First headteacher refuses to be Ofsteded in boycott

[noblegiraffe]

There has been talk on twitter over the weekend of a boycott of Ofsted in protest at its ridiculous system of stressful high-stakes inspections and public shaming, following the suicide of a headteacher in January after her outstanding primary was downgraded to inadequate.

This morning the first brave headteacher has put her head above the parapet. Ofsted called to notify of an inspection tomorrow and the head said no.

twitter.com/florascooper/status/1637760884243066881?s=46&t=vKGM6xpoeW3wdlaVVVagQA

She is calling for people to come to the school tomorrow morning to support the boycott (details on twitter).

I hope this becomes the catalyst for a serious review and reform of the inspection system.

So what phrase would be better than inadequate safeguarding? The school was praised to the skies everywhere else,and I know some think that should have carried the school through to good with targets to improve safeguarding, and I just can’t agree with that. That’s not to say that I don’t have every sympathy for what’s happened, but I don’t think there’s a way around it other than a cloak and dagger approach to reporting on schools which does no one any favours.

Branwen Jeffreys of the BBC is reporting that the inspection will now go ahead.

There is no need for grading.
And a reformed system doesn't even need to have safeguarding under the same inspection.

Safeguarding is essential. It should not be left for years to check if it's such high stakes as to completely downgrade an otherwise good school.

Safeguarding should be a monitoring process rather than an inspection style one. Regular, annual, supportive and advisory. Any lapses - which would be seriously reduced due to regular monitoring - to be followed up in within xxx days/weeks to ensure all is as it should be.

I agrée with this…

It's not someone saying that the safeguarding was inadequate that's the issue. Of course it needed to be said.

The issue is that it was tied to the OFSTED inspection that basically defines the school in one word. And reduces all the hard work of all the staff to that one word. Which will mean that parents will not send their children there, which will mean redundancies and massively reduced funding. Its reputation would take a decade to recover.

All because of one issue which would have been put right within days of the issue being pointed out.

Had an annual low key check on safeguarding happened and the head been told of the omission, she would not be dead now. She'd have put things in place instantly to resolve the issue, it would have been checked again, and she'd have got in with running her school and providing that good education to her pupils.

She is being very brave, but is it legal to reuse?

Wasn’t the school in Reading one of those that people move into catchment for? So they pay more for their house etc so maybe head felt she let the kids down and more… ?

Ultimately, I think there has to be basic regulation so schools do correct DBS’ and eg health needs are met (allergies, special needs etc). That kind of thing.
I do not understand why it has to be a publicity stunt the whole Ofsted report thing. I think Ofsted inspections should always be run, but I think they should be confidential. Because in reality Ofsted inspections have become a sort of marketing tool for schools to attract the right sort of families putting them down on their forms, and that is not right! It is way too commercial. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, more kids, more funding etc. The only thing that matters are the fundamentals and the checks need to be carried out and management hold to account if there are unsafe issues, but parents don’t really need to know in most cases.

So what phrase would be better than inadequate safeguarding?

How helpful is a single phrase? Why is safeguarding mashed up with the rest of inspection stuff anyway?

A yearly detailed report would be more helpful.

You could have 'pass' or 'follow-up needed' where they come back in 6 weeks to check the actions have been taken.

Outstanding, even
😉

Exactly that.

And fixing that would be very simple, and in everyone's best interests.

Sorry I missed your reply, thank you for being kind.

Its just so massively emotive on all sides isn’t it.

I think a single phrase can be helpful if the single phrase sums up whether something is effective or otherwise. I really don’t feel a school should be said to be good, outstanding, effective, whatever we want to say, if it’s safeguarding is not.

OFSTED is undoubtedly responsible for a lot of shit in education, but putting education to one side for a moment, arguing for safeguarding failures - in any context - not to be reported because the person failing might be distressed by it sets a worrying precedent.

No one is arguing for safeguarding not to be checked.
Infact a proposed change to annual monitoring would be safer for all.

Although I am sympathetic, this seems a really difficult position to take as a headteacher.

They think that Ofsted inspections are too stressful and high stakes. But they are in the business of putting their pupils through similarly stressful and high stakes inspections in the form of public exams .

They bemoan the "shaming" aspect of an Ofsted but there is definitely more than a whiff of that in the discipline techniques that are used by teachers on school children. (We get daily records of "E's" recording every forgotten ruler or momentary lapse in behaviour, for example).

I just think if you are headteacher you can't afford to be an iconoclast. You have to follow the rules. Because when the headteachers start publicly breaking Ofsted's rules, how are they going to be able to ensure their own school rules are followed?

You raise good points.
U wonder how the HT will feel when her pupils starts protesting things they don’t like at the school

Literally no one is arguing that safeguarding shouldn’t be checked. Remember, we’re the same people reporting safeguarding concerns on a daily basis. We do this job because we care.

Under OFSTED, some schools weren’t inspected for more than ten years because they were previously outstanding. Under a reformed system, safeguarding protocols could/should be checked more often than they are at the moment - with support put in place about how to improve them, rather than a judgment made about them by someone who then fucks off.

By the way, this headteacher is now saying ‘please don’t turn up tomorrow to support the school’. This is for safeguarding reasons.

I think that many of those seeing the word ‘safeguarding’ imagine that a ‘safeguarding fail’ means an actual risk to children.

Ofsted’s judgements are often so snap, based on such a tiny amount of evidence, that a failure can be about something ludicrously small, but blown out of all proportion because - while schools amass and contain a mountain of evidence - the amount actually scrutinised during a 2 day inspection is miniscule.

However, once the inspector gets an idea in their head about one particular aspect, many will actively seek out any and all evidence that supports it (the very antithesis of proper sampling and scrutiny of the quality of evidence.

So I have known a safeguarding fail based, at heart, purely on an inspector incorrectly identifying a member if staff and their role. To cover up the embarrassment of having to admit this mistake, they actively magnified other tiny scraps of evidence to draw a ‘failing’ conclusion.

My guess is that ‘some’ staff very much meant ‘one’, but Ofsted didn’t want to admit the flimsiness of their evidence base,

They think that Ofsted inspections are too stressful and high stakes. But they are in the business of putting their pupils through similarly stressful and high stakes inspections in the form of public exams

What tosh. First, teachers don’t decide on the high stakes public exams; most of us would like those reformed too. Believe it or not, most of us quite like children. Secondly, individual pupils’ exams aren’t reduced to single words, published in the press, sent to all of the schools’ stakeholders…

I met someone who worked for Ofsted years ago and she was telling me how miserable it was - she had joined to use her knowledge to help schools and had originally been doing just that. She said over time they had been pushed to be more and more critical and the helping aspect disappeared, and that loads of people were off on sick leave because they were so unhappy at what it had become.

I do understand this argument.

The problem is that when you’re talking about safeguarding, the little things really do matter.

It’s been reported in the press that the staff who didn’t know how to report safeguarding concerns were dinner ladies, so it didn’t matter as much as if they were teachers. That’s so wrong. A dinner lady is exactly the sort of person a child is likely to confide in, or give ‘hints’ that they are not ok. We will
never know if there were children who slipped through the gaps because those dinner ladies didn’t know what to look for.

The other press reports have said that the person who wasn’t checked was a one off speaker, not a regular member of staff. But a one off speaker might see a child from the school again out of school, and be able to strike up a conversation and gain trust based completely on the fact that the child met them at their school, in a safe environment surrounded by people the child knows and trusts.

It’s treated with such seriousness for good reasons.

I wholeheartedly agree that safeguarding, if it really is deemed so important as to cause the failure of a whole school, should be an ongoing process, checked annually. It's actually outrageous for this NOT to happen because Ofsted inspections in some schools happen so infrequently that anything could be happening between them.

Now being reported (Branwen Jeffreys) that the inspection will go ahead.

The other press reports have said that the person who wasn’t checked was a one off speaker, not a regular member of staff. But a one off speaker might see a child from the school again out of school, and be able to strike up a conversation and gain trust based completely on the fact that the child met them at their school, in a safe environment surrounded by people the child knows and trusts.

You're really reaching here. Schools have lots of visitors and as long as they're accompanied by staff there's no need for a DBS. Children see any number of people visiting school, and the odds of them coming across them and being in any danger from having a vague memory of having seem then before, is vanishingly small.

Safeguarding should be a monitoring process rather than an inspection style one. Regular, annual, supportive and advisory. Any lapses - which would be seriously reduced due to regular monitoring - to be followed up in within xxx days/weeks to ensure all is as it should be

Now that I could definitely get onboard with; there's still the question of who'd do it, but it would mean no leaving things far too long and allowing the rot to set in before anything's done, no one word emotive judgements and no applying the result of one aspect to the entire school

Just one question: under an "ongoing" process like this, how should a school's effectiveness in this area be best communicated to parents?

Interestingly if you are an independent school you can continually be judged as inadequate for safeguarding and no action is taken at all