Schools to receive surprise Ofsted visits

Yesterday afternoon The Guardian reported that Ofsted inspectors will pay surprise visits from this autumn onwards to schools where pupils' behaviour is a concern. The school inspectorate reported yesterday that they would trial this no-notice inspection process within schools that had behaviour problems and a 'satisfactory' rating.

This new way of undertaking inspections comes after Michael Gove, the education secretary, warned in April that teachers had told him that in some schools, on the day of an inspection, naughty pupils were taken on trips so that inspectors would not see them.

The worst teachers were also "invited" to stay at home and the best ones were told to patrol the corridors, he said. This sort of practice was enabled by the fact that schools are usually given two or three days' notice that an inspection is going to take place.

As part of the new no-notice visits, inspectors will spend more time in classrooms assessing how teachers get pupils to behave well and observe how pupils act between lessons. Inspectors will also ask parents and pupils to judge how good behaviour is at a school.

However, headteachers said surprise visits implied schools were hiding their problems from inspectors and that an unannounced inspection would not uncover anything that an ordinary two-day visit had not found.

Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the no-notice inspections "smack of a culture that seeks to catch schools out".

"I am pleased that Ofsted has said it wants to do more to help schools address behaviour problems," he said.

"But it is difficult to see how no-notice monitoring visits will help achieve this, as the implicit assumption is that schools have something to hide. The suggestion that schools are somehow able to hide badly behaved children ... is ridiculous. Any inspection team worth its salt would uncover such an approach in minutes. If they cannot do so in a two-day visit, they are hardly likely to do so in an unannounced follow up and serious questions need to be asked about the validity of inspection findings."