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.

India doesnt even bother to educate millions of their children

I think anyone that's been through an Ofsted inspection would heartily agree they can leave a trail of destruction that, whilst supposed to improve schools, is an incredibly blunt instrument. In my own experience they frequently have a fixed agenda even prior to a visit.

When they leave and senior leaders are picking up the pieces, it's not difficult to see how dire outcomes can happen as they did in Ruth's case.

It's not as though an Ofsted leads to supporting improvement, simply that they pass verdict and onto the next school. Meanwhile all staff are impacted and unless Ofsted confer Good or Outstanding, surely in a world where education is so badly fractured this cannot be good for children's outcomes.

A poor Ofsted is a death knell for school's future finances, makes it nigh on impossible to recruit staff in an already difficult market and discourages retention of the many teachers needed to support the improvement.

I agree that transparency is good. Schools that are not giving children best outcomes should be identified. But this system is seriously flawed.

I can’t even see India in the PISA 2022 Maths rankings, so I doubt it’s true anyway. And China cheats! They are notorious for this.

I agree and I would add that schools spend a lot of time and effort making sure they are ticking the Ofsted boxes rather than on things which directly impact children’s outcomes and experiences. I’m not criticising SLT for doing that. It’s the crazy system.

This isn’t true. An inadequate rating means forced academisation. It happened to our school in very similar circumstances. Whole process took a year during which they couldn’t hire a permanent head, couldn’t permanently replace leaving teachers as we were between management, and pupils left in droves due to the uncertainty of what was going on. We are now an academy, everything is much the same as before (because there wasn’t much wrong in the first place), but ofsted won’t now come back for another 4 years, because we’re technically a new school. How this is a good outcome beats me.

Has the HT been sacked yet? Lol the Great Revolution...

A poor Ofsted is a death knell for school's future finances, makes it nigh on impossible to recruit staff in an already difficult market and discourages retention of the many teachers needed to support the improvement.

That sums it up really. This is why it's so stressful. This is why it mattered SO much to that poor HT.

If the government wants a school to improve, why on earth do they make it almost impossible for them to resource those improvements, by creating an environment where they lose funding, teachers and pupils?

Oh, and we never had any monitoring visits in that time. Just ‘inadequate’, so you need to become an academy, see you in 4 years.

It seems like a knee jerk reaction which will not end well for the school or HT.

Two RIs also means forced academisation - ridiculous when the very definition of RI is a school that ‘still provides an acceptable quality of education and care for children, but will have areas where they could improve.’

The inspection is going ahead. She will not be refusing entry.

So a lot of hot air then...

She’s shown poor judgement and I would be concerned if she were the HT of my DCs school especially as she’s only be there a short time, so not had time to build a reputation.

This is anecdotal but there’s a school near me where the teachers always appear to be kicking off and downing tools at the drop of a hat. During Covid they fought to stay closed and just handed out Twinkle sheets citing safeguarding concerns and never marked them. I had friends with kids at the school and they commented that the school prioritised political activism over the children. The school was definitely an outlier in the area as most around here have good reps.

Ofsted may be a mess but there needs to be some level of assessment as not all schools are run properly and there is such thing as poor teachers.

Awesome. Ofsted is stupid and pointless. Study published in journal of child psychology a couple of years ago:

We found that Ofsted ratings of secondary school quality accounted for 4% of the variance in students' educational achievement at age 16, which was further reduced to 1% of the variance after we accounted for prior school performance at age 11 and family socioeconomic status. Furthermore, Ofsted ratings were weak predictors of school engagement and student well-being, with an average correlation of .03

Conclusion
Our findings suggest that differences in school quality, as indexed by Ofsted ratings, have little relation to students’ individual outcomes. Accordingly, our results challenge the usefulness of Ofsted ratings as guides for parents and students when choosing secondary schools.

@Endlesssummer2022 what would your reaction be if this School was judged good or outstanding?

An Ofsted will not take this into account, in fact they make that super clear at the outset of an inspection.

Said school pulls out the stops in the day, passes with flying colours.

Can you see how that's a flawed system?

Furthermore in a small Trust one school receives a bad Ofsted and it destabilises the Trust. It makes schools vulnerable to takeovers that destabilise further.

It's a crazy system. It does not do what should be sought to achieve, which is excellence.

Next lesson, who the fuck thinks Trusts are a Good Idea 🤣

And yes, there are such things as poor teachers. It should be the case that where this is true, schools have an easier time in managing out. Looking at Unions for support in this rather than slavish devotion to ensuring tenure.

@Endlesssummer2022
Ofsted may be a mess but there needs to be some level of assessment as not all schools are run properly and there is such thing as poor teachers

Surely the governors have the power to sack a poor head? (“Schools not run properly”). And the head/leadership team have the power to sack poor teachers? (“there is such a thing as poor teachers”). I’m not sure how a government department which has poor knowledge of a schools history and the specific challenges facing a school can help that school more than the skilled adults who spend their lives working there

I suppose you will now say in this country Chinese and Indians kids aren't top of their studies either - that they are cheating too?!

Where are India in the PISA ratings please?

Hang on, those kids are in our education system and receive our teaching. So the teaching can’t be as bad as you say! You are confusing yourself now 🤣

Well I mean surely they have SOMETHING to do with how good a school is....🤷🏻‍♀️

What the hell are you on about?!