School Ofsted Inspection reform is absolute bollocks

[noblegiraffe]

So after the long campaign to get rid of the Outstanding grade post the suicide of Ruth Perry, they have merely renamed it 'Exceptional'.

Good is now Strong Standard
They've reinstated the old Satisfactory as Expected Standard.
Requires Improvement and Inadequate are now Needs Attention and Urgent Improvement

As currently, schools will not get a headline grade but will be assessed in 6 areas against these grades. Safeguarding will be separate and 'met' or 'not met'.

The areas are curriculum and teaching, attendance and behaviour, inclusion, achievement, personal development and wellbeing, and leadership and governance.

"Schools deemed to require significant improvement - judged as “urgent improvement” in any evaluation area or “not met” in safeguarding - will receive up to five extra inspections within 18 months.
Schools that are judged to require special measures - graded as “urgent improvement” in leadership and governance or “not met” in safeguarding, and given the lowest grade in at least one other evaluation area - will receive up to six inspections within 24 months."

Workload, workload, workload. This is going to be awful.

Inspections start in November.

https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/ofsted-first-report-card-inspections-voluntary

You’re absolutely right, it is a load of bollocks. The education system is in a terrible state; children and young people are not getting enough support, TA wages are shit, teachers need more support in a variety of ways, behaviours and mental health is the worst it has ever been, and the government have spend mega money coming up with this bullshit.

Parents and carers need to be marching on Westminster demanding better. I’m up for a march, anyone else?

Ffs.
What a shitshow

I teach at an Outstanding school (inspection nearly 2 years ago) and our Head is an inspector. In this year’s SDP we have seen these changes - all teachers MUST run a club and it won’t come out of directed hours. We will have 2 parents evenings per class. We MUST be a coach to another teacher and MUST meet for an hour a half term and observe each other too - again not out if directed hours. To meet “exceptional” we have to “go above and beyond” which has been interpreted as work you to the bone. I’m old and let it wash over me - I have no shits to give. In my dept we have 5 teachers under 29 and 1 2nd year ECT. They have cried every day since last Monday.

That's grim.

I'm sitting at home with a desperately depressed teen who had a nervous breakdown and was forced out of school. He was devoted to school and getting all top grades before but the staff knew they were breaking him and did it anyway, and then they cut contact with him and forced him out. They just got outstanding from ofsted.

There's something terribly wrong in the school system right now. Just dreadfully wrong.

Absolutely fucking ridiculous. I sometimes think they set out with the singular aim of increasing the data for teachers leaving.

Your head needs to familiarise themself with the STPCD - unless you're unlucky enough not to be covered by it.

You're right, it is no significant change, just tinkering. I'd have more respect for the whole system if it was a coaching model, as in experts pitch in and help you plan, teach and mould policy if needed. Fingers wagging and box ticking helps absolutely no-one.

They ought to have done something actually transformational for schools and put 'teacher wellbeing' as one of the areas for inspection. If it's not measured, then no one cares about it but it's causing such a problem in education.

It's not even really tinkering because it's all change in the wrong direction. Adding an extra grade = way more hoops to jump through. Increasing the number of graded areas by two = two extra members of SLT to create workload for teachers.

The consultancy business must be bloody delighted. Cue the "Achieving Exemplary" book and training series.

The problem is that 'experts' seem self selecting. Consultants who haven't taught in classrooms since before covid, and therefore don't have a clue. I include inspectors in this, who are SLT and out of the classroom most of the time.

Of course it's bollocks.
Why did anyone think it wouldn't be?

Parents at state schools should be demanding better.

Oh of course 'personal development and wellbeing' means teachers running clubs for free in their own time.

The unions really ought to kick off if there is any mention of extra-curricular in the framework.

I'd thought there was a chance of true reform, making it more supportive and less like a telling off, but no, here we are. No overall grade but grades in different areas still and if a school Isn't doing well then the inspectors just come back again and again.

I was hoping for something with people like SIPs (do you still get those?), working with schools over an academic year, putting in training, working with SLT on policies etc. and then writing a report. I genuinely didn't think this is what the outcome would be. Who got paid all the money to come up with this continued load of bollocks?

I am so, so happy I've left education.

I'm really sorry that has happened to your boy. The school system is so incredibly pressurised but also so inadequately resourced, it isn't good for anybody right now.

I'm not sure that measuring schools on personal wellbeing would have helped your son either, it would probably have just put more pressure on him to tick more boxes.

I am a chair of governors and fuck that shit! No way would we allow that treatment of staff in our school.

Oh no, that's awful 😢 Schools like that need to be named and shamed.

Except it has been named and praised….Outstanding.

And what happens in education is that heads will be talking ‘I heard that school that makes all their teachers do a club got Exceptional for personal development’ and that will spread and become a ‘thing’ that you have to do if you want to be Exceptional.

With falling pupil rolls, being able to attract students is going to become increasingly competitive and so these scores (6 now instead of 1) will all really matter.

But parents are less likely to go to an "outstanding" school if it gets talked about badly on social media, so the only way to "out" those schools is by parents naming them and spreading the word about the terrible pastoral care for example

Yes, an expert would have to be a teacher currently in (or v recently out) of the classroom. Or how about we experienced teachers ALL have a chance to go on secondment as inspectors? Train us up, we all do a few weeks/months a year.

We can't talk about it. The school is still 400m from our door. The formal complaints process specifically forbids us to talk on social media. All the community knows what the school are doing and we talk about it over the garden fences, but nobody talks online.

I think there is a conspiracy of silence generally in education, and the teachers and kids are all being harmed. I really hope this white paper in the autumn recognises how serious the situation is and does something about it.

What exactly are you wanting from the White Paper? There's no more money coming so it's only going to be tinkering around the edges.

I’m just a normal parent with kids in regular schools. I absolutely knew this would be the outcome - no real change. Ofsted doesn’t have the vision to make the kind of changes we need. It’s the same leadership styles and personnel, thinking the same way they always did.

I watched “The Imitation Game” the other day - and the breakthrough that led to the Enigma Code being cracked only occurred because right at the top someone had the vision to cut through the hidebound, rules-based, dogmatic thinking of the military chain-of-command and invest in a ground-breaking, risky, different approach. At the end of the film, it was estimated that 14million lives were saved by that decision, and the brilliance of the people who worked on the machine that cracked the code.

We need something like that - a proper shake up, a real change in how we do things. “More of the same” won’t make a difference.

I'm not sure, sorry. It's a very big question.

I think part of the problem is that everything is punitive now. There is very little recognition that the teachers want to teach and the kids want to work.

Everybody is the rack for attendance, and ofsted and league tables.

If the punitive management could go away, we might be able to actually get something done.

I think that there is some very interesting work going on with remote and online schooling. I think the new hybrid models are very interesting indeed.

But you won't get that when Phillipson is mooting "speed awareness" type interventions for absence and telling parents that if their kids miss the first week etc.
The only guarantee is a reduction in EHCPs and restricting parental ability to appeal.

Thats a lot of potential extra inspections. There will be a lot of job adverts out soon.