The fight back against OFSTED has begun - support needed

[wantmorenow]

Just saw this and it seems genuine and if so then bloody marvellous. Let's hope this is the rallying call to changes with immediate effect. This has been posted today. A Headteacher has refused access to Ofsted tomorrow, I assume in the wake of the coverage of Ruth Perry's death.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4765105-ofsted-needs-to-be-abolished-trigger-warning?page=1

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4765712-ofsted-needs-to-be-abolished-further-details

twitter.com/FloraSCooper/status/1637760884243066881

I've just had the call.
I've refused entry.
This is an interesting phone call.
Doing this for everyone for our school staff everywhere!

School asking for support in person tomorrow 8am if local.

Reform is one thing but what comes out needs to be a strong robust process that parents can rely on and which is not overly influenced by teachers and their unions.

I think that decisions about how to judge what makes a good school should be made by people who actually know about teaching. It's ridiculous that Amanda Spielman was never a teacher.

In very weak schools, the improvement required can be extensive. It takes time to rebuild a school to meet the Ofsted framework. It takes good staff and very committed volunteer governors. ( could you volunteer @Lovelyveg80 )

One of the biggest issues, especially in a school causing concern, is finding staff. Recruitment is difficult generally but to improve a school requires those who can give time to work over and beyond, those who will thrive on scrutiny, those who are not worried about the perception of a school.

Add to that some of our small schools, trying to improve a whole curriculum, every subject, improvement by one full time teacher and one teaching headteacher. Just about impossible!

Often schools in our most vulnerable, highly disadvantaged communities are those that require improvement. Staff need to be highly skilled in more than just the academic. Mental health, emotional health, etc.

AIBU?

But I wouldn’t know if they were being U, and wouldn’t presume to - so no.

The OP isn’t a teacher
she posts in AIBU

had she been a teacher
and posted in the Teachers forum

you would have a point with your doctors analogy

I wasn’t talking about the OP

I’m explaining why non teachers are posting on this thread

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/mar/22/nursery-manager-and-owner-tell-of-devastation-after-ofsted-downgrading

I don’t even know what to do with this. I mean, the article focuses on the witchcraft issue (now, there’s a sentence I didn’t expect to be typing tonight), but….county lines? In a nursery?!

I think we all agree that safeguarding is important. But I just don’t have faith in the system. The school my children go to was ofsteded last year. They got an inadequate due to safeguarding. There were various circumstances at the time that many parents didn’t feel had been properly taken into account (we hadn’t had a head for at least 6 months, for a start), but regardless, inadequate due to safeguarding, that’s bad. So, what was done? Well, we were forced to become an academy. A process which took the best part of a year. During that time ofsted didn’t come back. Now we are an academy, we are a new school. Ofsted will be in in around 4 years’ time. So, I guess we’d better all hope that that simple ‘become an academy’ solution had the desired outcome, because if safeguarding is still bad, nobody’s going to know for another 4 years. Can somebody explain to me how that is a good process? Meanwhile, we will now struggle to recruit teachers, and parents will send their children elsewhere - maybe to one of the other schools down the road with a ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ rating that were last inspected many many years ago. Nobody’s saying that schools shouldn’t be inspected. Just that ofsted is fundamentally broken.

Sadly, political rather than anything to do with the quality of education or safeguarding our children.
The education system is in crisis.

Not always.

I have just been through ofsted.
There was one inspector for two days.

There was no team.

No head for 6 months

That is appalling and would undoubtedly had a profound impact on safeguarding, given the head has day to day responsibility for safeguarding.

and the other parents that had concerned. I’m guessing they think an “inadequate” was reasonable if not underplaying.

Something drastic had to happen. It was either change the entire infrastructure of the school or make it an academy or close it down

It didn’t mean “or make it an academy”

I meant i.e make it an academy

Yes but now they’ve made it an academy, that’s it. Ofsted didn’t come in during the process, and they won’t now come in for 4 years. We’re an academy, job done. Apparently. I just don’t see how that’s achieving anything- you’re underperforming, please become an academy, off you pop, see you in 4 years. Nobody has any idea if the safeguarding is any better than before.

But academies have a very different infrastructure and will pull in multi discipline expertise from across the trust.

So your school, floundering without a head, seriously failing in terms of safe guarding, will now be surrounded by an extensive infrastructure, with the aim being to avoid your school closure

Ha. I wish. There is another school in our area that just got an ofsted inadequate. That one really was deserved by all accounts. Ofsted went in as a result of parental and teacher reports. It was already an academy.

It’s just not good enough. If safeguarding is seriously failing then for god’s sake, wouldn’t you want to check on it in a few month’s time? Apparently not.

And that’s the context in which Ruth Perry killed herself. They picked up problems in her school. They gave her an inadequate, and then they sailed off into the distance. Caversham has a lot of detail on their website about what they’ve done in response to the report, but who knows when- if - ofsted will be back so they can prove themselves again.

So your school, floundering without a head, seriously failing in terms of safe guarding, will now be surrounded by an extensive infrastructure, with the aim being to avoid your school closure

'Turn into an academy' is where the government plan for failing schools begins and ends. They have no idea what to do if that doesn't work.

There are failing schools out there who have been failing for years, and the solution after each shit Ofsted is for the academy trust to give them up and for a different one to take over. No sign of the school closing.

The ofsted inspection policy where a school was previously graded inadequate prior to conversion is as follows:-

, the graded inspection will normally take place:no later than the predecessor school would have received the graded inspection if it had not converted to an academy; but
no earlier than 1 year after the new academy opens

seems reasonable to me

The school that my DGD should attend when she's five is RI or inadequate in all areas. It's already an academy.

Turning a school into an academy isn't some magical act that makes everything right. I'm not sure why anyone thinks it does. There are plenty of failing academy schools and useless trusts.

Academies are a political response, not a quality one. The government wants all schools to be academies by 2030 and it's issuing poor OFSTED readings to speed up the transition.

Oh academies are no panacea that’s for sure

what they do do is bring in a lot more accountability. So the PP talking about her primary without a head for 6months 😮 and the serious safeguarding breaches…. Would be immediately be surrounded by an infrastructure that will hold it up at least in the short term. The alternative being appalling schools such as the above would simply have to close

But ‘no head for six months’ is an over simplification. Legally, schools have to have a headteacher. It maybe an interim, it maybe a shared arrangement with another school, it seems very unlikely that there is ‘no head’ at all.

Academy Trusts are variable, like all organisations. Trusts have less local authority/government over sight ( they answer directly to one Regional Director - regional in vast areas of the country like ‘the north’).
They are much more likely to be working without LA over sight. In my LA, you can see ( earlier posts) the lengths we go to to put in rigorous annual and termly specialist monitoring and support for safeguarding. The academy schools within our local authority area sit outside of this. Can opt in, but never do.

But ‘no head for six months’ is an over simplification. Legally, schools have to have a headteacher. It maybe an interim, it maybe a shared arrangement with another school, it seems very unlikely that there is ‘no head’ at all.

PP said this was the case at her school so no idea if “over simplification” or not

LAs are the infrastructure. Our LA schools improvement team would have been available, and with much more local knowledge, in both those situations. My own SLT were brought in by the LA when hard to fill Headteacher vacancy came up, and our Head and deputy stepped in to run both schools.

And of course our people knew that school well and could step in seamlessly. An Academy trust flying someone in from a different part of the country at short notice isn't necessarily better.

The head was off sick for months, and then resigned shortly prior to the ofsted. The deputy head, who was part time (3 days) and also teaching a class, stepped in for several months, and then an interim head was put in place, shared with another local school, about a week before the ofsted. It was hardly a surprise that there were weaknesses in leadership and management. And in many ways, given the rubbish job the LEA had done at providing alternative cover during the months the head was off sick, perhaps a change of oversight from LEA to academy was a good change. But I’ve no idea. Because ofsted came in for two days and then buggered off and haven’t been back since. I fail to believe that if the aim is to safeguard children, that it’s a good system for them to deliver an inadequate rating and then not come back in again for years.