The inspector strikes back

Christine Gilbert is entering the last few months of her tenure as chief inspector of Ofsted. Reports surrounding her departure have centred on claims that she was too close to the previous government, fuelled in part by her marriage to Labour minister Tony McNulty. But she maintains that it was always her intention to leave when her five-year term concludes at the end of September.

Her time at the watchdog has largely been defined by change. The past two years have seen the introduction of new-style school inspections, as well as no-notice checks for children's services departments and new safeguarding and looked-after children inspections. The inspectorate has also faced fierce criticism - most notably for its handling of the Peter Connelly case in Haringey.

More than three-and-a-half years after the tragic death of the 17-month-old, the ramifications of the case are still being felt in the corridors of Ofsted. Only last week, Professor Eileen Munro published her interim report into child protection. It warned that bureaucracy is damaging services, calling on the profession to focus on protecting children rather than on "regulations, inspections and procedures". If Munro's proposals are implemented, all children's services inspections will become unannounced and Ofsted will cease to evaluate serious case reviews.

Facing the critics

This could be interpreted as a sign that the current system is not working. But Gilbert bristles at the suggestion that Munro's calls equate to a criticism of Ofsted. "Nothing is guaranteed to make my blood boil as much as the references to tick-box inspections, because they absolutely are not," she says. "We don't think children's social care inspections are tick box, and actually people who have been inspected tell us that they're not tick box. It's a really easy criticism to make and Eileen Munro doesn't make it actually. If you read her report she talks about 'perceived bureaucracy', she really is careful to use the word 'perceived'."

In fact, on serious case reviews Gilbert reveals that she actually wrote to ministers before Christmas to say that Ofsted's evaluations should be stopped, in light of the move to publish reviews in full.

"We don't take it as a criticism," she explains. "We felt the evaluations were incredibly costly, so we did think that there needed to be significant changes. It's more important for us to be looking at how the changes are happening on the ground."

Gilbert also backs Munro's proposal to make all inspections unannounced, saying the plans will cut down the amount of time and money invested in preparing for inspection "at a stroke" and allow inspectors to see more clearly how practice is working.

Lessons learned

But she admits that her experience of pushing through such big changes in the past will influence the way she approaches the next wave of reform. Gilbert confesses that she could have done more to communicate every detail of what was happening when Ofsted started inspecting children's social care.

"I hadn't really thought that people in local authorities would think that children's services would be inspected by school inspectors," she says. "But they thought that for a while until we'd done several inspections and they saw that the inspectors were qualified and able to give really good judgments and clear recommendations for change."

Now the coalition government is setting out its vision for its role as schools inspectorate. School inspections will be refocused so that Ofsted only monitors four core areas - pupil achievement, teaching, leadership, and behaviour and safety.

Gilbert says she welcomes the change. "I think it allows us to focus on teaching and learning, and to build on the strengths of the existing framework, so we are very positive."

She denies that Labour's Every Child Matters emphasis on pupil wellbeing will be sacrificed as a result. "Good schools will be looking after the wellbeing of pupils, which will come through if you're looking at the leadership and the management of the school, if you're looking at discipline and so on," she explains. "I think we will capture those things in different ways."

Gilbert's biggest lesson since being in post, she says, is that you cannot over-communicate. "Whatever we do I still think there will be real anxiety because inspections are high stakes," she explains. "But I think we can do much more about communicating well. We're really thinking hard about that."

She has also learned a lot about dealing with criticism in a job that naturally sets her on a collision course with teaching unions and children's services professionals.

Drive to improve

The Association of Directors of Children's Services (ADCS) is among those to have aired its grievances with Ofsted publicly during her tenure. In July 2009, it accused the inspectorate of being inflammatory when the first set of no-notice checks found "serious concerns" with six out of the nine councils inspected.

Despite such wrangles, Matt Dunkley, vice-president of the ADCS, believes that the children's sector needs to keep working closely with Ofsted: "There is no doubt that Ofsted has a lot of development work to do in the face of changes to school inspection and the inspection of children's social care. We are keen to continue working with Ofsted as it undertakes this work to ensure that new frameworks and inspection schedules meet the needs of the sector in terms of being proportionate, based on risk and focused on outcomes rather than processes."

Gilbert insists that criticism should drive organisations to improve.

Following the Peter Connelly case, the watchdog's own processes came under serious scrutiny. Although Ofsted was already on its way to scrapping paper-based assessments and introducing no-notice safeguarding checks, Gilbert says the case did cause it to rethink its plans.

"The Peter Connelly tragedy made us go back to the proposals to make sure that they were as rigorous as possible," she explains. "I think initially we had suggested one day for the unannounced inspections but we doubled that to two days.

"It's really important that you use criticisms to look at what you're doing and make sure that you use it to help you improve, and not be defensive about that."

She believes the Haringey case also gave rise to important discussions about the purpose of inspections. "We could grade someone outstanding today and it could shift in three months," she explains. "Somebody from a very large authority said to me: 'we really need Ofsted to come and tell us how we're doing, because we have no idea'.

I had to say: 'Ofsted would never be able to do that, you need yourself to have built in processes to look at what's going on'. I think local authorities have really taken that seriously with the work they're doing with peer reviews."

Not ready to retire

Although Gilbert is unable to confirm exactly when she plans to step down, she wants her replacement to have enough time to prepare for the watchdog's annual report, which is published in November.

"Nothing is set in stone yet," she says. "I wanted to do one term as chief inspector and that term ends at the end of September. I think it would be really good if a new chief inspector was in by September."

She refuses to be drawn on what her next move might be, although she says: "I'm not ready to retire. I am really keen to do other things from September."

But it does not take her long to come up with ideas for what she would do if she were to stay at Ofsted a little longer. "I would want to intensify the focus on looked-after children," she says. "What we do for looked-after children is still woefully inadequate."

She adds that she would also focus on literacy. "The last government made tremendous changes in literacy in its early years, and then it stalled in about 2001," she says. "Until children can read, write and speak well they can't really access all of the other bits of the curriculum and they don't enjoy learning. The changes that are coming there are really important."

TIMELINE: OFSTED UNDER CHRISTINE GILBERT

Oct 2006 Christine Gilbert leaves her post as chief executive of Tower Hamlets to become chief inspector at Ofsted

Apr 2007 Ofsted's remit expands to include children's social care and the work of the Adult Learning Inspectorate

Nov 2008 Case of the murdered 17-month-old Peter Connelly in Haringey hits the media spotlight

Apr 2009 New safeguarding and looked-after children inspections introduced

Jul 2009 First unannounced inspections results are published. The ADCS accuses Ofsted of being inflammatory over its findings

Sep 2009 New schools inspection framework introduced. Ofsted starts inspecting schools on pupil wellbeing

Jan 2011 Education Bill limits Ofsted's school inspection remit to four core areas, including achievement and teaching

Feb 2011 Munro review calls for unannounced inspections and that Ofsted ceases to evaluate serious case reviews