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?

I’m just can’t believe this is not a national story. I only learned of it due to a podcast.

We got nailed for the poor reading of one KS2 child. Pointing out he was non-verbal when he started school, getting out all the SLT paperwork (which they didn’t look at), all the paperwork from hours of interventions (they didn’t even glance at it), the fact that they couldn’t actually understand what he was saying when he was just talking, not reading (shows his speech was a major block in him being able to sound words out - he couldn’t say half the sounds, of course he couldn’t read them clearly. He just couldn’t pronounce them)… made next to no difference. They listened to three readers in the whole school and then homed in on this child and asked if we felt, as they did, that it was evidence of our inability to teach reading adequately.
We got a good rating but it was close. Three years ago this was a 5 yo who didn’t speak. The fact he is operating in a mainstream school at all is a small miracle, doing maths along with his year group, and accessing science and history and English too, with significant support to read everything. Not relevant - he doesn’t read as well as he should for his age…

Ofsted is in opposition to “every child matters”.

It's an absolute tragedy. Because of a snapshot judgment from ofsted a husband is now a widow, children are left without a mother and Julia has lost her sister.

This school is based in an area with falling birth rates and many primaries are struggling to fill spaces despite bulge classes only a few years back. This rating would have certainly also affected applications, funding and the long term viability of the school. No wonder poor Ruth was desperate.

Keeping on top of staff training and paperwork in a school office is a huge job, and one that many schools are struggling to stay on top of as falling budgets mean a fall in admin and support staff on site.

A local private school was in a similar situation not too long ago. They were written to by ofsted, told what to do to remedy the safeguarding issues and kept their Outstanding grade in the meantime. Why is the same grace period not given to state schools who already have fewer resources.

RIP Ruth. You didn't deserve this. Your family didn't deserve this. Your colleagues and the school community didn't deserve this.

What would the alternative be? I'm not a teacher so I don't have first hand experience but I do have regulatory bodies overseeing my work environment and I definitely think there is a place for them.
How would you assess schools without actual visits from something like ofsted?

Gaps in record keeping? Maybe the school couldn’t employ a permanent safeguarding team due to cuts?

But the gaps ofsted were talking about were things like gaps in employment records where anything could have happened. It's just a basic requirement that you have a full and complete employment background on all your employees who will be around vulnerable people. I've been looking for care homes for my mum. I've come across a couple that got rated inadequate for both management and safety categories because of gaps like these. If a member of staff assaulted a child and that could have been discovered from a full employment record, how many poster on here would be supporting you over your claim you were too busy to check or lacked sufficient staff?

Ofsted needs to be overhauled. Schools do need external scrutiny but it should be less public and more about improvement. High stakes inspections every four or five years are not doing what they need to. The death of this lady is tragic and highlights everything that is wrong with the current system.

It's a local authority school. HR won't issue an employment contract until they have had evidence the appropriate checks have been made. It was almost certainly a filing error so the evidence of these checks couldn't be located immediately.

No-one has a problem with schools being assessed and objective inspectors visiting. Of course that's necessary.

What's wrong with OFSTED isn't that it inspects schools at all, it's what it expects of them. It's entirely unrealistic and focuses on the things that are least important to most children and parents.

It's a punitive system and it way too much hangs on it.

Now that sounds exactly the kind of thing that would actually help schools be the best they can. I get that it would cost more to provide than the current Ofsted model but it looks like would bring such a positive change to schools that it would would save money in the context of staff retention.

Of course the paperwork should have been in order. But I think there should be a better way to check on this so it could be picked up earlier - perhaps yearly low stakes checks by the LA to check everything is in order, and if it’s not, support to sort it out, without publicly announcing to the world that it is a problem. Not 13 years of not knowing it’s wrong followed by a public branding of INADEQUATE which makes it seem like the whole school is crap, when the report clearly shows it is not and is good in every other area.

No one thinks that schools shouldn't be inspected and the fact that teachers are generally recommending inspections take place more often so that they are less high stakes shows this.

If this school did not have the correct safeguarding paperwork in place, even going four years without this being checked isn't good enough. A lot can happen in four years.

Police forces definitely do. My local constabulary was recently rated ‘inadequate’ and put in special measures. I don’t see the need for the scary labels, just give school a list of positive points and things requiring improvement. It’s madness to hinge an entire school’s reputation on a single inspection. My DS’s nursery was rated inadequate while he was there and I genuinely couldn’t believe it. I felt they were the most warm, loving environment for children and every child was genuinely happy to go there every day. DS adored all the staff, they were well educated, well fed and cared for. But the day of the inspection, they had 2 room leaders off sick, they were struggling to replace a staff member who had to leave to move away because they had zero applications when they advertised. They didn’t deserve the inadequate rating based on one bad day.

This doesn't surprise me as much as you. I kid you not, in higher educations we have to report sexual orientation to the Higher Education Statistics Agency. The rest of the data is the usual stuff like start date, end date, course applied for, final award. It's all very standard except sexual orientation. I was surprised.

I've been through ofsteds. It's a mad system and better ways to do it, in my opinion. The stress it causes throughout the school or college is massive. So much, too much, rests on this two days. And it's not an accurate snapshot of how the school operates day by day.

But. But this headteacher knew what was coming down the tracks. She'd have known they'd been due an inspection after so long. Everyone, but everyone, knows your paperwork needs to be in order. Even above the standard of teaching, the boxes must be ticked. You can't just say, oh we've lost this and that. And they clearly hadn't done safeguarding training properly. I can't count how much safe guarding training we had to go through. Like you say, the school reached good in other categories. But in this day and age, if you've not got your safeguarding properly sorted, getting inadequate seems inevitable.

Clearly the stress this woman felt must have been so excessive and I feel hugely for her and her family. But that doesn't mean ofsted weren't in the wrong to point out the failings.

But that doesn't mean ofsted weren't in the wrong to point out the failings.

I don't think anyone disagrees with inspectors telling a school that their safeguarding paperwork is incomplete.

It's the form of the telling that's the issue.

I also know of a local head who committed suicide. As an ex teacher I'd do away with any advance notice as it creates panic no matter how well the school is prepared. Much better to just turn up on the day for a day inspection. I'm so glad I'm out of it now

But aren't parents entitled to know that there are failings in safeguarding? Amd it wasn't like the paperwork was just incomplete, the leadership team lacked knowledge to carry out adequate safeguarding. If the leadership didn't know, you know the staff are going to know even less

"Leaders do not have the required knowledge to keep pupils safe from harm. They have not taken prompt and proper actions when pupils are at risk. They have not ensured that safeguarding is effective throughout the school"...leaders have a "weak understanding of safeguarding requirements and procedures".

The lack of understanding is really quite serious. How much training do you go through in your school? Nothing is done on staff training days more than that.

schoolsweek.co.uk/labours-ofsted-plans-logical-evolution-says-spielman/

The head of Ofsted even seems to think removing their own grading labels (as Labour have already proposed) is probably a good idea. Shame she didn’t suggest it during the years she was in charge really.

Labour also suggest having specialists inspecting phases which should already be a must. My friend’s school was done recently. They are a small infant school and were inspected by an inspector who was the Assistant Head of a secondary and taught mainly A level geography. He didn’t know anything about child development, phonics or early reading-it was a bit of a joke really.

I don’t think anyone really thinks schools should never have any sort of audit, but this system is broken, destructive and doesn’t raise standards. I think Labour’s proposals here are good.

Ugh it’s shit. We have CQC inspections on our wards and it’s equally mindless. Auditing crap and not focussing on the important stuff. We actually set up teams to manage the inspection weeks in advance. Leaflets sent round staff. Endless prep meetings. All costing time
and money and keeping us from patient care.

I wish there was some way we could boycott it.

I also hate the management’s joy when we go from Requires Improvement to Good. If we don’t accept the crap result we should not celebrate the good ones.

I wish there could be some national action of boycotting CQC and Ofsted inspections. Downing tools and refusing to engage. If everyone did it, that might give a message.

The gaps in record keeping at our school weren’t gaps. They were just files that for reasons I won’t go into weren’t accessible. Not great, yes, but not actual gaps. Our report said that no children had been put at risk, as did Caversham’s. But still, inadequate.

I don't know specifically about safeguarding records, but what I do know is that Ofsted are anything but clear about what paperwork schools should have in place. It is literally a guessing game. Where I am, headteachers often have two or three schools (rural) and are asked to produce completely different documents when their respective schools are inspected, which shows how inconsistent the process is. I've told teacher friends in at least half a dozen schools about the paperwork we were asked for and not one keeps the records we were asked to produce. If Ofsted were more transparent, we might all stand a chance. We were told time and again by LA advisors we were Good. Inspectors said otherwise. The process is broken.

Ofsted is not about every child matters. It is about ticking boxes and putting on a show. It is about training staff and children to answer questions using buzz words. It is a real shame that we don't have a service focused on school improvement.

I totally agree. Schools could still be held accountable by a collaborative inspection process that focused on working together and truly improving schools. Rather than the current just coming and judging them.

I wouldn’t have agreed with this myself until my youngest child’s pre school became victim to OFSTED the other month.

The inspectors were rude and disinterested when I spoke to them. They said the pre school (running and serving the village for 75 years) was inadequate because children could potentially gain access to a fire door and open it. The fire door couldn’t be blocked because that would be a fire risk… The pre school put in a new fire door but because of how long it would take for OFSTED to reinspect they lost their funding for the council and had to close leaving 35 children with nowhere to go. The care of the children and everything else was outstanding…. Just heartbreaking.