Sean Harford became National Director, Education in September 2015. Sean was appointed Her Majesty’s Inspector in 2003. Since joining Ofsted he has worked in school improvement, school inspection policy and organisational restructuring. His previous post in Ofsted was Regional Director (South).
Before joining Ofsted, Sean was a teacher and a successful senior leader in a secondary school in the East of England, as well as associate adviser for a local authority.
Follow Sean on Twitter @HarfordSean
Sean Harford, Ofsted's National Director for Education, discusses the work of our subject curriculum groups.
Sean Harford, National Director, Education on the wealth of information available from Ofsted on its proposed education inspection framework.
Sean Harford, National Director, Education, on how Ofsted will evaluate and review multi-academy trusts.
Sean Harford, National Director, Education on first ever prosecution for running an unregistered school.
Sean Harford, National Director, Education on the findings of Ofsted's report, 'Growing up neglected'.
Sean Harford, Ofsted's National Director, Education, on the new tool that collects evidence electronically and the feedback gathered from the pilot inspections where it was tested.
Sean Harford and Jason Bradbury, Ofsted's Chief Statistician look at the range of evidence in inspection judgements for schools with high proportions of White British pupils and on free school meals.
With the anticipation of exam results in the air, thoughts will be turning to the future. That’s where careers guidance comes in. So how do we assess the effectiveness of the careers guidance on offer?
There's been a lot of talk recently in the media about algorithms. Facebook has come under scrutiny for their use of algorithms to target users with specific adverts or content. Uber and Deliveroo are using them to support their business model. Public bodies such as HMRC and the Home Office are using algorithmic analysis to look at data and make decisions. I wrote recently about how we’re using them to risk assess schools to help us decide when in the inspection cycle to inspect them.
Inspection is above all about human judgement. Therefore, the quality of Ofsted’s work and our value as a force for improvement depend absolutely on the knowledge and expertise of our inspectors.