AIBU to not want ofstead abolished?

[Applepiesmum]

please bare with I don’t have a school aged child yet

however it’s the only criteria to assess schools against and as a parent the first thing I check when looking at a school if I should move to an area

i understand headteachers might be under pressure to perform but so are all public sector workers Doctors and nurses assessed and judged on performance by patients / students

am I the only person who is thinking like this

Having work in all school in all categories , the best quality of teaching I have seen was in a required improvement school that later became good. They had to work so much harder and put so much more in to get the same outcomes for pupils that the outstanding school did ( well in fairness they didn’t get same outcomes but what they provided for the pupils was incredible) They understood the need to raise pupils aspirations and address social issues before the teaching and learning even happened.

Did you know a music leader in a primary school who may lead four different subjects is held to the same standard as a leader of a department in a large secondary school, who has a degree in music? This is what people are saying about the framework not being fit for purpose and the labels being meaningless.

No one thinks schools shouldn’t be accountable, but we should be trying to make all schools the best they can be for all children and currently the system does not do that. A large school, on an affluent estate is going to find it far easier to be outstanding than a small coastal school with high rates of mobility and deprivation. It is not a fair system.

Do we expect safeguarding to be robust or not? Is a school wholly inadequate if it fails safeguarding at inspection? What would the MN inspectors do? Sweep it under the carpet? Pretend it’s all ok? Or be clear it was a failure of management?

I think Safeguarding should be removed from Ofsted completely and be a termly/annual audit which would be redone regularly and not left for years.

@Italiandreams I understand what you are saying BUT, the report also makes this clear doesn't it?

We are told the FSM rates, EAL rates etc in the report. I know some schools have a harder hill to climb given their intake, but I didn't look at OFSTED on its own. The progress and value added is important too. I can see with my own eyes deprivation at certain schools. However, there are deprived area outstanding schools too.

@Italiandreams
What safeguarding audits? Governors? They often believe what they are told and are not sufficiently equipped to audit anything. They are not the day to day management of safeguarding. That is the responsibility of SLT. They should be held to account by governors but governors do not get involved in the safeguarding process.

The framework for nurseries is different. Yes, it is a reasonable framework because it says “how” and what’s expected of all parties. The bottom line is that children in all settings deserve the best. Village school or 2000 place secondary. Clearly secondaries get a different type of inspection.

If anyone reads an ofsted report: what the school does well comes first. Then the areas for improvement. Individual teachers are not targeted. However SLT is managing the school and when heads earn over £100,000 in a secondary, they do have responsibility and should be accountable.

No idea why you would use an ofsted inspection when choosing your child's school, you do know that's just made on a basis of a day or 2 of inspection, and depends on the inspector that day, so generally means absolutely nothing.
So so many other ways to choose a school that are surely much more effective, such as recommendations, checking the schools website to find out their ethos, visiting the school and getting a feel for it yourself.

Secondary schools have the same framework as primary schools. Inspection is the same and primary schools are often inspected my secondary leaders.

My point was we should be having regular safeguarding audits, schools shouldn’t be going 15 years without an external party looking at safeguarding.

I agree we should be providing amazing education for all, but can’t see how labelling schools possibly does that! We wouldn’t do it to individual children, schools who are failing should absolutely be supported and made to improve but don’t see how putting a label on helps anyone. Especially when it isn’t a level playing field, and it is much easier to be a good school when the odds are stacked in your favour. There are statistics that show schools are deprived areas are far more likely to be inadequate, is that because the teaching and leaderships is more often poorer in these schools? Is it because they need far more funding because they need to put more provision in?

Clearly secondaries get a different type of inspection

But they don’t.

A secondary school has exactly the same type as a small infant school. A deep dive in secondary geography will get a head of department with a degree in geography, who teaches it every lesson of every day.

A deep dive in geography in an infant school may mean the coordinator is a reception teacher who doesn’t ever teach ks1 geography, has no GCSE in it, was only given that subject the term before when the previous coordinator left, gets no release time, money or budget for the subject and is also the coordinator for Art, phonics, maths as well.

I can see why the deep dive model works in secondary. It doesn’t work in primary-especially small ones.

I would very much support a more regular safeguarding audit rather than the farce that can be OFSTED. I've been through an inspection 6 times. Some supportive with superb inspectors (even with a poor outcome) but more recently I have spent hours with inspectors who had an axe to grind that has cost people their careers, or their mental health. OFSTED inspectors that have reduced student to tears (in one case a student with complex SEN after they asked her if she had experienced a sexual assault in the toilets....) A friend and colleague is a DSL at another school in a different LA (I'm also a DSL) and he had a mental health break following a judgement of inadequate based off the previous DSL, who had be through a disciplinary and jumped ship before he was sacked. My friend had been in post for less than a term and was still unpicking issues to deal with. The historic issues created by that meant that the inspection team arrived with one view of the school and nothing would change their mind. Having the misfortune to have an inspection from a team with preconceived ideas is soul destroying. Not to mention when you have to put complaints in regarding the inspector themselves, as some of their questions begin "how has you school failed to do X,Y and Z?"

The current system does not work and it does need an overhaul. It really should be a supportive measure to help schools give their parents the best outcomes and not destroy staff morale and add to workload. I remember a few years ago thinking if I have to re-write this scheme of work one more fucking time to use key OFSTED framework and language; that process probably took me, for one science subject, at least 20 hours. Imagine the man hours it took across an entire school with a sixth form!

If we had faith that inspectors we acting in the best interests of the school and their students, rather than coming to battle it really would be a different situation. If we trusted them as professionals it would be great. During my last 2 inspections I happened to Google the names of the staff; have a guess how many had failed schools, pay offs and controversy behind them in the media?

Oh look another person posting about something they know nothing about.
Please have some respect.
A headteacher DIED because of pressure of Ofsted.

I definitely agree with a separate body auditing safeguarding more regularly with bullying included in this audit. It's a completely separate but arguably much more vital aspect of a school than teaching quality which has more serious repercussions if left unchecked for long periods of time. One of our local secondary schools gets excellent exam results and was Ofsted outstanding but hadn't been inspected for years. Reading between the lines everyone I spoke to about it said it wasn't a nice school with lots of bullying and drug problems. Sure enough these have finally been picked up on by Ofsted and it's now rated inadequate but it's too late. Entire generations have gone to that school and probably gone through hell before it was picked up on because of the current system

Exactly @User923081 . The system is not fit for purpose at all. The outstanding label for the school was meaningless. We have several schools rated outstandingly round here, haven’t been inspected for 10-15 years, the leadership teams know that under the new framework they will not be outstanding anymore, but the label remains . ( They are still very good schools but unwillinging and unable to jump through hoops required by framework- pupil and staff wellbeing is more important to them)

@MrsKeats Who knows nothing? The report is actually very positive. It says it’s a welcoming and vibrant school. The issue was safeguarding. The governors were totally in the dark. So there was a legal failure. It’s so sad this affected the head so deeply because so many comments are very positive. Utterly tragic. Do we now think safeguarding should not be a legal requirement in schools? Who should be responsible?

I wouldn’t object to safeguarding not being part of Ofsted inspections, especially with 13 years between outstanding and this inspection. That’s clearly not acceptable. However who would inspect? Other heads? How often with the thousands of schools we have? Ofsted cannot get round to the inspections, so how would anyone else? Who is paying? What body would do it? Governors are supposed to hold schools to account. Some clearly don’t. This was what is meant to happen.

Of course secondary inspections differ. Look at the deep dives into subjects for a start, plus careers education. Very different. The framework is the structure. Not the detail.

The op. As she states.

But that’s the point, the deep dives are the same in primary, which is why it doesn’t work!

Of course secondary inspections differ. Look at the deep dives into subjects for a start

The Deep Dives into subjects is the model used for both primary and secondary-yet in secondary, it would be led by the head of that subject who probably has a degree in it and teaches that subject all day.

How do you think they differ, @TizerorFizz ?

Agree. I want to know if the school is well led, gets good results and goes above and beyond.

I KNOW it’s only a snapshot, soon out of date, not the only thing to go on etc etc - but for decades state schools just coasted, and many quietly failed children. I want my DS to go to an outstanding school. And I want to know the Head and Governors are accountable to an external body.

So you don’t think there’s any difference between a deep dive into art, geography. Maths, MFL and science during a secondary inspection (as at one school near me) and the primary curriculum deep dive into history, early reading and maths at the junior school where I was a governor? I think there was.

Plenty of schools do have very skilled curriculum leaders at primary. Why do teachers think they are all poor at their jobs? Many curriculum leaders in primary are superb, talented and well qualified.

goes above and beyond what?

Goes above and beyond normal reasonable working hours I expect you mean

I expect you are saying you want teachers to go above and beyond what is reasonable working hours, and sacrifice their health and family lives to provide for your child from their own time and resources? is that what you mean?

So you think ofsted are entitles to penalise staff who DON'T go above and beyond normal working hours, who prioritise time with their own children and looking after themselves.

So you are agreeing ofsted should be making unreasonable demands on school staff?

With the deep dives, secondary leaders are coming into primary schools as ofsted and expecting the same as secondary schools. They expect the EYFS teacher, who also leads 3 other subjects to know the exact profession of skills in their subjects. What is being taught is Year 5 , term 6 and how that leads in later and where it came from in EYFS etc .

Primary teachers are often great at their jobs, but they also sometimes leading 4 subjects and not paid anything for it or given time to do it. On Twitter several heads of all through schools and MAT with primary and secondary have called out the unfairness of this, and I think they probably have a good overview.

Vesta, you need to really think about your 'above and beyond' comment.

Who, precisely, are you applying this expectation to? Exactly which members of staff should go even further 'above and beyond' than the basic level of above and beyond that it takes to keep a school ticking over? Which part of their own lives should they forfeit in the process? For no 'above and beyond' remuneration?
Phrases like 'above and beyond' and 'going the extra mile' are unreasonable as a baseline expectation. They're also frequently used by coercive leaders.

There used to be a Grading of Satisfactory. All schools school be Satisfactory meaning they do what they are supposed to do. Maybe a Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory verdict is all that is needed and the nonsense paperwork should play no part in it. I'm not talking about Safeguarding, which should be monitored at all times by the LA or MAT regardless of Ofsted, but the stupid Visions and Mission Statements, the nitpicking planning formats showing things which are just common sense and many other things I have happily now forgotten.

The last Ofsted I took part in I was praised for my written Risk Assessments for two perfectly ordinary classroom activities. There was nothing on there that wouldn't be common sense to any adult and there is no way I would have bothered to write them at any other time e.g. for a visit to the school pond 'make sure children don't fall in'. As if anyone stupid enough to let children fall in a pond would be prevented by a sentence written down.

Ah, yes-I’m sure we all remember when Michael Wilshire decreed that Satisfactory was unsatisfactory!

I think there should be: meets expected standards or it doesn’t. With a type of www/ebi type feedback structure. There should be a transparent framework so inspections look similar to each other and not completely inconsistent like they are now. Heads should never be left with a one-word failing that they know will probably end their career and not be allowed to talk about it for weeks.

Safeguarding could be done yearly.

@Applepiesmum you don’t fatten a pig by keep weighing it.

When mine started school we asked around and generally sent our dc to the local school.
The biggest factor we took into account was the area we bought in eg. We bought a home in West Yorkshire and avoided living near schools in parts of Bradford.
If my dc’s old primary got an inadequate I would think it was a mistake. I certainly wouldn’t panic.

I'm in ROI and we seem to get on perfectly well without an ofsted equivalent. Trust me, everyone knows the good schools.

We spend just as much time preparing for ofsted requirements as we do planning day to day stuff for children. Without the out of touch expectations we could be spending more time on the children. During Covid the admin needing to be sent to ofsted and the LA was crazy on top of all the extra cleaning etc.