OFSTED reforms brought in following headteacher Ruth Perry’s death have made the system worse, the National Education Union (NEU) said today.

The school inspectorate replaced single-word overall judgements with a five-point scale report card after her suicide in January 2023 following a critical Ofsted inspection that downgraded her school to “inadequate” sparked significant concerns.

A motion calling for Ofsted to be abolished — alleging the framework remains too rigid to judge special and complex schools, worsens inconsistency and adds workload on already-stretched inspectors — was passed unanimously at NEU’s annual conference in Brighton.

Moving, Brent delegate Vina Vekria said: “This is about the entire institution, which is corrupt and it needs to go.”

She described the changes as “cheap perfume” amid one “ongoing truth which persists: Ofsted kills.”

Seconding, national executive member Ian Walters said: “They’ve made an appalling inspection framework even worse. 

“What we have seen in the first inspections since the new framework has been simply disgraceful.

“We are back to evaluating poverty, not evaluating education.”

Delegates heard that the first 100 or so reports after the reforms included 12 with identical passages under “next steps.”

Teachers also condemned the use of Ofsted as a “political tool” after a Bristol secondary school was subject to a snap inspection for postponing a visit by a local MP member of Labour Friends of Israel.

NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede said: “Ofsted causes more harm than good, and we need urgent and fundamental reform. 

“Inspection outcomes are often inconsistent and disproportionately penalise schools that educate our most disadvantaged students. 

“The NEU’s position is clear: we need fundamental reform to school inspection and a system that is supportive, effective and fair.”