Are some school inspectors more lenient than others?

Christian Bokhove (), John Jerrim () and Sam Sims ()
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Christian Bokhove: Southampton Education School, University of Southampton
John Jerrim: UCL Social Research Institute
Sam Sims: UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities

No 23-03, CEPEO Working Paper Series from UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities

Abstract: School inspections are a common feature of education systems across the word. These involve trained professionals visiting schools and reaching a high-stakes judgement about the quality of education they provide. By their nature, school inspections rely upon professional judgement, with different inspectors potentially putting more emphasis on certain areas than others. Yet there is currently little academic evidence investigating the consistency of school inspections, including how judgements vary across inspectors with different characteristics. We present new empirical evidence on this matter, drawing upon data from more than 30,000 school inspections conducted in England between 2011 and 2019. Male inspectors are found to award slightly more lenient judgements to primary schools than their female counterparts, while permanent Ofsted employees (Her Majesty's Inspectors) are found to be harsher than those who inspect schools on a freelance basis (Ofsted Inspectors).

Keywords: school inspection; reliability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 95 pages
Date: 2023-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-ure
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https://repec-cepeo.ucl.ac.uk/cepeow/cepeowp23-03.pdf First version, 2023 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucl:cepeow:23-03

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