Yesterday, I received our draft inspection report.

As the word draft is attached to it, I should immediately point out that there are limits to what I can discuss until the final report is published. Quite understandably, school leaders are expected to treat draft reports with a level of confidentiality that occasionally feels somewhere between safeguarding documentation and the Official Secrets Act.

So, whilst carefully avoiding the disclosure of anything that might threaten national security, I thought I would reflect on the inspection process itself.

After 24 years as a headteacher, I have experienced more Ofsted inspections than I care to count. I have worked in schools across the South of England and, in truth, most inspections have been professional and constructive experiences. This one was no exception.

The lead inspector was knowledgeable, fair, thoughtful and professional throughout.

This is not a criticism of inspectors. It is a criticism of a system. Because the longer I spend in school leadership, the more Ofsted reminds me of something from the pages of Kafka. Not because it is sinister. Because it is surreal.

Yesterday’s report arrived electronically, accompanied by instructions explaining how to raise factual inaccuracies. Dutifully, I followed the process. I replied to the email.

I was then informed that I could not reply to that email address and would instead need to send my response to the email address from which the report had been sent.

It was the same email address.

Now, before anyone accuses me of making a mountain out of a molehill, let me be clear. This is not some great injustice. But it is absurd. And absurdity has a habit of accumulating.

In Kafka’s novels, people spend entire chapters attempting to establish contact with the very authorities that are already communicating with them. Instructions generate further instructions. Progress appears to be taking place whilst somehow nobody actually arrives anywhere.

Being told not to reply to the email I had just replied to, but instead to reply to the email from which it had been sent, felt like a remarkably efficient modern version of the same experience.

Take our age-range designation.

Historically, inspections have reflected our registrations. We have a DfE registration for our 0-2 provision and a separate registration for our 3-11 provision. Previous inspections have recognised those distinctions. Naturally, therefore, we expected a 0-2 inspection. Ofsted had never suggested otherwise. Then, at 5pm on the evening before the inspection, the designation changed. Not to 0-2. Not even to 0-11. But to 0-4. No consultation. No discussion.No prior warning. One moment we were preparing for one inspection. The next, we were preparing for another.

The irony was impossible to ignore. For well over a year, my Business Manager and I had explored whether it was possible to formally move towards a 0-11 designation. We asked questions. We explored processes. We sought clarity. The answer was effectively that it could not be done. Yet at 5pm on the evening before inspection, Ofsted managed to alter our designation with remarkable ease. What had apparently been impossible for us over the course of a year became entirely possible for somebody else in an afternoon. Perhaps there is an explanation. There usually is. But one of Kafka’s recurring themes is that there is often a considerable gap between an explanation existing somewhere within a system and the people affected ever getting to understand it. The experience was simply this: something we had been unable to achieve through months of enquiry and process was achieved instantly without our involvement. The lesson seemed to be that what was impossible for us was entirely possible for Ofsted.

Kafka’s characters are forever discovering that the rules governing their lives have changed somewhere behind the scenes. Nobody tells them beforehand. Nobody asks for their view. Nobody explains the rationale. The change simply arrives, fully formed, and the individual is expected to adapt immediately.

Discovering that the inspection we had expected was no longer the inspection we would receive (at 5pm the evening before it started!), felt strangely familiar.

Then there was the inspection feedback. The report carries my name. The accountability sits with me. The correspondence comes to me. The judgement is attached to me as Headteacher. Yet before delivering feedback, the lead inspector asked my amazing Nursery Manager whether it was acceptable for me to be present. I remember sitting there thinking that if Kafka had spent time working in education, he might have struggled to improve on the symbolism. I was apparently accountable enough to receive the judgement, but not automatically entitled to hear it. Again, no great injustice. Just another small moment in which logic appeared to take a coffee break. If Kafka had been asked to write a scene about accountability, it might have looked something like this. The person responsible for the inspection sits waiting to hear the findings of the inspection conducted in their name while another person is asked whether they may remain in the room.

Nobody questions it. Everybody proceeds. The logic is never quite explained.

And then there was the timing.

The inspection took place in August.Oh YES! August… Technically, there is nothing wrong with that. Our nursery operates all year round. We only close between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day. On paper, therefore, an August inspection is perfectly reasonable. But schools do not exist on paper. They exist in reality. August is different. Headteachers are on holiday. Teachers are on holiday. Support staff are taking annual leave that they have earned after another demanding year. Staffing patterns are different. We have all year round contracts but the summer is different to term time. Provision is quieter. The rhythm of the organisation changes.

Of course, when the call comes, you return. What headteacher wouldn’t?

I have never understood the assumption that a Headteacher’s holiday somehow diminishes their commitment to accountability. Headteachers do not stop caring because they have crossed a county boundary or boarded a ferry. If the call comes, they come back.If they can… or they quietly die inside… The real question is not whether a Headteacher wants to be present. It is whether anyone seriously believes they wouldn’t or shouldn’t.

I was fortunate. My trip to Ireland had taken place earlier in the summer. Had it fallen during inspection week, I would almost certainly have been making arrangements to return. Most Headteachers would. Because schools are are more than just jobs. They are responsibilities. They travel with you, even when they shouldn’t. What concerns me is not that inspections happen. It is the apparent assumption that the physical absence of a Headteacher is of little consequence to the process. After twenty-four years in school leadership, I can say with confidence that no inspection can fully understand a school without understanding its leader.

That is not ego. It is reality.

The Headteacher carries the history of the school, the rationale behind key decisions, the strategic direction, the context, the relationships with staff and families and ultimately; the responsibility for every outcome. Schools are communities before they are organisations. And Headteachers are central figures within those communities.

There is a phrase often associated with Ofsted inspections: inspectors should act without fear or favour.

I agree entirely. But “without fear or favour” should never be confused with “without empathy” or “without compassion”. Those should not be opposing ideas. In fact, Ofsted’s own guidance speaks of inspectors demonstrating professionalism, courtesy, empathy and respect and taking steps to minimise stress and anxiety.

Accountability and humanity are not enemies.They should be partners. No reasonable Headteacher is asking to avoid inspection. No reasonable Headteacher is asking for standards to be lowered. We are simply asking for an inspectorate that remembers the immense responsibility carried by those leading schools and understands that recognising circumstances is not the same as excusing them.

Compassion is not the enemy of accountability. Quite often, it is what gives accountability its legitimacy.

Kafka’s genius was not that he wrote about evil people. He wrote about ordinary people trapped inside systems that had become so absorbed in their own procedures that they no longer noticed the human beings standing in front of them. That is why his work still resonates a century later. Not because most of us will ever find ourselves arrested without explanation, summoned before mysterious authorities or wandering endlessly through bureaucratic labyrinths. But because most of us have experienced that sinking feeling of dealing with a system that appears unable to distinguish between following a process and serving a purpose.

After twenty-four years as a Headteacher, countless inspections and many positive experiences with inspectors, I am left with a simple conclusion: accountability matters, but humanity matters too.

Schools are not spreadsheets. Communities are not datasets. Headteachers are not interchangeable functionaries. We are people entrusted with leading schools, caring for children, supporting families and carrying responsibilities that rarely switch off, even during a holiday in Ireland.

The inspector was excellent. The children were wonderful. The staff, as always, rose magnificently to the challenge.

My concern is the system itself. Because when you find yourself unable to reply to the email that sent the email, preparing for an inspection that changes the evening before it begins, wondering whether you may attend feedback on your own inspection, worrying you’ll get the call whilst on holiday, and speaking concerns into a void that appears incapable of answering back, you cannot help but think of Kafka.

Not because the system is malicious. But because it has become so convinced of its own logic that it can no longer see the absurdity visible to everyone else.

And that, perhaps, is the most Kafkaesque lesson of all.