ISC Daily News Summary

There is further coverage today on the of strength of feeling within the education sector towards Ofsted following the death of Ruth Perry, the headteacher who took her own life in January ahead of the publication of her school's inspection report. Writing for BBC News, Branwen Jeffreys says "it's as though a dam has burst".

Staff at a Berkshire school where a headteacher had planned to refuse an Ofsted visit have been photographed pictured wearing black armbands during the inspection in solidarity with Ms Perry. By Maryam Zakir-Hussain, The Independent.

Writing in Tes, legal expert Alistair Wood explains the rules and regulations governing Ofsted inspections and considers whether schools have the right to refuse one.

A Schools Week investigation has revealed what appears to be a loophole in the Ofsted inspection system, which is based on the principle that schools should only be informed about inspections at most the day before they take place. According to the newspaper, thousands of schools may be receiving “highly unethical” alerts forewarning them to imminent Ofsted inspections by a company that has developed an algorithm to predict potential visits from website monitoring. By Freddie Whittaker.

In a letter published in The Times, Richard Cairns, headmaster of Brighton College and a governor of several state schools over many years, says he has "noticed that heads and teachers live in fear and trepidation of Ofsted" and calls instead for inspections to be "used to shape focused and sustainable improvement plans that are designed to support teachers, not pass judgment upon them". The letter can be found a quarter of the way down the page.

Speaking to The Times, two former headteachers shares their experiences of what the job was like and the challenges they faced. By Damian Whitworth.

Will Bridges, assistant head (teaching and learning), at Bryanston School, writes in Independent Schools Magazine on the issue of artificial intelligence in schools. Using ChatGPT to write parts of the article, Mr Bridges considers the merits and pitfalls of the use of AI and concludes that: "Just because it has the potential to be used with malice, it does not mean we should shut it down."

In a comment piece for The Times, Reza Schwitzer stresses the importance of monitoring the use of AI in exams. Mr Schwitzer, head of external affairs at AQA, says: "Fundamentally, retaining externally marked exams as a core part of our assessment toolkit is the main way we can mitigate the problems associated with ChatGPT."