A new inspection framework aims to end the culture of exam cramming

Exam results are to be downgraded as a measure of school quality as the chief inspector moves to stamp out a culture of cramming children for tests.

Days before 700,000 teenagers pick up their results in the new tougher GCSEs and A-levels, The Sunday Times has been leaked details of a new inspection framework to be brought in next year.

Exam results, or “outcomes”, by which schools have long been judged, will be replaced with a measure called “quality of education”.

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Inspectors will identify and mark down “exam factory” schools that narrowly “teach to the test” and do not offer a rich education including art, music, sport and drama. The chief inspector, Amanda Spielman, believes children are being “betrayed” in such schools.

“The culture