to disagree with preparing children for Ofsted visit

[kalms1971]

visiting over next couple of days. Ds comes home and says "mummy we are having visitors in school and we have to be extra good". I don't think they should be told. Surely the inspectors should see it as it is without preparation??

When I was at school, in order to encourage us all to put our hands up our teacher coached us to put up our right hands if we were sure we knew the answer and our left if we didn't. I still think that was impressively sneaky...

OFSTED have pretty much made up their minds on the school before they step foot in the building anyway. Data is king, and they look for evidence to support their provisional judgement. If I had a cynical disposition I might say that they twist evidence to suit the government's agenda of turning schools into academies.

DoJo that wouldn't work nowadays for two reasons: 1) Lots of kids don't know their left from their right. 2) Hands up questioning is frowned upon as it allows some children to hide and others to dominate.

Oh come on, Spikey - the chances of ht and all slt being somewhere else the very day Ofsted chose to visit must be pretty remote!

They should be surprise vists. Otherwise imo the are a total farce. Telling children to behave well for the special visitors,what a joke.

Perhaps somebody should Ofsted OFSTED
Some American companies have 360 reviews

i think ofsted visits should be unannounced. at the school my kids go to. i hear the head telling the smoking parents not to smoke outside the school just for the next couple of days because it don't look good.

I would have thought that parents should be discouraged from smoking outside the school anyway.

Ofsted don't play fair, why on earth should the schools!

Dd's HT did brief them on what to say to the inspector. I suggested to dd that a good response might be "oh, I'm so sorry, I forgot what the Mr X said we had to say".

But I know dd would never have had the nerve.

In any job, if you know that someone senior or influential is going to observe you doing what you're paid to do, you make sure that you present yourself in the best possible light, don't you?

And unless said senior observer is crashingly dim, they'll be able to spot cover-ups a mile off, yet still be aware that what they are seeing is best practice, in the knowledge that it isn't exactly like that day in day out.

the chances of ht and all slt being somewhere else the very day Ofsted chose to visit must be pretty remote!

I don't know, our school was slap in the middle of moving school buildings when Ofsted announced they were visiting, 1 of the days they were due to be there was a development day - we had 3 development days tacked onto the beginning of half term to give the teachers longer to move everything

Half the school had already been moved into the new building - all that was left were the essentials to get through 2 days, all the paperwork, most of the equipment.

It was an absolute nightmare.

They also need to get some of the Governors in, sometimes they need notice to get time off work

OFSTED turned up at our school when Y6 were on a residential visit, and the Y3's were out for the day. The school only does KS2, so half the school was missing for one of their days and only three out of four years were around for the other.

Hardly the best time to get an accurate picture of the school.

I don't know why people get so wound up over half a days notice that they're arriving, schools aren't going to be able to do much to sway their grade in that time.

Give a thought please for the poor teachers. OFSTED for the majority of a school / college is an absolute NIGHTMARE. Can cause literal breakdowns. I know of colleges preparing six months in advance. Saying "you should be good" is really not the most outrageous thing I have heard. It is not as thought they have said "or I will break your legs!" come on. The teachers are terrified. It is a vile/ horrid process. I imagine it was one nervous teacher like me under immense pressure who just smiled sweetly and almost prayed to them "please be good next week".

Also - just to add - I worked at a centre for children with extreme behavioural difficulties and the majority of them had been removed from their schools, strangely, one week before their OFSTED inspection.

I am still recovering.

DD was "chosen" to speak to Ofsted at her last school. School were rung up at 12.30 for an inspection the next day.
There is no time to prep the children, they simply explained that visitors were coming who wanted to find out more about the school (it was an infants so no more explanation appropriate).

DD was asked what her targets were and replied that she couldn't remember (so actually you really can't prep a child this age).

Even with no time to prep the school obviously cherry picked the children who were allowed to speak to Ofsted - i.e. the sensible ones - so this in itself may give a false picture!

I don't agree that ANY notice should be given to schools about inspections. There would be a far more TRUE picture presented then.

Sorry, definitely think although there may be exceptions and residential/training/building moving etc may be taking place, the best way to get an accurate picture of day to day life and behaviour at the setting would be to just turn up.

Most schools have websites and they could find out if there was residential or some such big difference by consulting it.

If teachers don't think anything can be changed in the 24 hours or so notice, what's the difference anyway?

But as has been said, the HT and SLT need to be there. What if the HT works over more than one school (as can be the case in rural areas with small schools). They need to cancel meetings in school a and actually be present at school b. What if it is an INSET day, where staff are training off-site? Or it is the day of the whole school panto/ beach/ sports trip? (All have happened at our primary school). No point in Ofsted turning up if no-one is there!

"Without any prior knowledge or prejudging - just to look at what's going on rather than going in with an agenda based on what they think from the data and the results."

That's exactly what they did at our secondary. They had decided they needed an academy in SM and they just sailed in, decided they'd seen what they wanted to see and gave a damning report and left.

Ofsted have their own agenda, never believe for one second they care about your DCs.

Our HT is offsite at some point most days. Yesterday HT, DHT and SBM were all out for the morning.

OFSTED did trial no notice inspections and found that they didn't work. They made the decision to call the afternoon before. To be honest I'd rather not know, then at least I'd sleep the night before. I've been through 3 of the things now and they get more stressful with age.

Schools are prepping for OFSTED all the time. A lot of the things we have to do for OFSTED in no way help children's learning.

Spikeytree