Starmer forced to defend scrapping one-word Ofsted assessments

An official review of England's schools inspectorate's response to a tragedy in which a head teacher took her own life after an "inadequate" report has found that the inspectorate – Ofsted – was "defensive and complacent" after her death. That is not hard to believe. An inquest last year had already found that Ofsted, whose inspections are notorious for causing stress among staff, "contributed" to Ruth Perry's death. But the government's decision in advance of the review to scrap Ofsted's one- or two-word assessments is harder to explain. Keir Starmer insists a new system with headline assessments for individual aspects of schools' performance but not overall won't confuse parents. It's not clear that's true; nor that the new system will actually do much to limit staff stress. The old system, introduced under Tony Blair, did arguably at least serve parents.