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.

@Governorthatwas I can relate to this as an ex-governor of a school that was failing on safeguarding. The local authority wasn't doing enough. I thought that was strange. There was a whole education team in the local authority who although were absolutely expert, they didn't seem to be doing enough to 'leverage' improvement. This is why I have to fully support Ofsted, when schools are failed due to safeguarding, especially those that are 'local authority maintained schools'. Children have to come first.

Governor of this school has been on TV and is saying what happened in Reading nearly happened to their school. I’m assuming he meant the loss of life 😥

I made a complaint with regards to the behaviour of an Inspector.
(Months after) she was so awful, spiteful, nasty, wouldn't let me finish speaking, kept over talking me. I couldn't remember answers, it was terrifying and I have never had someone treat me like this. I cried for weeks. In the end I just shut down emotionally and sat saying yes to everything she said. I was bullied. This was coercive behaviour. This was at the time of Ruth Perry's death. I said I thought Ofsted needed to be more supportive and help settings and that perhaps things would change?( I had 3 Outstandings and a Good).
She scoffed and said 'I doubt it' very nastily.
I was disgusted at that. I didn't complain initially as I was in shock and it took me months to get over mentally and I am quite a strong person.
My complaint had a huge amount of detail in and was witnessed by other adults.
In hindsight I wish I hadn't complained as when I did within two weeks I was Inspected and given Requires Improvement which I am heartbroken with.
Basically no point in complaining as they will always win!
My parents have all been wonderful saying they know what I do. 95% of the children leave my setting smashing their peer group goals.
I work with assistants (childminding). How can I possibly be marked down on their knowledge if they aren't even present???
I had an assistant that had worked 4 days, brand new and shiny. No childcare qualifications but I was training her.
Inspector said my vetting skills should be better?
Does she not know there is a national shortage of childcare practioners???
Ofsted is no longer fit for purpose.
We need an organisation that helps, nurtures good/outstanding practise and if there is a mistake there needs to be a process to put this right without being made to feel like criminals or damaging teachers/early years workers mental health.

I remember an inspection at a school my sister worked at. One little girl was brought in one morning by her mother, who said there had been a dreadful incident in the night (domestic abuse, husband arrested) and the child wanted to come to school, where she felt safer. The little girl was very tired and upset, and spent the first hour sitting curled up with the TA, on a cushion during the literacy session. The inspector watching spoke to my sister and asked why she hadn't asked any questions of the child, about the story they were discussing. When she explained to him about the night time incident, he said tetchily " That has nothing to do with it, that child was not accessing the curriculum! "

Sounds about right. Ofsted will haul you over the coals for an administrative error when recording safeguarding incidents but generally show no interest in the realities of dealing with examples of safeguarding in practice.

In my experience from a recent inspection, they don't even bother to go and look at children with SEND needs either. My school has a number of children with extremely challenging needs (and no funding or resources to support them). The inspector walked past all these children with barely a cursory glance. It was almost as if they had been told not to draw attention to the SEND issues in education...

OFSTED is like a lottery imo.

I spent 20 years working in different schools and the same Ofsted teams would behave so differently in different schools.

One particular male inspector was vastly different in tone and manner in schools with male HTs (and some quite steadfast female HTs), but he was a fucking monster in schools if he sensed a female HT he could bully.

There was one memorable one when an inspector held the front door of the school open for a child. No adult waiting. No school staff saying “Jimmy has the dentist”. Just a primary school age child saying “oh hold the door please” as the inspector came in. Luckily the office staff clocked it and the child was ordered back inside. The inspector then nitpicked safeguarding constantly until the HT pointed out that one of the worst incidents they almost had was a missing child who was let out by an inspector… they soon started being fair!

When we had Ofsted in, the inspectors approached some of our lower school pupils (year 7-9) during their lunch break and engaged them in conversation about school. They then used the fact that the pupils hadn't automatically challenged them about their identity as a safeguarding issue. Yes literally. Apparently even though the kids had seen these same inspectors in and out of lessons during the morning, the correct response on seeing them in the lunch hour should have been 'excuse me, who are you and can I check your ID?'

Ofsted are a joke. If they want to find a problem they'll use all sorts of devious and bullying tactics. While at the same time if they want a school to be outstanding, they'll conveniently not see some pretty unpleasant stuff. I've also worked in a so called outstanding secondary where I wouldn't send my own kids as there was a fair bit of low level bullying which was swept under the carpet by SLT