New Ofsted allegations

[HeyAliceYoucool]

Another school that was downgraded to inadequate based purely on safeguarding processes, has come forward with some pretty damning allegations around the Ofsted inspector and data breaches….

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-65029975.amp

I don’t know anything about teaching or safeguarding standards , I’m just the parent of primary school kids so my knowledge of Ofsted is limited to the reports, which I found helpful when choosing a school.

But I’m really shocked by the head teacher’s death and now reading this, if true…. it sounds like behaviour from the last century! I work in healthcare and we take data protection really seriously.

The issue is that if safeguarding fails, then the school is automatically graded inadequate. No matter how good (or outstanding) everything else is.

The primary school head teacher who killed herself was shocking. Particularly as reading through the report, there were plenty of statements saying the children were happy, achieved well, teaching was fine etc. It seems the inspectors observed one or two things, jumped to massive conclusions about them and have now caused untold damage.

Knowing one or two people who have become Ofsted inspectors it doesn't surprise me. Small minded box tickers who delight in doing a job which has very little to do with genuine metrics about how a school is performing, and which certainly doesn't do anything to promote excellent teaching and learning.

I wonder how those inspectors involved in this case sleep at night

I’ve had experience of this. An inspector absolutely leapt on a tragic incident that had happened with one of our students - not linked with college at all but we got torn to shreds on safeguarding. It was really biased and unfair and they were aggressive and inappropriate, reducing members of staff to tears and bringing up traumatic (and recent) memories with no regard for the mental well-being of staff at all. We were supposed to go to a 4 because of this but complained and got reinspected to come out at a 2.

In contrast, a more recent inspection has been friendly, helpful and unstressful. It really depends on the team and the agenda they go in with.

Despite what OFSTED will say - teams of inspectors vary greatly. Some take great pleasure in lording it over any staff member.
As the stakes are high -particularly for the head teacher - the inspectors know that they have substantial power. It’s not on an equal footing at all and varies greatly between the teams. Too many inspectors have less experience than the head or even the governor they are meeting with.

That said, safeguarding is always a limiting judgement.

Most inspectors are very keen to ensure they have not walked away with any sensitive data - not sure what has happened here but experience tells me inspectors vary greatly- and the new ones are no where near the standard of the inspectors from 20 years ago.

While obviously safeguarding is essential, and should form part of the rating, the article says some shocking things (OP i know this is what you meant but people are unlikely to click through...)

He said inspectors "went off with a substantial" amount of highly confidential data related to children and their families, not all of which had been returned." The only safeguarding problem that the inspection revealed was about the conduct of the Ofsted inspectors, because it was the Ofsted inspectors who broke the confidentiality of pupil data," he said."It was the Ofsted inspectors who left the children feeling bewildered and upset and distressed and it was the Ofsted inspectors who broke all the rules of confidentiality by discussing individual children in a crowded corridor."

There are so many problems with OFSTED and so many complaints are made about them. Unfortunately, as with most government groups, they are beyond reproach. If a complaint is made they close ranks and nothing happens

Yes @HyggeTygge I was really shocked about the data breaches if true. In healthcare this would be taken very seriously and could lead to dismissal.

Under GDPR other organisations are now subject to stringent data protection laws and would need to report this type of breach to the ICO within days. I can’t believe this has happened with personal information of what sounds like vulnerable children. If it’s true of course.

I have felt Ofsted was a joke for a long time.

Our secondary was inspected by Ofsted when I was in year ten, or 4th year as we called it. Our school was a shit show, I've mentioned on another thread about the disgusting behaviour towards pupils which came to light whilst I was there and in most cases, was covered up, including at least 1 member of the male staff having an affair with a female pupil, resulting in her pregnancy and announcing the father in his class. He left the school and was not seen again and nothing else was said. The girl left or was told to leave.

Anyway, we were one of the first schools in our area to be inspected under this new group. They received the call a few days before and our previously dark and gloomy school was painted over a weekend. They put up displays of work-one piece had my name on but I'd never seen it before.

We all had to go to an assembly where we were warned of what would happen if we acted up. Several pupils, known for their bad behaviour, were shipped out on a "field trip", usually as long as they didn't punch a member of staff they pretty much were allowed to terrorise us.

Such was how poorly run our school was, lunch was a free for all, we all went to lunch at the same time and our canteen was tiny, so you did all you could to get near as possible in the queue because you could be waiting near on all of lunch otherwise. There was more than one time where I had to eat a bag of crisps on the way to my lesson as I hadn't got in in time.

Anyway, on the day of the inspection, the Ofsted guy came over to me in the queue. I was right near the steps leading up to get lunch with 20 minutes of lunch left. He tells me, quite aggressively, to leave the queue as he wishes to speak with me and a few others he had already grabbed.

I asked him, politely, could he not speak to me whilst I was in the queue, as if he didn't, I would not get lunch that day. He got quite annoyed and said I would do as I was told. I said I usually would, but I hadn't had anything to eat that day, so was starving and if I left the queue I would have to wait until probably gone 6 in the evening to eat anything. My mum didn't do snacks.

He boomed at me that he would be taking my name for the headmaster who would no doubt deal with my insubordination. I cried. He was about 6ft 4, and I was a 5ft 2 skinny teen. I gave him my name through fear and I went to get my lunch, but barely stomached it as I was so scared.

I went to my lesson and someone came in, saying to the tutor the head wanted me in his office.

He then proceeded to tear strips off me. He refused to listen about lunch, said I was a disgrace to the school and he was going to be suspending me for two days! All done in front of the frankly bullying Ofsted guy who smirked. My mum wasn't the type to bother complaining about anything, she was bloody useless so I never even told her.

Luckily for me because I had never been in trouble before, my head of year got him to remove the suspension but I got two days of detention. I was also "named and shamed" in a whole school assembly. This was a regular thing where the head would read your name out and you had to stand up whilst they reported your "crime" to all. Funnily enough they never called out the real buggers who were so nasty they paid to send them off for the two days of Ofsted though. I was so embarrassed.

Our school got a Good rating it didn't deserve.

I've never paid attention to ratings ever since.

@ReformedWaywardTeen that sounds like an awful experience… just goes to show how important it is for inspection to be child focused. Hopefully they’ve moved on in the last 30 years and it’s just a few bad apples like the one referenced in the article

My ds's school has had similar this year- it was downgraded for two reasons, but the major was safeguarding and data security as they deemed that pupils personal data was stored in too many places.

The fact that it was in transition from one system to another, more secure one with before access for parents was completely ignored! Had the inspection been a few weeks earlier or later it would've been fine and now they're labelled inadequate for trying to improve the system!

Ofsted are destructive and useless.

Some of my experiences with Ofsted

Grading a violent out of control school "outstanding" whereupon most staff left, as we had been relying on Ofsted to force management to get us some help. Within 6 months we had a student lose a lung in a stabbing.

Reprimand me for not having the gay students highlighted in my register, and not teaching my maths lesson in a "gay inclusive" way.

Randomly choosing an ethnic minority to concentrate on, before they arrived, then finding we had only one individual from that group ( think something like Malay) then spend the entire inspection with several inspectors literally marching around on either side of this frightened child, assessing her in every single subject, and going through all her records with a fine tooth comb.

Insisting several schools throw away all text books, which ten years a later, we still have had nothing to replace them with, and have suffered from their loss every day. But text books were "evil" at the time.

Putting a secondary school into special measures because they were inspecting a DIFFERENT primary school, which happened to be using the secondary school sports facilities, and the first day, the security guard checked the ofsted inspectors ID, but the second day, recognised him arriving with the primary school and nodded him through

Penalise my colleague for ticking work left handed

It has been shown that ofsted judgements are random in well over 90% of cases, ie, the throw of a dice is as good an indicator of ofsted judgement as anything

O yes, penalise a school for the state of its walls, which they can do nothing about. I agree the walls were terrible, but there was no way the school could afford any repairs

Ofsted are just a bunch of ignorant bullies, who stuff themselves up with so called "educational research" without any understanding of what education or research is.

Teachers and schools expend so much energy and resources trying to second guess what ofsted wants, and it changes with the wind.

Time to take away their power. We need something completely different

I was a primary school governor for a school that went from outstanding to serious weaknesses over safeguarding and leadership. I have to say that the inspectors were great, they were clearly very upset to have found the issues that they had, and the inspection that had been a pretty good experience for the first day took a turn on day 2. From my POV they uncovered some issues that were not only very serious but actually confirmed some concerns I had about the leadership that made me become a governor. The aftermath of the inspection was awful, but that had nothing to do with Ofsted and everything to do with the behaviour of the Chair of Governors, the LEA and certain Diocese employees.

As an ex-governor, Ofsted is critical. My school wasn't keeping accurate DBS records. Safeguarding failures are dangerous for children. And instead of following EEF research to benefit pupils on free school meals, they did the opposite. But I recognise that there is favouritism with Ofsted. Some schools get judged more harshly. My school wasn't Ofsted'd for 10 years and is in a heavy Tory area and 'protected'! That isn't fair!

I was a governor during an Ofsted inspection - there was very much a feeling that the outcome was decided prior to the visit and then the inspectors looked for the evidence to back this up.

The school was then forced to join another MAT, as were other schools in the original local academy trust.@

Having been through a couple of inspections I am always surprised when schools fail due to safeguarding. Safeguarding protocols are clearly set out - and for good reason

Except in the Reading case, the inspectors judged the fact a school kid was twerking as evidence of sexualisation of children.
I've also known cases where an Ofsted inspector will approach school-kids in the playground, and if the child doesn't automatically question who they are, it's 'evidence' that safeguarding is inadequate because the child doesn't know about stranger-danger. Except of course it means nothing of the sort. The school could have been exemplary in teaching stranger-danger. The inspector is judging whether a kid remembers to behave in a certain way- they are not judging what the staff actually have in place.

I don't think anyone disagrees that schools should be inspected - robustly! It's the fact that the metrics used and often the manner in which they're applied are flawed and in some cases downright harmful. It's not about actually making schools better or safer.

Who inspects the inspectors? There must be a body which does this. I hope the team who inspected the Reading school are thoroughly scrutinised and held to account.

Ofsted is cruel and unfair. I have been through three inspections and there was no consistency in the process. In two of the inspections the inspectors were really nice - they were helpful and explained the process clearly. In the third however, the inspector was rude and bullish. It left the staff feeling disillusioned and bullied.

Yes there needs to be accountability but schools have such a battle to face on so many fronts that the way Ofsted works often just creates more barriers.

Ofsted decided to grade my school inadequate because of our GCSE results. We were a Key Stage 3 school, always had been and as our students left us at the end of Year 9 we didn’t have any results to show. It took us 2 days to convince them of this. All they had to do was to look at previous reports but they were convinced that we were lying. When they realised their mistake they couldn’t backtrack quick enough.

A collection of Ofsted experiences collected over the past week:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02saWCMWBKPDvP6zi3itpByzWfA1UPEBoBRuMyncqoFXrzf6a2cWHsQxE5m2evMJwEl&id=100050174603029

As safeguarding is something on which the whole inspection hinges over and above anything else (and I am not intending to downplay its importance) then how on earth are Ofsted getting away with leaving it years between inspections of it? Would it not make sense to separate it out and have specific safeguarding visits at a minimum of annually?

Exactly. There could quite easily be frequent safeguarding inspections led at a Local Authority level instead. Ofsted is all about the judgment.

DS school wasn't inspected in 15 years. I haven't seen any school go longer in the news or on MN. That's an entire intake to reception to yr6 without an inspection followed by another entire reception to yr6 without inspection. How do they know it's still outstanding and there's no safeguarding issues?

It's recently caught up with them. There are issues. We've had issues.

Now waiting on the outcome.

If it comes back as outstanding we will have concerns. If it comes back as requires improvement then no one will believe it. It's a farce.

The whole system has lost credibility and in doing so, no is no longer fit for purpose.

There will HAVE to be an overhaul at this point because of the damage done to public trust in Ofsted.

Wow it sounds like the system is broken and needs a big overhaul. An inspection system should not have so much variation and blind spots.

My anecdotal view as a teacher of 20 years experience - many really quite unpleasant teachers join SMT. They then get promoted to heads. They then become OFSTED inspectors. I know 2 previous SMT members who are now OFSTED inspectors, both deeply unpleasant individuals.

I moved this year to a private school and we have just had an ISI inspection. It was nothing like OFSTED - I felt ISI were genuinely looking at what the school was like rather than coming in with a view that eveything was requires improvement and we had to fight tooth and nail to prove it wasn't.

I agree with PP that mentioned yearly safeguarding checks by LA. I feel like this will stop issues going on too long and will stop things spiralling in that area. But it must cost too much to do. Years ago the LA used to send people round to help us childminders every year and make sure we were doing everything we needed to. Now they're no longer there to help and instead you wait 6+ years for an ofsted inspector to pop round for 3 hours 🤦🏼‍♀️ and terrify the kids. It needs a shake up. And really some people that actually have worked in the field would be great. Some of the inspectors I've met have never worked with children and it really shows!

My understanding is that for maintained schools the LA does do annual safeguarding inspections. It was one of the questions I raised after we failed so spectacularly. The response from the LA was that we failed on something their annual inspection doesn’t cover so it wasn’t anything to do with them