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.

@ImNotAsThinkAsYouDrunkIAm

and since conversion - you have seen no improvements?

Given you don’t think that an inadequate was fair in the scenario where a school allowed a person from another country to have unsupervised access to children without having done the legal checks… means we are unlikely to ever agree

I didn’t see the things that were apparently wrong before, because they were safeguarding, and behind the scenes. So, no idea.

So Even with no head and then the part time deputy stepping in as an interim…. You remained very happy with the school?

Was your inadequate in the “special measures” category?

No. But I also wasn’t happy with what happened after the ofsted inadequate. Which was that they delivered their verdict, and then left the school to get on with it. Which meant, still no permanent head, because the LA was now no longer responsible for recruiting one. The academisation took the best part of a year during which time the school couldn’t recruit a permanent head and couldn’t permanently recruit for any teachers that left. If you look up the name of the school now, it says ‘ofsted inadequate’, and will say that until ofsted decide to come back in, in several years time. We could be bloody excellent now, and nobody would know. Or we could still be inadequate, and again, nobody will know. Conversely, a school down the road that was rated good many years ago might be awful.

So no, I obviously wasn’t happy with how it was with no head, but, what we needed was a permanent head. And the ofsted inadequate made it harder, and dragged out the process longer, of getting one. And And , having delivered their verdict that safeguarding was bad enough that it required an inadequate rating, ofsted is apparently not concerned enough to bother checking the school again for several years to see whether anything is different or not.

Nobody on this thread thinks that schools shouldn’t be checked. But I don’t believe that the way ofsted goes about checking them is effective.

And now? What do you think now?

Oof, that’s really hard to say. We have a head. That’s good. We still have a lot of supply, because it’s hard to recruit teachers to an ‘inadequate’ school. I was never unhappy with the teaching before, and don’t see much difference in that now, either positive or negative. I’ve obviously no idea what the safeguarding processes are like behind the scenes. It seems, outwardly, much the same as before we lost the former head. We’re assured that the safeguarding is now much better, and I hope that’s the case, but I can’t know for sure, because ofsted won’t be in again for a long time.

In the spirit of ‘don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions’, what do I think should have happened? Well, I think that ofsted should have come in, picked up the issues that they picked up, and told the school they needed fixing. Then I think that they should have come back in a few months later to see if that had been. As I think you’ve said, if it’s safeguarding processes, it shouldn’t take too long to fix. Deeming a school so ‘inadequate’ that it needs a complete change of management and governance, but then not coming back in for years to check if it’s got any better, is absurd. And it’s not helpful to me as a parent. All I know is that the school was ‘inadequate’ a year ago. In two years time that’s probably still all I will know. That word, inadequate, means nothing. What would have been helpful was a report that said ‘we’ve picked up some errors in the way safeguarding incidents are reported’, and then a report a few months later to say whether or not those processes had been fixed.

Do I think that we should have been academised? Well, as I said, the LA hadn’t done a great job of helping us, so perhaps that is a good thing. But it needs to go hand in hand with ofsted returning for a monitoring visit and giving the school- and the new management - a chance to show it’s improved (or indeed, if it hasn’t - what else needs to happen above and beyond just ‘become an academy please’? ) An ‘inadequate’ does so much harm in terms of pupil numbers, and therefore funding, teacher recruitment and so on, and schools have no way of proving themselves for many years after one. How is that helping our children, and their education?

That is not in keeping with inspection regs for inadequate schools that convert

Schools judged ‘inadequate’When we judge a school as inadequate, we place the school in a category of concern. This means that we judge the school either to have serious weaknesses or to require special measures.The Secretary of State for Education will issue an academy order to a maintained school judged inadequate and placed in a category of concern. The school will then become a sponsored academy. We will not usually monitor the school unless there are safeguarding concerns or there is a delay in the school becoming a sponsored academy.If an academy is judged inadequate and placed in a category of concern, we will monitor the school. If an academy is judged inadequate and is rebrokered to a new multi-academy trust to become a new sponsored academy, we will not usually carry out any monitoring inspections.If an academy is judged as having serious weaknesses or requiring special measures, and if it is not rebrokered to a new multi-academy trust, we will monitor the school to check its progress. We will then carry out a graded inspection within 30 months of the publication of the academy’s previous graded inspection report.

Not sure that makes me feel any better about ofsted, that they don’t appear to be following their own regs, then. They’ve not been back.

No but if you read it… the school is being “monitored” by ofsted. Parents won’t be advised of monitoring output by ofsted or the school.

For a school to be deemed inadequate and placed In special measures and converted to an academy… they would have had to have been deemed as failing in 3 of the 4 pillars and judged as failing to adequately educate the children and unlikely to be able to improve without external support.

Why not though? How does that help me know whether this school, or any given school is any good, if they don’t report their findings? How does it help the school to have an ‘inadequate’ label, until the next report that they do decide to publish in a few years’ time?

Because if the motioning proves that the school is continuing to fail with regard to the 3 pillars and is not showing signs of improvement - then additional support implemented and finally closure if literally no improvement at all.

essentially during monitoring if you don’t hear from ofsted it is because the school is keeping pace with the pace of improvement expected by ofsted

Well wonderful, but I don’t see how anyone is supposed to know that. Perhaps they could employ you to write that on their website next to the ‘inadequate’ rating that comes up when I, or a prospective parent, search for the school.

No, any monitoring by OFSTED is a published, public document.
Details of monitoring here.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-inspection-handbook-eif/school-monitoring-handbook

This will tell parents/public whether the school is making adequate progress to improve.

We have an inadequate academy, OFSTED monitoring report about to be published with the judgement:
‘[The school] continues to require improvement. Leaders have made insufficient progress to improve the school.’

The only other judgement as part of the process is:

‘The school] remains inadequate and has serious weaknesses. Leaders have made progress to improve the school, but more work is necessary for the category of concern to be removed.

The only published document for our school is the original ofsted report from around 18 months ago. The academy trust when they took over said they don’t expect ofsted in before the usual schedule for a ‘new’ school. Perhaps they are wrong. I hope so.

Well I desperately want Ofsted to go and review my DC primary school. It was last rated in 2011 as Outstanding. It then converted to an academy in 2013 and there have been no further reports since the 2011 one. So nothing for 12 years. And it's had a complete change of leadership and ethos since then. Its mad.

Yes, that would fit into the schedule for a new school. The academy I mentioned above was inadequate as an academy, so monitoring continues under that schedule.

Always a huge flaw, that an inadequate school that becomes an academy is not monitored.
LA maintained schools, without a sponsoring trust continue to be maintained as the existing school. LA’s support governors, including to find a new HT. Monitoring by OFSTED continues to the schedule above.

I was under the impression that schools could request an inspection?

my sons school had a good ofsted which was a few years out of date. They were then acquired by an academy trust. The head was replaced and the parents weren’t happy so triggered an immediate inspection that happened in the first September of it being an academy. The result was special measures. Since it had only been an academy a matter of weeks, all the parents who had been raving about how amazing the previous head was and how amazing the school was were suddenly quiet as it became clear that actually the school was not not perform anywhere near acceptable.

over the next 12 months the school and ofsted published quarterly communications about actions taken so far and their impact and what was planned next. They were then re-inspected and achieved a good rating.

They then requested another inspection a few years later which upgraded them to outstanding.

https://educationinspection.blog.gov.uk/2016/02/08/inspection-timescales/#comment-1148

Yes, they can, a friend’s school has recently done so after more than a decade without an inspection.

So if a school is given a poor rating, it’s not actually the case that they are ‘stuck’ with it for years - if the issues are easily resolved then why don’t they make the changes required and then request another inspection?

Well, they have to pay for it, according to the handbook. And if we’re to believe the news from recent weeks, most schools trust ofsted about as far as they can throw them. Perhaps they don’t want to put their staff under that kind of pressure.

It also doesn’t explain why, having deemed a school inadequate due to safeguarding, ofsted is so unconcerned as to wait several years (just read the relevant section in the handbook, it’s 3 - in our case plus the time it took to become
an academy) before they go back in to check on the school.

As the pp said, it’s a bit of a flaw.

If my school got an inadequate, personally I would do a little research 🤷‍♀️

I work for a charity. Bugger all to do with teaching or ofsted but I do have children in education hence we reading bloomin anything I can get my hands on