‘Absolutely not a checklist’, says Ofsted music lead on subject crib sheet

The ‘aide memoire’ for primary and secondary music inspections is ‘absolutely not a checklist for inspectors’, Ofsted’s national lead for music has said.

Christopher Stevens was speaking at a Music Mark webinar about assessment in music yesterday (on Wednesday) when CEO Bridget Whyte gave him the opportunity to make a statement on this topic.

Earlier this week, confidential ‘aide memoires’ or crib sheets for each school subject were shared on social media, causing discussion and concern among educators about Ofsted’s ‘secrecy’ and ‘lack of transparency’.

Ofsted has since come under pressure to officially publish the aide memoires.

The documents, which have now been shared among teachers on Twitter via Dropbox or other document-sharing platforms, are marked ‘Official - CONFIDENTIAL - For training only - December 2020’.

Stevens, who frequently speaks at music education events and has previously been interviewed by MT, told the Music Mark delegates: ‘The aide memoires are part of a training programme for inspectors. Those aide memoires only make sense in the context of having done that training. They are absolutely not a checklist for inspectors.’

He added that they’re part of ‘the results of four hours of training’, and ‘would only be used by inspectors to remind them of some of the key messages’. 

Stevens continued: ‘The crucial point about this is that the messages of that training are the same as the messages we share in our research review. We take this transparency really seriously because it’s really important for the sector that they understand what our conception of quality is. There’s nothing in that crib sheet that hasn’t been said in our research review.'

‘[The crib sheets are] for a very particular audience as a result of training, and they’re not to be used as tick lists and they’re not used as tick lists by inspectors. They’re not standalone checklists.’ 

Ofsted has since issued an official statement: 'Inspectors assess schools using the education inspection framework and the school inspection handbook – and we always encourage schools to read those.

'We don’t publish inspector training materials as they are specifically designed to support inspection activity. Without the context of our wider training programme, they are incomplete and do not work as guidance to schools. However, the information they contain is already available in our published research, videos, blogs and curriculum roadshow materials.'