The Subject"Deep Dive": What is it? (Instalment 1 of 3)

From 'The Journal of a School Leader' series...

The History of Ofsted

It may not feel like it, but there was a time when Ofsted didn't exist. In the past schools were inspected by the Local Education Authority (LEA) under a Senior Chief Inspector (SCI) who was also part of the Department of Education. Unfortunately, this system wasn't great for consistency across the country, and there were major failings that needed to be addressed.

Cue..

The 1988 Education Reform Act set to solve these failings quickly by introducing the following main aims:

1. A National Curriculum

2. National Testing

3. Local management of school budgets

4. Ofsted

Ofsted stands for 'The office for Standards in Education' and was set up in 1992 with its first inspection taking place in 1993. Its role is to inspect & regulate state education across the UK. Its moral purpose is to improve education for all learners. So, love them, or hate them, we can all get behind that goal!

Over the years, Ofsted has had multiple leaders, government changes, school foci and created countless hoops for us to jump through. The latest being the new Ofsted inspection process, which includes the somewhat mysterious (and daunting) "Deep Dive".

The Rationale

With senior leaders being (understandably) the most invested in their school's Ofsted outcome, it seemed a long-standing failure of the inspection process to spend so much time with the people who were most likely to provide a 'spin' on what the inspectors witnessed. As some one who has experienced many Ofsted inspections, I have seen this happen again and again. It's challenging to grasp 'the real measure of a school' in only two days... especially when you are seeing it through a specific (and somewhat biased) lens.

Fortunately, Ofsted have wised up to this being a poor measure of a school, and educational inspections have now turned their eye towards the importance of a school's middle leadership team, and its staff body. Often senior leaders may set the vision, but it's the middle leaders who enact that vision in the day-to-day running of their teams. For a better understanding of a school, it makes perfect sense to spend in depth time with those at the educational coalface.

A typical Ofsted schedule

A typical two-day secondary school inspection is likely to be:

Day 1

• inspection team meet with senior leaders and middle leaders of the chosen deep dive areas

• Deep dives take place, including lesson observations of chosen subject areas

• inspection start to form their theory of the school and look for strengths and possible areas of concern to explore further

• Inspection team feedback to each other at the end of the day. Senior leadership are welcome to listen to the conversation.

Day 2

• inspection team focus on proving/ disproving their theory from day 1 explorations

• other subject areas may be explored - albeit on a much smaller scale than day 1

• Inspection team feedback to each other at the end of the day. Senior leadership are welcome to listen to the conversation

• a provisory judgement is provided to the Headteacher.

Post Day 2

• The inspectors leave to write the report, which takes in the region of 18 days + any appeals the school may wish to make before the report is published

Note:

• No feedback is given to the middle leaders or department staff by inspectors. You will need to garner this from discussions with your senior leadership team.

What happens in a "Deep Dive'?

Ofsted's new method of gaining a better understanding of a school's curriculum and quality of teaching & learning involves delving deeper into multiple curriculum areas. For secondary schools this means taking a closer look at 4-6 subjects (at least one needs to be a core subject!) and for primary schools this means carrying out a closer look at reading and a few other foundational subjects being taught at the school.

As primary schools tend to have smaller staff bodies, this might mean an interview style discussion for multiple curriculum areas with the same person. For secondary schools, this means anything in the region of 2-4 hours between a Head of Department and an Inspector discussing one subject area.

The goal of a “deep dive” into specific areas, subjects or topics is to gain first-hand evidence. The core objective of the “deep dive” approach is: “Let’s see that in action together.” And Inspectors will discuss your subject's intent, implementation and impact to gather this evidence.

My "Deep Dive Experience

Previous to my current role as a Senior Leader, I led a Secondary school English Department for 5 years. In April 2022 we received the call that Ofsted was coming to complete a Section 5 inspection. Every English Department has a 50/50 chance of being chosen (instead of Maths) for a deep dive... and on this occasion Ofsted (very conscientiously!) opted "to get up, close and personal" with both English and Maths.

My department's day ended up looking like this...

*my school operates a 'period' system for lessons, so 'P1' stands for lesson 1.

Each deep dive will follow a slightly different pattern (depending on timetables etc.), but they all tend to include the following:

• lengthy discussion with HOD about subject area

• curriculum overview scrutiny

• lesson observations & tour of curriculum area

• a student panel discussion with inspector (they tend to choose students from the lessons they observe)

• work/ book scrutiny

• discussion with subject colleagues (minus Head of Department/SLT)

After years of dread (we had been due an inspection for ages!), my Ofsted experience turned out to be a positive one... phew! I know this isn't always the case and some of my Head of Department colleagues certainly did not relish the experience.

Partly my team got lucky. My inspector was an actual human being who understood school pressures, had created a great career for themselves, didn't have anything to prove or any axes to grind.

BUT, mainly I had been preparing for this day since I took on the role of Head of Department.

Want top tips on how to prepare for a deep dive? Check out my next instalment from 'The Journal of a School Leader'.

So there you have it, key info on the Ofsted Subject Deep Dive. For more useful ideas, check out our range of blogs.

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