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.

Yeah let's make our kids miss more fucking school! 🙈🙈🙈

ofsted is awful and needs to be completely overhauled I agree. However I’m not sure she can refuse entry? She works at the school, she doesn’t own it. Also I’m a bit alarmed she invited everyone to come to the school initially. I’m a teacher so I fully support the idea of taking a stand against ofsted (although I am in wales). However I feel she has gone about this in such a bad way with terrible judgement. Be interesting to see what happens tomorrow.

The OFSTED system is punitive, not supportive. It's not about helping schools improve, it's about damning them. And there's a huge political background around wanting them to fail, so that the government can turn them all into academies and get rid of local government control over them.

@saraclara why is it bad to become an academy?

You seem to have forgotten your original point and now sound like a lunatic:

India and China are way ahead in their mathematics teaching and results.

Not really. I gave examples. Who cares about PISA when these countries produce doctors, bankers!

Right 🤨🤨

The question is why do you think the governors would do a better job? The governors may be biased and have their own agenda.

I hate Ofsted but a regulatory body is essential. I'd hate the thought of my children being in a school that was never inspected and was failing my child. Even worse, imagine if it was your child who was failed by inadequate safeguarding.

Because academies have the power to vary the pay and conditions they offer staff. Other schools do not.

She’s backed down and OFSTED will be in tomorrow 🤷‍♀️

That’s a very racist comment.

How is it racist to state that Chinese and Indian parents educate their own children and take the school with a pinch of salt? How is it racist to point out that these 2 groups top the education tables? Do you even know what racist means? Schools discriminate against ethnic minorities so absolutely we do not allow our children to be solely schooled by their physical schools. When we put our children into private schools it's not so much for the actual schooling although that is better than most state schools it's to have our children around less disruptive children. The point still stands children of Chinese and Indian parents do well and we had the language barrier. Not racist at all!

@Maximo2

in the interests of transparency you should probably have explained that your school just got a shite of ofsted raging and now has an academy order

Evil. And bonkers. They are done to protect children, not to protect unfit for job individuals. Ofsted reports are far from perfect and are usually too lenient and lax and miss quite a few red things but do make schools more accountable. Anything could have tipped that person over the edge. People take their own life for various reasons all the time, including for failing in their jobs, relationships and so on. There needs to be better support for mental health, which is nothing to do with ofsted, but children need to be protected and schools made more, not less accountable.

Meh, I’ve not hidden it, I’ve talked about it quite a bit on MN.

But not once mentioned that you are very raw from a recent appalling ofsted inspection on this thread.

I agree with assessment and inspection, just think it needs to change. One or two words cannot describe a school, as an Ofsted rating does.

Well if this was round 1, Ofsted won.

Of course they took an issue with "flossing" - it is indeed sexualised. Fortnite isn't suitable for under 13s, it's rated Teen. And the other inappropropriate play they picked up on, they were correct in doing so - if it looked like peer on peer abuse, it probably was. What happens in the school when the ofsted inspectors aren't there is probably much worse.
How perverse to be defending this behaviour in young kids. Those campaigns are started ptobably by those who are happy to make violent sexualised games and the weird dolls in suspenders and g-strings available to kids.
The school has 12% more boys than girls on roll, wonder why that is.

Ofsted reports are far from perfect and are usually too lenient and lax and miss quite a few red things but do make schools more accountable.

Not sure they make schools accountable for the important stuff. And is it accountability or support and encouragement that works best?

Anything could have tipped that person over the edge. People take their own life for various reasons all the time, including for failing in their jobs, relationships and so on.

Nick Robinson talking about this right now on radio 4. Her family said she was under terrible pressure and was badly criticized in the inspection. So they definitely think it was because of Ofsted.

I need to catch up on the whole thread.

I was devastated by the death of this poor woman. I can actually imagine exactly what she went through as a teacher of 21 years, who's had burn out several times and mh issues due to the pressure and demands of education.

I however I have to say that, given what I know of the process and how safeguarding is the heart of an inspection, I thought this was a foolish move.

The education system is an absolute mess and Ofsted are too. But I don't believe this was the correct cause of action.

I used the Ofsted teacher survey to completely destroy the Tory government who I saw as having put schools, heads and Slts in ridiculous positions through their privatisation of educational resources, which mean that slts are forced to put unreasonable pressure on teachers and creating horrific work loads.

Schools shouldn't be left for 12 years without inspection. That's a major safeguarding fail on Ofsted. They are absolutely culpable in this case as are the government too.

@fairywhale what was evil?

Her family and friends have said it was very much the OFSTED - I have friends who are HTs who are on the edge of burnout due to the constant pressure of the inspection so can totally see how this would tip someone over. Please don’t minimise it.

All of those things. I would add to this extremely poor discipline in some schools, where the school bends over backwards to keep the disruptive children in education, while throwing all the other children's education under the bus.

The poor access to support for children who are struggling, either with their mental health or academically.