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.

@teacherteacher1 I agree. Not only does it set a bad example about how disputes should be resolved to the children but it is also is a bit of a political issue, which should be kept out of the playground.

I also agree that the way Ofsted works is a bit old fashioned. In business, it's all about coaching, small improvements, continuous conversation, identifying skills gaps, empowerment & ownerships as ways of raising performance. Who wants to wait 5 years to learn what you're doing wrong?

I think collective action and protest is a great lesson to teach children. Learning to take a stand against unjust things. All the great people we teach children about- MLk, Gandhi etc all broke the law, caused disruption to meet their ends.

She has since requested that people don’t turn up. I do hope more Heads take this stance and we get some change.

Yes, that is accurate. Lead inspector will feedback at the end of the inspection, to HT, SLT if there are any ( small schools often not) and governors.
Part of the lead inspectors script is that this must not be shared outside of the room other than with governors not present. This is so that the inspection can be quality assured before the report is published. Staff can only know at the point of publication.
Lead inspector always says that during the quality assurance process judgments can change. They obviously do not want to have to have the discrepancy made public.
There is very often a warning from the lead inspector, that if the judgement is ‘leaked’ before the report is published, the school risks an immediate re-inspection.

@AdaLane this is why I am wondering how details of the inspection have been in the press before the report was published. And the report doesn’t give a detailed explanation of the safeguarding concern, so who has leaked that

Was there an appeal/complaint about the inspection as there seems to have been a delay in publishing it?

The report was published in full on the school’s own website, alongside a letter and action plan from the school, I presume because publication by Ofsted was expected. I don’t know if that has since been taken down

(Complaints / reviews are usually within the initial period straight after the inspection, and it would not have got as far as the school’s website putting up a final version if that process was still ongoing. In the case of a re-inspection, no
report is made public via any route until after the second, then the eventual report published with both dates on it. It is vanishingly rare for complaint or re-inspection to change the grade)

My guess is that Ofsted sent it to the school as a standard ‘we’re publishing this within the next day or twi’, so the school put it up on its website with its letter, then Ofsted got cold feet in the light of the furore and didn’t pit it on its own website.

I don’t think I am reaching, but respect that you disagree. There was a youth worker who did maybe 5 assemblies in my whole school career and I met him in my 20s and recognised him 🤷‍♀️

I can’t think what you mean by ‘lots of visitors’ who don’t need dbs checks but it isn’t relevant in this case anyway, because this person did need a dbs and did have access to children.

The closest Ofsted goes to acknowledging a mistake - for example in the case I cited where a safeguarding fail was based on an inspector’s mistake - is when they have a new inspection in a surprisingly short timescale after very positive interim reports, and during which inspectors privately may refer to things having not been done perfectly in the past.

They do not, pretty much as a matter of policy, ever change grades after a complaint, seeing this as a route that would open the floodgates to anyone unhappy with their grades and thus absorbing time and resource.

A lead inspector’s mobile phone rang on an observed lesson during an inspection - and he answered it! When we complained, he wrote a letter in which he typed ‘I APOLOGISED’ - yes. In passive aggressive CAPs.

It is also important to recognise - as Amanda Speilman did in a recent article - that Ofsted is a route for the enactment of Government policy.

As policy changes over time - and faster than the reinspection cycle - schools providing exactly the same standard if education can be inspected in different ways with different outcomes.

Equally, the policy agenda - the explicit intention to dramatically reduce the number of Outstanding schools; the drive to academise schools in counties where LAs are still quite strong - means that Ofsted’s own agenda when arriving at a particular school will be, if possible, to give them a grade to match the policy. The evidence they look for will be evidence to match this agenda - to downgrade Outstanding, to give a second RI to a school in a predominantly LA county - often however flimsy and contrived, and ignoring evidence that does not point ‘the right way’.

What a twat.

Well at some point they must have had a meeting to discuss whether it was appropriate to include a bullet point about the headteacher’s death just above the bullet point that said the school had a breakfast club.

One cannot fathom the lack of humanity in the room that thought that was reasonable.

A show of support this morning

twitter.com/teachertoolkit/status/1638142015606071297?s=46&t=vKGM6xpoeW3wdlaVVVagQA

@noblegiraffe they appear to have removed that bullet point now

She only bloody went and let them in 🤦‍♀️

Where did you see that @felixfeline ?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/education/ofsted-inspection-school-john-rankin-b2304907.html%3famp

Thank you @felixfeline , at least she has brought their behaviour into the spotlight. That's no bad thing

Just chipping in with twopence that for all the "why can't Ofsted be critical friends, why do they take so long to inspect outstanding schools, why don't they check safeguarding every year..." - everything Ofsted does is directed by legislation. They are independent of government, supposedly, but the powers that they exercise are set out in law. Ofsted MUST visit and report on schools, over an inspection cycle of however long. For a number of years, regulations set out that schools graded as outstanding were exempt from routine inspection. Ofsted were pushing to get that changed and a few years ago it was, the Department for Education directed okay go and look at the outstanding schools you haven't visited for 12+ years. Ofsted didn't ignore them by choice, it was government policy that they shouldn't be inspected. So if you want things to change, it's the Education Secretary you have to convince.

The problem there is we’ve had approximately 5 million Ed secs in the past couple of years.

Oh I've noticed - the one who only lasted a day was particularly memorable, did she even get a new nameplate on her office door?

Whatever happened to Education Education Education as a vote-winning political slogan! The next Chief Inspector at Ofsted is being advertised for now; it's the DfE who write that job advert and set the tone for what they want.

Will it be back to a Michael Wilshaw style ex "superhead" who banned kids from hugging and said low staff morale was a sign of being a good school leader?

apply-for-public-appointment.service.gov.uk/roles/6251

Ofsted inspections are statutory.

Prospective childminders at a pre-registration meeting I once attended thought twice about it after the Ofsted inspector stood up, flashed her badge at them and stated: "This badge means I can come into your homes at any time and there is nothing you can do to stop me!"

In that case she seems a bit daft now, she must have known she would have to let them in?! Maybe she was just making a point

@felixfeline maybe she felt she needed to make a point.