Ofsted needs to be abolished (Trigger warning)

[MrsMurphyIWish]

Watched this heartbreaking story today:

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001k4r9

A headteacher took her own life as her school was rated inadequate. The pressures Ofsted creates are immense. Last week Ofsted were on strike Wednesday so decided to break protocol and rang schools Friday to conduct inspections on Monday - some schools were off for snow but that wasn’t a good enough reasons and even if the messages were picked up, that meant school staff would have worries over the weekend - some even going into school. Then there were schools who complained as these schools were given “extra notice”. Ofsted has created such a toxic work environment.

How has it come to this? A teacher who dedicated their life to education feels that a one word judgement meant life wasn’t worth living?

In my authority, the locality lead comes into schools each term with a different focus, so SEND, attendance, maths, safeguarding etc. They spend the day going through everything relevant, provide items for improvement and positives. The following term, they check up on the areas identified for improvement and the new focus areas. Supportive, helpful and not life threatening.
OFSTED, alternatively had us all in tears, even though we came out with a Good.

Ive not listened to the recording in the link posted. I think they should listen to teachers about how ofsted could be improved.

I do think it's good that they now ask kids about bullying, racism, homophobia etc. Sometimes outstanding selective schools like the Bacup grammar are downgraded because of entrenched problems with the school community that have been ignored.

Don't you think though that results and achievements tell how well a school is performing? Of course a safeguarding inspection is one thing but in my experience those inspecting have no clue how a classroom works.

As a former teacher, the biggest problem with Ofsted is that their metrics make no sense. What schools are judged on is almost entirely irrelevant to whether or not the school is actually any damn good. For example, Ofsted like schools to have a computer drive with every lesson on it uploaded with PowerPoint and worksheets etc. Schools have to have decided why they’re teaching it in that order and why they teach physics in term one and chemistry in term three etc. BUT Ofsted also need you to show that teachers aren’t even fucking using the exact fucking PowerPoint and worksheets from the bloody computer drive because each class is unique so you need to show that staff spent time creating lesson resources and uploading them to the drive for them to download and edit for each class and explain why they edited them in that way.

I taught science. I didn’t need a power point because I could teach it off the top of my head, draw diagrams, use movement or mini-whiteboards etc - but I had to have a PowerPoint so that Ofsted could look at it. My PowerPoint had to say things like “mini-whiteboard exercise” so that Ofsted knew I was doing something… the whole thing is just a rimming exercise.

Every school and every teacher up and down the country are having to personally make the exact same lesson because Ofsted will fail any school who hasn’t made bespoke lessons. It’s a complete and total waste of everyone’s time. They completely ignore the fact that schools are actually there to educate children - teachers know full well that when asked “why are you teaching them X?” then the absolute worst answer is “because they’ll fail their GCSE otherwise” because Ofsted are actively against teachings students how to get qualifications.

Ofsted are worse than useless - they’re actively detrimental. Ofsted had no issue with a school locking a child outside naked as punishment but have an issue with teachers using worksheets made by a different teacher who’s teaching exactly the same lesson. That’s how ridiculous their metrics are.

Theres the CQC for GP surgeries same crap.
Stress all round and people dread the inspections and spend hours preparing etc

Not necessarily. That can be down to parental support and tutoring. I'm glad they look at bullying, racism, homophobia and not just results

I do not pay any attention to Ofted anymore, after the nursery I withdrew DD from for serious safeguarding received a GOOD, and her current nursery so are just on top of its shit, caring, wonderful setting received inadequate on what was basically an admin nitpick.

So you are saying that a selective school with 2% PP and 2% SEN should be looked at in exactly the same way by inspectors as a school with 40% PP and 45% SEN?

Under the previous Ofsted framework (the one used for many of the inspections in the database), there was an exceptionally tight relationship between ‘low PP’ and ‘High Ofsted’ - which is obviously wrong, because if Ofsted is of any use at all, it should be based on ‘the educational and care work being done’, not the nature of the intake.

Yes, schools should have high expectations of all pupils. Yes, obviously, funding should and must flow to the schools (and the support services that they refer in to) with most challenging intakes to reflect the much harder work they need to do in SEN support, pastoral support, meeting the physical and mental health needs if their pupils and tge families they come from. But proposing that inspections should turn a blind eye to the nature of a school’s intake is wrong.

I’ve been teaching for 23 years and have been though 5 inspections in that time. The last eight years I have been subjected to annual mock-steds. It’s not just the inspection itself, it’s the toxicity Ofsted generates which is the issue.

As a trivial example, a school I worked in had a very high % of Traveller pupils. Our attendance statistics were, as a result of the cultural norms of that community, less good than a school that catered only to a settled community would be, despite us putting an enormous amount of time, money and support into improving them.

Luckily, we had an Ofsted inspector who judged the school in its context. He noted that despite having attendance below the ‘theoretical’ threshold for failing on that aspect of the framework, we had much higher Traveller attendance and engagement than average for that group nationally, and that we were going above and beyond in what we were doing to improve it.

That’s what I mean by ‘in context’.

Thay poor woman

What I don't understand with schools and Ofsted though is why schools need "hours and days of stressful preparation" for an inspection? To me that implies you know you're doing things wrong and will be picked up on them. Is it not the case that all the things you're frantically putting into place should be routine daily stuff that is done as part of your working day? If someone went and audited my work you'd know exactly what was going on and where it was going to on any given day. Isn't that the case for everyone? Maybe I just don't understand teaching.

I’m a childminder and OFSTED causes me so much stress that I’ve considered giving up for that sole reason. Many childminders already have. Our inspection is a little different but an awful lot of pressure. They’re with me for around 5/6 hours and I’m a lone worker so all the scrutiny is on me. We are inspected in the same way a pre-school is but obviously a pre-school has more staff and children.

When you have an inspection you are at the mercy of someone making a judgment on a snapshot. That person could be in the foulest of moods which flows over whilst they are making that judgment. There is no consistency between inspectors. OFSTED gives no advice and if someone makes a complaint about an inspector they close ranks and nothing happens. Some inspectors are lovely however some are just intent on tripping you up all the time.

settings and schools are losing valued people because of the way OFSTED operates.

this

It's all shit tbh. My daughter goes to a Requires Improvement high school, and we cannot speak highly enough of their commitment to her well-being, which we tell them regularly. Yes, there are the odd behaviour issues, but you get those anywhere. Academics we can boost if needs be. We have chosen it for our son as well, over and above the 'Good' school, that is closer but by all reports shows very little care for the individual pupils bar their results and their skirt length.

all that glitters is not gold @butterfly

This is heartbreaking. I live locally and all I have heard from people is what an incredible person and headteacher Ruth was. What a sad loss of life, and for what?!

Politicalnamechange,

I think the difficulty with teaching (vs, for example, financial work) is that so much of the output is not ‘visible’ on paper in the same way.

So, for example, an experienced teacher could teach a lesson with the objective ‘To calculate unit fractions of an amount’ with very little more than that objective, their own personal knowledge of that class, a jar of counters, a whiteboard and a pen. Sone children may have almost no work in their books after the lesson, having used the counters throughout, but will emerge from the lesson with a secure understanding. Others may have a variety
of numbers written down in their books.

The teacher will have a good knowledge, as a result of the lesson, who understands, who doesn’t, and what tomorrow’s lesson should look like.

However, for inspection, everything must be documented (and obviously as inspection is short notice, this tends to mean that documentation becomes a routine burden even if not required). There needs to be a written plan. Specific adaptations must be detailed as evidence of meeting SEN needs. Marking books is done to evidence that the teacher knows what the child can do - and so on.

With such a high-stakes inspection system, so much is done ‘just in case’.

It's because the list of things you "should be" doing doesn't even fit in a 13 hour day. Teaching is a constant juggling act of sorting out the absolute most pressing tasks while shouldering the weight and guilt of all the things you should be doing but don't have time for.

So for example when I taught Year 1 in a particular school I had 120 books to mark every evening (English, Maths, RE and Topic). And not just a few ticks and a smiley stamp.... a multicoloured, 2 stars and a wish, next steps kind of marking! Now let's say one day you are feeling really ill so you leave without doing the marking that night. Well the next day you've got 120 to do again, you can't do 240 pieces of work so you skip that day. Then you can't catch up at the weekend as that's when you do your planning, catch up on your assessments and maybe look at your own children.

But OFSTED might ask why that day was never marked, so the night before the inspection you've got to go back and "fake" mark it. That's just one example I can think of, and yes, I only stayed at that school for a year and had a lovely breakdown mixed in too!

Thank you both for taking my comment in the spirit it was meant and taking the time to explain without shouting me down.

It’s such an awful story. I live near to that school, not in catchment and no point applying cos it’s so popular. I knew the teacher had died and heard rumour it was suicide at the time but to see it confirmed today is very sad indeed.

Thing is, if you read the report it’s actually overwhelmingly positive. Everything was good except leadership and management, which was inadequate due to safeguarding concerns only. Whilst it is bad the school did not have the safeguarding stuff sorted, it makes you think - has no one been checking on safeguarding at that school for 13 years? No one deliberately does safeguarding badly or is lazy with it - someone should have been in checking their arrangements were adequate at some point surely? My school is independent but we have an advisor in a couple of times a year to check we are compliant. Do LAs not check this in state schools? Or does it literally come down to ofsted, which in this schools case had not checked on them for 13 years? I don’t think that’s ok. People make mistakes and should be supported to correct them; not just publicly branded inadequate when actually lots of the provision was clearly fine and the local community is very happy.

Unbelievably sad.

My daughters school is so new that it hasn’t had an Ofsted visit yet (although they’re expecting it will be soon!) and I was very impressed that in a new parents evening the head said when they do come they won’t be aiming for outstanding, because they don’t think that all the metrics that equate outstanding are the correct ways to run a school. He’s confident they run a good school, and so am I. We’ll see if ofsted agree I guess!

Me too

I may be viewing this from a different lens but where is the support network for headteachers and senior leaders? The whole system is wrong! Blame culture causes this distress.

Yes, totally agree needs to be abolished. Same for CQC in primary care- we don’t need to jump through meaningless hoops to satisfy quangos who disregard our professionalism, we simply need the resources and time to do the jobs we trained for.

OFSTED is not fit for purpose. The whole inspection process is deeply flawed. My previous head was constantly worried about the next Ofsted and everything was geared to the possibility of the next inspection.
I worked as a TA with a teacher who would put on a wonderful performance for Ofsted. She was, warm, approachable and kind, walking around the classroom being encouraging and helpful. The reality was totally different, lots of shouting and she never left her chair!