Duncan is free to defend grades and disagree with Julia. But she must answer the actual campaign, the actual inquest and the actual evidence for Ofsted’s effects. Calling Ofsted reform “class war” is lazy sloganeering and lazy journalism and does none of those things.

Julia has argued for safer, fairer and more accurate inspection. I have worked with her on that aim. No child is served by an inspectorate whose mistakes cannot be independently challenged, or by treating foreseeable harm to school leaders as the price of accountability...

The coroner’s concern about the continuing risk to life led to a Prevention of Future Deaths report. It identified risks in grading, handling distress, confidentiality, delays and Ofsted’s failure to review Ruth’s death. This was no concession to unions “weaponising” tragedy...

This was a severe stress reaction to a series of stressors arising from the Ofsted inspection. It was not simply disappointment about a result. Duncan’s phrase “anticipation of a grade” leaves out the inspection and the system Ruth was crushed by...

The coroner said the medical records made it “abundantly clear” that the Ofsted inspection was the reason for Ruth’s sudden deterioration. Her conclusions identified not a single causal factor unrelated to that inspection...

Duncan claims Gillian Keegan “seemed intimidated” by Julia. Based on what? I attended almost all their meetings. Julia pressed a secretary of state for answers about a system the coroner identified as a causal factor in her sister’s death. Questions deserving proper answers...

Duncan offensively tries to recast a legitimate response to a preventable death as an instrument of union politics. It is offensive to suggest we sought to weaken accountability. We sought safer inspection and better accountability for Ofsted...

Julia has held more than thirty meetings with secretaries of state, the DfE and Ofsted. None was conducted in collaboration with a teaching union. She has worked with unions on a few occasions where their aims aligned with hers. That is not “joining” their campaign...

“Weaponised” is an insidious accusation. Duncan leads with this vile word as if it were fact, without offering evidence that Julia exploited her sister’s death for political purposes. It misrepresents a grieving person’s actions and invites readers to regard them with distrust...

Thank you, Ruth. Exactly this. Accountability should help schools identify what must improve and support them to do so. A grading system that frightens leaders, drives staff away and damages a school’s reputation can destabilise the very education it claims to protect.

A grotesque rhetorical inversion: empathy becomes pathology, preventing avoidable harm is weakness, calculated indifference seen as courage. If care's dismissed as dangerous, refusing responsibility can be sold as realism, death becomes an acceptable consequence of accountability

Nobody argues that threatening suicide should change a school’s grade. Harwood invents that demand, then warns that conceding it invites blackmail. Preventing a state system from causing avoidable harm is not appeasement. It is the elementary duty of those operating it…

That is why NAHT is calling for grading to be paused. It continues to hear accounts of acute stress caused by the current system. This is not a demand to end accountability, but evidence that the reforms have failed to make high-stakes inspection safe…