As I sit here, trawling through our curriculum to check if we are ticking all of the ‘British values’ boxes, it has never been clearer to me that Ofsted needs reform.

Teachers, school leaders and Tristram Hunt all agree, but saying things need reform and actually reforming them are very different things. Labour needs an ambitious plan to reform Her Majesty’s inspectorate and I want to set out what our top three priorities should be.

Unlike some quarters within the profession, I am going to start by saying we need Ofsted. It is not beyond salvation by any stretch and indeed has shown some very positive moves towards reforming itself over the past 12 months; no crackers 20-minute observation grades to name but one. That said, more must be done urgently.

I want to start with the problem. The single biggest issue for Ofsted is that it lacks the respect of the teaching profession. Any good teacher will tell you that trying to wield power without respect is a road to nowhere. Ofsted lost this respect by subcontracting out the recruitment of inspectors to Capita and co who have hired a large number of shoddy ex-school leaders who are now shoddy inspectors. Having met many of these ‘AIs’, as they are known, it is abundantly clear that they do not understand school data or how to analyse it; strategy or how to implement it; or pedogogy and how to practise it.

This approach has resulted in some unfair and inaccurate judgments, absurd suggestions for how schools can improve and a rumour mill that spreads these recommendations far and wide. Add to this the high stakes nature of these inspections and you have got a pretty toxic mix that is at risk of sending the profession into an early grave.

So what is to do be done?

First, Labour should take the four-category judgement scale and simplify it to two – good and requires improvement, something which Steve Munby of CfBT has also suggested. Ofsted is not there to fuel the adverts of outstanding schools nor is it capable of making the subtle and complex judgments required to mark out good and outstanding in a single short inspection. It should be humble enough to say so and be clear that it is there to provide assurance to the public that money is being spent wisely by those in positions of trust for the benefit of children. If a school is doing that great – it is compliant and gets a well done. If it is not then a clear, rapid and robust process for improvement is put in place. We must trust teachers and school leaders to work out what outstanding looks like in their context and let the range of data and local reputation do the rest.

Second, Labour must insist on a comprehensive programme of quality assurance that ensures that the integrity of inspections is maintained. Schools need to know where the goalposts are and inspectors need to stick to them. Any deviation and the rumour mill sets off all over again. This means better training for inspectors. Do they know about data, strategy, pedagogy? It also means quality assurance of the inspections themselves and a swift process to remove shoddy inspectors. On this last point I would be public about it: ‘We have got rid of 100 shoddy inspectors this year who did x, y and z’.

Third, Labour must commit to stop using Ofsted as the ‘go to’ policy lever to drive change within the system. Changing the inspection framework every time there is a new fad in town rather than persuading school leaders through a credible and compelling argument is lazy. We should not be surprised that the ‘do it or else’ approach does not go down to well and we should be brave enough to put a stop to it.

These reforms would create a fairer, higher quality, transparent inspectorate that expertly balances trust and accountability. It sounds like British values in action to me.

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Matthew Hood is a director of a national education charity and assistant head at a secondary school in Morecambe. He tweets @MatthewHood and writes in the Reform Time column on Progress