Inspection and audit

Before the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) was created in 1992, many schools never saw any national inspectors. True, there were LEA inspection and advisory services, and some were good (though others interfered needlessly in good schools). But there was no regular pattern of inspection nationally, nor was there a set of consistent standards against which each school could be judged. Ofsted was introduced after a significant change in attitudes to school improvement during the 1980s. Projects such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's International School Improvement Project recognised that there needed to be a systematic approach to change within schools themselves. A school's lessons, procedures and use of resources became the key focus for such reforms. Educational goals were seen as important and they began to reflect the school's own priorities. Schools did not act alone and there had to be an integrated approach between top-down policy and bottom-up improvement. And change was only successful when it had become part of the natural behaviour of teachers in the school. ¹ Against that background, Ofsted was introduced and its remit was continued and extended by Conservative and Labour Governments. It existed in a culture where exam results started to be published and targets became a key agent of improvement, first under the Conservatives mainly within specialist schools, and later an integral part of the Labour Government's approach to education reform.