By ensuring that the ENTIRE national school landscape is managed & reviewed in a comparable manner then surely we can demonstrate our competitiveness against any other establishment. We can offer not only the obvious advantages of pastoral care & high-level learning opportunities, but also schools that are managed effectively and transparently.

This is what ISI ought to do now, not wait & allow independent schools to drop behind their public sector competitors.

What we don’t need is another layer of bureaucracy. There is a democratic point here: Ofsted inspects maintained schools and reports to the Secretary of State; ISI inspects independent schools and reports to the Secretary of State. And so there both regulators are directly accountable to Parliament - inserting Ofsted into the chain of accountability on the independent side reduces democratic accountability.

In addition Ofsted is regarded as overstretched already. The Education Select Committee said as much, in damning terms, in its report this Summer. So why are we giving it more responsibility?

And finally, Ofsted ir regarded as a rather inflexible assessor - “death by tickboxes” is a phrase I hear again and again. The independent sector is, by its nature, less likely to fit processes driven by checklists.