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?

It's getting the paperwork sorted. Stuff that ofsted claim they don't need but then expect to,see evidence of.

And the cleaning/getting displays completed etc. Yes ofsted claim they don't need it, but those first impressions really do count annoyingly.

And in advance you don't know which areas will have their deep dives. It's decided/told to you in the phone call the afternoon before. Then they decide which books they want to see, which subject paperwork they want, all the attendance and progress grades printing. This also means that the headteacher and SLt are out of action for most of the afternoon as the ofsted phone call can be 3-4 hours long. Which means all the work planned that afternoon now needs doing after school, as well as doing the admin for everything they've asked for. Simply printing everything out takes time. Organising a private room for the inspector to work in can be a job in itself.

Most of the time you get the call around or,just after lunch, and they come the next day. The conversation then happens that afternoon. So come 3:30 or whatever, that's when school staff need to get everything in place ready for the next day. Most teaching staff already work in an evening, or at least after school so you can easily see why it means a longer night.

They claim to want it to be a normal day but they don't really. If they are doing a deep dive in history then they want everyone doing history so they can see it. So timetables need changing, even though officially they are supposed to see a normal day. All this means extra work and prep for school staff. And this is normally for 3 or 4 subject areas.

We had all our paperwork completed etc before ofsted came. But just gathering it all together, printing it, getting it ready for the inspector, changing timetables, gathering materials, collected the necessary books, and all of above - it means we didn't get to go home at the normal time, as this had to be done on top of your normal after school work.

I still think it's best to wait for the inquest, where doubtless the bigger picture will become clearer. It may be that the alleged horrors of Ofsted were the key factor here or it may not - the point is that we simply can't know

'alleged horrors'?

You mean that her outstanding school was downgraded to inadequate as a single grade, that she was personally named in the report for not keeping children safe, and that this report was shortly to be made public to the local community. That the report would have a devastating impact on the school, most likely it would lose staff and pupils, possibly academisation and that the grade would hang over them for years?

And on top of all that, she wasn't allowed to talk about it?

Those aren't alleged horrors, that's just the reality of the situation.

Even if those circumstances were not a factor in her death, surely it can be agreed that that set of events are unacceptable?

m.youtube.com/watch?v=fu4Tlc8sY0M

I am stunned that people can watch this and write, I don’t think you can say the reason the HT killed themselves was the Ofsted report. It’s not fair to the HT.

The safeguarding issues from this under today's framework would be a nightmare though. Just checking who the inspector was and who had sent them before they came into school under today's framework would take ages.

And in the 40s and 50s they didn't have to have anywhere near the expected paperwork as they do now. I have the log books from my school.
The long term planning for the year for the whole school is in the first two pages of the A5 size paper - a list of topic areas with the month they will be taught to which year groups.
The register is a tick book with a present of absent only marked.
The register for staff is a comment on the log book for that day.

The log book includes an annual 'inspection' from the council board (I think that's who it is. The inspector has watched some lessons during the day and basically says yes/no. It is less than a page long - infact it's about 2/3rd of an A5 page and looks more like a certificate - it's stuck in the log book. It has one or two statements about what is has seen, and a comment about the children. There is no rating system as such and most subject areas aren't looked at, no paperwork is referenced, no reference to teacher or pupil 'interviews', nothing like that.

This was even worse with the old ofsted where you got a lot of notice.
There is no far less time to 'cover up' ongoing issues, and parent view (and not a pupil questionnaire as well) obviously means parents can give an unbiased view with comments, which is anonymous to the school.

Years ago you got a lot of notice for ofsted. Schools would arrange to have challenging students off site, toms of work,was done in the run up, etc.

In my mother's day of teaching 1940s and 50s the school inspector would arrive completely unannounced and sit in the back of teachers' classes and watch. I think that was a better system

We have had Ofsted recently. They didn’t sit at the back of anyone’s classes and watch. They did learning walks-alongside other members of staff-all of whom needed someone external to cover their own class. They wanted the deputy in meetings with them all morning which couldn’t have happened with no prior warning as we had to get supply cover in. They wanted the geography coordinator out all afternoon, with the deputy-again, more supply needed for that class. The head would have been on a course in London and was staying down there the day before so wouldn’t have been present for most of the day had we not been told the day before, neither would the governors-all of whom work some distance away.

If a school was good enough they shouldn’t have to spend hours preparing for an ofsted inspection. It just masks what a school is really like. Same with nurseries.

I do think they should have multiple inspectors rather than just the opinion of one person though.

If a school was good enough they shouldn’t have to spend hours preparing for an ofsted inspection.

This is bollocks.

It's a local authority school.

I could have almost guaranteed this was an LA school.
Now forced to be an academy I would assume.

Hmmm.... lots of LA schools are experiencing this downgrading under the new framework,. You read a report and it sounds almost entirely good bar one or two points and then you need the judgement, lo and behind its RI or inadequate and is now automatically down to be made an academy. But it's definitely not part of the governments agenda - oh no.

"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".

But in the same inspection they also say that no children were at risk or harm.

Hmmm.... lots of LA schools are experiencing this downgrading under the new framework,. You read a report and it sounds almost entirely good bar one or two points and then you need the judgement, lo and behind its RI or inadequate and is now automatically down to be made an academy. But it's definitely not part of the governments agenda - oh no.
The sad thing is that this doesn't surprise me.
We've seen similar happening in my area. Several decent, but not exceptional, schools were downgraded and shortly after were turned to academies.

I've worked in a school that was placed in special measures under an old framework. It was a fair judgement and nothing like the sort of agenda-driven judgements that have been happening in recent years.

I’m a head of a primary school. There has to be accountability, and knowing that safeguarding processes are sound is essential. When I started at my school it was RI. But unless you are in the system, you don’t seem the relentless build up and up of pressure from the local authority, from governors, from parents, from staff to be judged as ‘good’ next time when ‘good’ can be such a subjective judgement and dependent upon the luck of the draw with which inspector you get. The pressure takes you to breaking point. The judgement becomes a stick to beat you with in every local authority visit, in every horrible article in the local newspaper about ‘worst schools in our area’ that look at the previous judgement and ignore the positives. It becomes an easy way of the parents criticising you if they don’t agree - “Well, the school is RI, what do you expect?”

For about a year up until my most recent inspection, I couldn’t sleep because of the worry of what the next outcome would be. The judgement feels personal, because it goes out into the public domain. People judge you personally on those one or two words, they don’t see what else you are battling against, the massive safeguarding issues, the lack of funding, the antagonist parents who launch personal attacks on you on social media because you won’t bend to their whims, the struggles to recruit staff. And that’s just a few things. For about a year before we were due to be inspected, my poor children didn’t have a mum, my husband put up with a burnt out, snappy, work-obsessed wife.

We were inspected in September and got good. But I am only just starting to be able to sleep again, I am still jumpy, I still feel physically sick when the school phone rings between 10 - 12 which is when ofsted call. As awful as it is, I can understand why that poor headteacher killed herself after that Ofsted grading because it’s not one word on a report, it’s the undermining of years of hard work and putting everyone else above yourself, and then knowing that you are now facing years of constant criticism and pressure. I probably would have done the same.

And for those who wonder why heads still do the job when we face this - because we care so deeply about our children and our schools and, let’s face it, there don’t seem to be many others banging at the door to take over. I wonder why not.

It didn't escape my notice that normally on a certain day the teacher has a few hours out of the classroom but the week of the inspection she was firmly in the class

When inspectors are in all PPA, ECT and SLT time is paused.
That is normal during an inspection and is an expectation.
That missed time is then often given over the following 2 or 3 weeks where possible.

I could have almost guaranteed this was an LA school.

I know of another LA school, the last LA secondary in the area, also recently downgraded to inadequate. Some of what happened during the inspection was very odd.

And now the school can be taken over by any academy chain and there’s nothing they can do about it.

I work in a school and I genuinely don't think the parents realise how bad the safeguarding is. I didn't until I started working there.

So schools should have all paperwork printed and organised into piles every day waiting for OFSTED's arrival? Stored where?

Our inspectors wanted hard copies of all the documents - not to see them on a screen.

The process of printing the required documents and paperwork takes a lot of time.

We didn't have to write or rewrite any documents.
But until we knew which subjects were to be our deep dives, which attendances records were needed this time, which children's books they wanted to see and in which subjects, which lessons they wanted to observe and in which days, etc we couldn't even start. The phone call lasted all afternoon with HT and SLT - until that finished, which was just before the end of school, no one could even begun to get it printed. Simply organising an empty, private room for the inspector takes time in an over populated building!

Exactly what is happening in the city here. Only one remaining LA secondary school. Had a lot of,pressure to become an academy for years but hasn't gone that route.

Recent inspection. Report reads fairly good. Not outstanding but certainly not bad. One or two incidents mentioned but one not backed up with parent and pupil views at all. The other seems a very odd one. But school is now RI after being good.

It is now to be turned into an academy as a direct result of the RI rating. There will now be no more LA secondary schools in the city.

I used to work in an "Outstanding" primary school. No way in hell would I ever send my children there. Extremely high staff turnover. The management was nepotistic, xenophobic, sexist, and bullying. While all paperwork was perfect on the surface, it was full of lies. SATS were altered by management. The safeguarding lead ignored the concerns of staff members. Staff would repeatedly fail their NQT with weak reasoning even though they were great teachers just so they could be stuck there and paid less.

All of this was reported, but surprise surprise, it was run by an Ofsted higher up, so all reports vanished.

I disregard all Ofsted reports. They can be faked so easily. They only way to know about a school is to talk to teachers, teaching assistants, and students how they feel about the school.

My school’s results are in the top 20% of the country. In our monitoring visit, we received a second RI because our Music plans weren’t finished and our governors are too new. The previous inspection in 2021 also put us in RI because our curriculum wasn’t planned properly, despite the facts that this same curriculum was praised in the previous inspection.

We now have an academy order. In a school with some of the best results in the country.

Far too much emphasis on buzz words and current educational jargon.
Our school was marked down because 5 year olds looked blankly at the inspectors when they asked if their teacher held Learning Conversations with them. If they'd asked if their teacher talked to them about their work, they'd have been able to answer.
Another local school was graded weak in all areas (the lowest grading) when the HT had been in post for 5 weeks. So all the gossip is what a useless Head she is when the damage was done by the previous post holder.

I teach a nursing programme. The students are working, aged about 35 on average, most are women with kids and work in the nhs. It gets inspected by OFSTEd and as part of that we have to make sure that we are embedding prevent. I mean WTAF! Try as I might it's hard to explain to 35-40 year old women who work their bits off in the nhs why I need to make sure they are not terrorists!

I think this sums it up in a nutshell. Inspecting a school or a nursery isn’t like inspecting a kitchen. In a kitchen, the paperwork might not be in order and there might be rodent droppings under the units, but at least you would know what to expect and would have some control over it - the knives wouldn’t suddenly leap out of the drawer and start launching themselves across the room. But this is exactly what happens in a school or nursery, because kids are messy and unpredictable and don’t care about the outcome of the inspection. Kids can’t be controlled like inanimate objects.

Ofsted have no understanding of that. Well, they probably do - surely they must. But they don’t care. They expect perfection, and when you are dealing with people (and especially people over whom you have limited control), perfection is not possible.

I agree with this. It's an absolute tragedy.

I've just completed an OSTED.
It is my understanding that not complying with all safeguarding requirements means an automatic inadequate rating even if, as was in this case, everything else found to be rated as good.

Reading the report it suggests to me that the school did not ensure that all dbs checks had been made. Record keeping was not up to scratch etc
There's no way I'd want my children at a school which was inadequate in this area.
At our school every single person involved with the school is dbs checked and has annual safeguarding training. OFSTED checked this. The inspector asked me personally if I'd been checked and what the training and record keeping arrangements were in place.
This includes individuals who wouldn't normally even be in contact with any students.
Everyone is clear on how safeguarding concerns are recorded and managed.
Schools also have a post inspection meeting where the outcome is discussed with them.

I feel so sorry for the teacher and her family.
The issue here is what OFSTED uncovered and the lack of support for the Head which lead to this tragic outcome.

The issue here is what OFSTED uncovered

No it's not. The issue is with how it was dealt with.

I watched it, but if the school is unsafe for children because (among other things) it wasn't following proper recruitment checks - how is that Ofsted's fault for pointing it out?!