Education staff wellbeing and workload: ‘Causing Concern’ in the proposed Ofsted Inspection Toolkits

We, like many of you, have been very interested in Ofsted’s current consultation on proposed changes to their inspections in England, following the biggest consultation Ofsted have ever undertaken; the 2024 ‘Big Listen’. The proposals relate to inspections of early years (EY), schools, further education (FE) and skills providers and initial teacher education (ITE). Proposals include the introduction of inspection toolkits, and grades for a range of areas, on a 5-point scale from causing concern (red) through to exemplary (black). which you can see in draft here https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/improving-the-way-ofsted-inspects-education.

In this blog, we are taking a ‘deep dive’ into a specific area of the proposed Inspection Toolkits; staff wellbeing and workload, which appears in the school, early years and FE toolkits in the Leadership and Governance section. Here we are using the ITE toolkit for our ‘deep dive’ as our own wellbeing research has been in this sector (Wood & Quickfall, 2024). In the ITE toolkit, staff wellbeing and workload are covered in the final section entitled ‘Professional behaviours, personal development and well-being’.