposed improvements, inspectors still obsess over statistics and adjectives, but surely school success depends on teachers and parents The government regulation of state schools by Ofsted in England is a fiasco. Following the 2023 suicide of the Reading headteacher Ruth Perry, after her school was downgraded from outstanding to inadequate, Ofsted appears to have referred to a dictionary. Single words were replaced by colour-coded report cards , which use a wider range of differen