She joined the senior leadership team at Ark Schools in 2005. From 2011 to 2016, Spielman was Chair of Ofqual.[5]
Early life and education
Spielman was born in North Kensington, London. Aged five, she moved to Glasgow for her mother's lecturing job where Spielman attended Notre Dame, a state primary convent school.[6]
With KMG Thomson McLintock from 1982 to 1986 and then Kleinwort Benson from 1986 to 1992, she served as a director of Newstead Capital from 1992 until 1994[10] and of Bridgewater Business Analysis from 1994 to 1995.
From 2005 onwards Spielman was a founding member of the management team at Ark Schools.[13][14][15] From 2011 to 2016 she chaired Ofqual, the examinations and qualifications regulator.
In 2021 it was reported she was seeking an extension to her five-year tenure due to the Covid crisis interrupting the roll out of her new inspection framework.[18] A two-year extension was confirmed in May.[19]
Policy positions
In 2018, Spielman supported a primary school headteacher's right to set a uniform policy that did not permit hijab for pupils in Key Stage 1 (ages 4–7). The UK's National Education Union (NEU) described this as "naked racism dressed up as liberalism".[20]
In 2018, she backed a ban on mobile phones in classrooms. In the same speech, she urged strict pupil discipline, saying "there is nothing kind about letting a few pupils spoil school for everyone else".[21]
In December 2018, Spielman asserted that basic parenting duties should not be outsourced to schools and teachers: for instance, potty training was "a normal part of parenting in every other country" and it was "startling" that any British parents could allow their children to continue wearing nappies for years.[22]
In 2019, she said that students who had sexual assault allegations made against them should be free to continue attending school along with their accusers. This contradicted Ofsted's own guidance and led to criticism that her lack of understanding of basic safeguarding procedures made her unfit to be head of Ofsted.[23]
In June 2021 she declared Years 11 and 13 (ages 16 and 18) should be kept in schools despite the cancellation of exams and the substantial extra workload imposed on teachers as a result, and said Ofsted would "want to know how" schools were using contact time with Year 11.[24] This was strongly criticised by teachers, who said that most of Years 11 and 13 saw no point in staying after exams had been cancelled.[25]
Following the death of headteacher Ruth Perry in 2023, Spielman acknowledged that "a culture of fear exists over the watchdog's inspections".[26] A coroner investigating Perry's suicide found that the Ofsted inspection of her school "contributed" to her death and found the inspection "lacked fairness, respect and sensitivity" and was at times "rude and intimidating""[27] Perry's death had resulted in calls for one-word inspection judgements given by Ofsted to be scrapped, something Spielman insisted "was up the government" to change, and that such one-word judgements "weren't wrong".[28][29]
Spielman's term as head of Ofsted ended in December 2023 and she was replaced by Martyn Oliver,[3] who immediately ordered a suspension in inspections whilst training was improved.[30]
^"SPIELMAN, Amanda Mary Victoria", Who's Who 2017, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 2017; online edn, Oxford University Press, 2016; online edn, Nov 2016 accessed 11 March 2017
.jpg)
