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.

Yes and I'm saying that's how it should be.

If it's a month before they'll spend that month making everything perfect.

A day before and they see the reality of the school. Which is what's needed.

Good for her. I hope more schools do the same.

I'm a Foster carer and have on the spot inspections.

Someone will just knock on my door and go through my full house.

It would be pointless for them to give me a month's notice.

They need to see what condition my house is in at any given moment to gauge the reality.

The problem is the way the judgements are applied, not so much the lack of notice.

This school took the unusual approach of contextualising their ofsted report and some of it does make me wonder

https://www.raf-benson.oxon.sch.uk/ofsted-report-september-2022/

Yes, but inspections need to be supportive. Ofsted aren't supportive.
They come in, tell us how shit we are (nit picking at absolutely everything), then leave. They don't actually tell us how to improve, or work alongside schools to help them improve.
Parents then told the grading and basically everything you've ever done for the school since the last inspection is defined by that grading.
What should be happening is Ofsted being full of actual teachers who have actually run successful schools before, no gradings, no damning report for everyone to see.
They work with a school for maybe a week, having time with teachers to help develop their practice, hold staff meetings to help develop the curriculum.

@BlackeyedSusan sorry I was agreeing with you. Might seem like I'm not! Didn't read your post properly.

Started another thread in AIBU www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4767293-the-fight-back-against-ofsted-has-begun-support-needed?page=3&reply=124783893

Not as supportive as this one - lots of people really don't understand why OFSTED is not about standards and safeguarding first and foremost. Why would they? Hope this raises the debate.

But as pointed out already, schools don’t just go into prep mode when there’s an inspection. They are endlessly preparing. If you’re a local authority foster carer I can assure you your local authority will also be endlessly preparing for their ofsted inspection even if it’s some way away. It takes so much time away from staff getting on with the job, and that’s in a situation where staff share the burden rather that it all landing on a headteacher.

In addition to Ofsted (Estyn for us as we are in Wales - Estyn translates as extend, or stretch) we have always had layers of other support and/or monitoring. County advisors. Challenge advisors/School improvement officers.

There should be no reason that the county advisors couldn't be involved in looking at school dev plans and carry out their own monitoring visits. They could then just be audited themselves to ensure they were doing a good job.

Yes but if I'm having a work review I have 1-1 every month with my manager, a.half yearly appraisal as well as my yearly appraisal. So if there is something I'm not doing up to the standard expected I have lots of opportunities to address it.
I don't just have a review once every 4 years and then branded an "unsatisfactory" employee if I happen to be having a bad week, and shamed in front of the rest of the company and everyone else I know!

I’m not sure about this. However, this could be very true if you mean schools which were graded outstanding years and years ago and have not been inspected since. Schools can change hugely in just a few years.

...and I'll add that nor is your work review report published to the entire country (or the world, actually) with all your colleagues and all the companies clients sent a link so that they can read about all your areas for improvement.

England also has that, but often only for schools who have asked for help or who have clear issues around safeguarding or academic results.

a few years ago when my son first became a teacher he had an internal inspection and got outstanding comments from a senior mentor, he used the same lesson plan the following week for the ofsted inspection, the inspector wasn't there at the beginning of the lesson left before the end, wasn't her subject but marked him down, he was furious, he is now a senior practitioner and teaches other teachers and has helped turn round a failing school

There are no school improvement officers left in my LA. Even if there were it would be a traded service that academies would have to pay for our of their own budgets. Pre-academisation there would have been an offer on the table to all schools.

The system needs to change. The trouble is, that many parents see 'outstanding' and register their child. The Ofsted report could be years out of date by then. Parents need to visit schools, talk to current parents and choose the school that best fits their own child.
The stress comes from all the publicity surrounding Ofsted. Yes, schools should be accountable, but does it really have to be made public? Ofsted should be looking to assess, identifying any weaknesses and then making sure that measures are in place to make improvements where necessary.

It’s my personal opinion that Ofsted is being used as a political tool to force academisation on schools who have resisted it.

We seem to have kept the county school improvement top tier - the ones who want to engage with school development plans and do learning walks etc. They engage with all schools, not those with issues. Our previous inspection was rated Outstanding. There is probably an awareness of which schools have just had inspections and didn't do so well and need their help, and those who are due (overdue) inspections, where they also make sure they support in advance.

But we've lost all the subject advisors, who had such a valuable role in being subject specialists and who held training courses or could come to your school to support you and your staff with training or monitoring as you identified.

To me, it's not so much what happens during the inspection as the outcome. The one word verdict and then move on and leave the school to pick up the pieces.

Get rid of categories. Have a school improvement team in each council who the school are referred to for any area which needs improvement - and this team actually works with the school and helps them do what's needed, not just demands updates and reports from the school. So, as a PP said, they're in charge of French in their primary school but they have no time and no expertise - so send someone into the school who does have the time & expertise and get them to design the curriculum, learning materials etc, get it how it should be and hand it over to the school.

Of course, this means £££ so it's not going to happen.

There used to be a system ( when dinosaurs roamed) with an Inspectorate (HMI ) who went in, they were almost all ex headteachers, knew how schools run and often acted as critical friends to heads and teachers.

There were also local inspectors , and advisors - remember them - who knew the schools, the heads and the situation on their patch. I am sure a similar system could be restored rather than the negative and heavy handed hammer Ofsted has turned into . Inspection should be about improvement, not blame. Heads are often too scared to be honest about what is happening in their schools.

Fair enough point. I think most people don't actually know how OFSTED works so it's hard to make am opinion subjectively.

You're totally right @HairyMcLair - the schools that do best for pupils with SEND are generally not rated outstanding. The schools that are rated outstanding are far too busy chasing ratings by playing the game - they don't have time for working with pupils whose SEND may drag down their phonics screening scores or GCSE grades. Yes an oversimplification, but far too depressingly common. The imminence of an OFSTED inspection was even used by one Head as a reason they couldn't offer a space to my DC with SEND. Unlawful but again common. OFSTED isn't working for DC like ours.

One of the things that bothered me most about ofsted inspections was that they were not in any way reflective of the actual school. So they felt pointless.
This particular school I worked at were just good at faking and hiding all of the problems and the inspectors had very little understanding of special education.

They got the teachers to complete hours worth of paperwork in the two days before hand, which took them all out of the classroom and stressed them all out, they all stayed so late getting everything ready.

And then on the day, we randomly had all of our unfilled positions filled with agency staff, and members of SLT office staff were helping supervise lunchbreaks.
SLT kept 'appearing' to help handle behaviours and incidents but as they never usually did they just made things worse or deviated form the kids plans which upset them.
The teachers had these stuctured lessons with extra songs and resources we had never seen and summaries of their targets and we were not allowed to take children to the toilet when the inspectors were in the room.

It felt ridiculous like surely they were going to notice this has all been only implemented today? But no, school got Outstanding slapped on it, all the resources and agency staff vanished and it went back to exactly as crap as it was before.
Like what is even the point if its not an accurate assessment of a school

Good for them.