To think criticisms of the new Ofsted ratings are self-serving?

[SmokeRingsOfMyMind]

Obviously the suicide of Ruth Perry was very sad and distressing. But the teaching unions appear to be using that tragedy as a way to avoid proper scrutiny of school performance by Ofsted. The new, more detailed system proposed looks perfectly sensible to me. I'm sure Ofsted could improve inspection quality, but a lot of the commentary about how stressful it is seems nonsensical. All professionals need to be able to cope with external verification of performance from time to time, don't they?

What’s always concerned me about the reaction to the Ruth Perry tragedy is that her school was given inadequate based on safeguarding.

Surely even cynics to OFSTED should recognise that this is one area schools absolutely must get right?

I would actually say better still is a panel where some know the school well and others are totally fresh to it. I do think there is an argument that local authorities in the old days could get too 'cosy' through familiarity, or too jaded that some schools were just hopeless, and so schools that really needed it never got the scrutiny needed, or insights from better practice elsewhere. But you want a mix of context and new eyes if you actually want the process to drive enhancement.

I think the impact of a negative inspection is what people are missing. If a school has a negative ofsted the impact is profound.
The head is usually forced out.
Many teachers will leave.
Recruitment becomes even more difficult.
Parents avoid sending their children.
Numbers decline and finding also decreases.

This state of affairs continues until the next ofsted which could be five or six years or even longer. The issues could have since been dealt with, perhaps pretty quickly but the judgement remains for all that time damaging the school.

I can't think of another public service that suffers such a prolonged impact. The damage reputationally is also disproportionate. In other sectors people move on but their careers are not essentially destroyed by that one inspection. This does happen in schools.

If OFSTED came in and advised schools sincerely things would be different. If there's a safeguarding issue for example then it should be addressed immediately and checked, not left for the follow up inspection months later at best.

I've worked at outstanding schools and those in special measures and everything in between. The difference wasn't generally the teachers, it was the catchment, the struggle to follow a negative impression report, the demoralised leadership. I remember one report saying that to improve attainment we should get the children to achieve higher grades. Groundbreaking!!!

I've seen leaders and teachers who have left schools in special measures go on and successfully use the same strategies that didn't work there to apparently be outstanding elsewhere.

Ofsted have since recognised that if it is a minor safeguarding issue that can be amended within 90 days then schools should be given the opportunity to do this without the school being rated inadequate and the school being taken over by an academy trust that the school and community had no say in.

The whole system around safeguarding was shit and the consequences of a quickly fixable error were catastrophic.

The whole system around safeguarding was shit and the consequences of a quickly fixable error were catastrophic.

Do you mean Ruth Perry’s suicide?

I find it a bit alarming how so many people would happily seem to have a reduced or non existent inspection process - some people on this thread didn’t even know hospitals are inspected!

Do people know what would happen if that was the case

This! The current system leads to greater inequality as it pits schools against each other and gives parents with the most resources the most choice. Schools are not a market economy and should not be, there is too much at stake.

No one has said they want a non-existent inspection process.

Yes?

Now I don’t know a great deal about Ruth Perry’s life but as a general rule I do not like it when the narrative is “X died by suicide and the reason is Y”. We don’t know what other factors were at play - or rather we have a very limited knowledge because nobody was inside their head. But blame is always attributed and I thinks it’s SO unfair to point and say “You! Your fault…I think”. Same happened with Caroline Flack. People who weren’t terribly impressed that she assaulted her boyfriend, and spoke out about DV in a different way to what we’re used to, got the blame. When actually even watching that documentary painted a picture along a woman who’d been troubled her whole life

Absolutely this. The new version does nothing helpful.

There was an inquiry and the outcome was the Ofsted contributed to Ruth Perry's suicide.

If you read all the details, it was abundantly clear what was inside her head because she talked about it and wrote about it.

Exactly

I find it a bit alarming how so many people would happily seem to have a reduced or non existent inspection process

Where ?
Which people ?
Certainly no-one on this thread, and no teacher, TA, Nursery Practioner, FE staff, or indeed parent I have ever met.

Who are these people who are supposed to have said this @JandamiHash ?

Sorry should have been a bit clearer.

Nobody on this thread but I’ve met people who feel it is pointless, or they want a softly softly approach (I used to work with child protection services) there was always a lot of pushback from many people about inspections. And always attempts to paint a better picture than it was. The desperation to avoid accountability in public services IME is rife and inspectorates have to have what might seem nonsensical or “fault seeking” methods but that because these services have too many piss takers and when you work with children it’s not acceptable

JandamiHash · Today 19:45

I find it a bit alarming how so many people would happily seem to have a reduced or non existent inspection process

I find it a bit alarming to hear people make proclamations about how schools should be run and inspected when they know absolutely sod all about the reality of the situation in schools.

Also, these people rarely think beyond the result of the inspection. They just seem to assume that inspections are inherently helpful, because they believe that 'requires improvement' means that improvement will be achieved, that the school will be sorted out. In reality, a bad Ofsted report is just as likely to lead to falling rolls and even poorer recruitment and retention of teachers than is normal at the moment. How is that going to help students?

Yes i agree, it's pretty much the same. We have OFSTED looming, we have been given loads of extra work but TBH it's stuff that should be done anyway, it's good to be assessed to keep us on our toes, its easy to let things slide, its kids futures in our hands, and we dont want education going down the pan again as it did when Labour was last in.

External inspections are the norm in most spheres of work which involves the public. Schools, hospital, prisons, every single restaurant or cafe, care homes. Others have mentioned financial regulators, police inspections, fire inspections etc.

Most have a published report.

Most are very stressful for those involved , and where the judgement is poor, can be career ending/impacting.

I don't see why teaching should be treated any differently, or more leniently. Like for any other area of management, if the oversight part is causing stress that's having an effect on your mental health, then perhaps it's not for you. I can't imagine a governor of a prison saying they shouldn't be inspected because they find it too stressful.

Yes, there may be a tricky child which throws a curve ball. Equally, a difficult prisoner, or patient, or unexpectedly vomiting customer! If the problem is that Ofsted seem to want perfection irrespective of what is going on, then that needs dealing with (the same as for any other inspection type), but as a parent I want external oversight, and I want to be able to read the published report, just like I could with my local hospital, or prison.

The original inspectorate report isn’t available from the school Ruth Perry was headteacher at but I do remember there were some pretty damning failings, including staff not having relevant DBS checks.

I am genuinely sorry she felt so desperate and it’s awful. The problem is we can’t not hold people accountable because it might trigger mental health problems, including severe ones.

I have often felt that it is unfair to name social workers who made the wrong decisions about children who are subsequently seriously harmed or killed but that continues to happen.

I don't see why teaching should be treated any differently, or more leniently. Like for any other area of management, if the oversight part is causing stress that's having an effect on your mental health, then perhaps it's not for you. I can't imagine a governor of a prison saying they shouldn't be inspected because they find it too stressful.

Yes, there may be a tricky child which throws a curve ball.

It's got nothing to do with a 'tricky' child throwing a curve ball. Tell me you know nothing about schools without telling me you know nothing about schools...

The aim of inspections should be to help and improve schools. Otherwise what is the point of them? 30,000 people quit teaching last year. Do you think that saying 'Suck it up or recognise that maybe it's not for you' is going to cut it? It's not about being lenient. It's about seriously considering the purpose of the inspections and the effect they actually have on schools.

Putting schools in competition with each other is not healthy either. Imo schools should go back into local authority control, with local teams working in close partnership with their local school and supporting them to make improvements.

Any regulated industry has unannounced audits with very public consequences.

You need to look into what happened and what changes have been made since then to prevent it from happening again if you think that what happened to Ruth Perry was entirely reasonable.

The coroner's report was damning.

I used to work in school improvement. I was sent into schools deemed by OFSTED to be failing so repeatedly saw the aftermath of poor inspections. In some cases harsh judgments were fair. But was wasn’t fair was that the organisation that claimed to raise standards did absolutely nothing to raise standards and, as previously mentioned, the consequences of their judgment made the job of actually improving things so much harder.
In some cases the judgement was unfair but there is no contextual nuance. Inspections don’t take account of highly complex contexts and account for the impact of factors known to affect outcomes such as prosperity, parental education level, ethnicity etc. They reward schools for being lucky with their intake.
This doesn’t mean that school inspections are wrong. But OFSTED has failed for decades and should be abolished.
A new organisation that is capable of raising standards and remains responsible for schools until standards have been raised would be a start. It’s very easy to pass judgement. The challenge is in improving things. That is what raises standards and improves lives.
Additionally, OFSTED has eroded trust. I cannot believe that parents still read and give any credence to OFSTED reports. Sensible parents would totally ignore the reports and go and visit the school and make up your own mind. An OFSTED report we’ll likely be no less flawed than your own opinion.

I’ll have a look. I don’t think it was reasonable at all Giraffe. But I have also worked in a school that had a slipshod approach to safeguarding and that had equally tragic and life changing consequences.