[T]he community suffers nothing very terrible if its cobblers are bad and become degenerate and pretentious; but if the Guardians of the laws and state, who alone have the opportunity to bring it good government and prosperity, become a mere sham, then clearly it is completely ruined.

— Plato. The Republic 421a (Penguin Classics) (Kindle Locations 2815-2817). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

I am not sure if I agree with Plato about cobblers and the community. As Benjamin Franklin once pointed out: “For want of a shoe…the kingdom was lost.”

However, I think his statement about the Guardians of the state stands. Equally so with the state-appointed guardians of education: Ofsted.

I think Professor Coe (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24079951) has done the education world a huge service by pointing out that the Ofsted king has no clothes. However, perhaps in the manner of scrupulous academics everywhere, Professor Coe might prefer a more nuanced “the king probably doesn’t have any clothes”.

Coe pointed out that there is no — repeat, no — valid research supporting the “Ofsted model” of classroom observation being either: (a) a reliable tool for assessing teaching quality or effectiveness when cross-referenced with other measures such as student learning gains; or (b) the observation-feedback process leading to an improvement in teaching quality. (See  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-UyGwYHhGY for the section of his talk on classroom observations and http://t.co/AqY7Xqzknw for a link to his slides.)

I don’t know about anyone else but I am staggered by this. As a working teacher who is just about maintaining a precarious foothold on the treacherous scree of middle management, I always thought my seniors and betters had reams of evidence supporting the stuff they were asking us to do. And if they didn’t, well probably their seniors and betters did.

To hear a respected academic say that classroom observation might be “the next Brain Gym” was shocking.

And the Ofsted response? “Tosh and nonsense,” said Sir Michael Wilshaw.  “I don’t know of any headteacher who doesn’t believe that classroom observation isn’t anything other than a help. The fact that we are an inspectorate and we do make judgements has made a huge amount of difference.” According to the TES (13/9/13 p.8):

He said that new figures released this week, showing a 9 percentage point rise in the proportion of schools judged to be good or outstanding, proved that the watchdog’s tougher inspection regime had “galvanised the system”

This is, to my mind, a textbook example of the logical fallacy known as petito principii or “circular reasoning”. The form of this particular logical fallacy is as follows:

Logical Form:

     Claim X assumes X is true.

     Claim X is therefore, true.

Bennett, Bo (2012-02-21). Logically Fallacious: The Ultimate Collection of Over 300 Logical Fallacies (p. 82). eBookIt.com. Kindle Edition.

Let’s see what Wilshaw said again.

• The inspectorate’s judgements make a huge amount of [presumably positive] difference.
• Ofsted judgements show that more schools (9 percentage points!) are good or outstanding.

…therefore Ofsted judgements make a huge amount of positive difference.

Now please note that this does not necessarily mean that the conclusion (that Ofsted helps schools improve) is false, but merely that the argument put forward by the Chief Inspector to support that conclusion is fallacious. And it hopefully goes without saying that a fallacious argument is by definition invalid and must be dropped immediately.

The character Chief Brody in the film Jaws once remarked that they needed “a bigger boat”. The Chief Inspector needs a better argument. And in view of the large amount of taxpayers’ money going to support Ofsted, that new argument should be supplied sooner rather than later. As Professor Coe remarked (somewhat plaintively) in his excellent talk: “Just one would be nice.”

H’mm. More rigour, anyone?