18-year career as an Ofsted inspector ended by a single email

[nodramaplease]

Ofsted have decided in their wisdom to annul my accreditation as an inspector because never having been a teacher, I apparently can't judge teaching. So, hey, having done so for the past 18 years and having passed every quality assessment they threw at me apparently they were wrong all the time! An unblemished career ended by a single email. Presumably this also means that every inspection any of us non-teachers has ever done is also invalid, and also every grading, despite them having been approved by our lead inspectors and higher authorities? But never mind logic, let's just score a cheap brownie point with the teaching unions -- don't worry about whether we're actually good inspectors or not. I am sad and angry: it was a huge privilege to witness so many lessons (600+ inspections). I'd like to say a huge cheer for the many fantastic teachers this country has got, and I hope that those who didn't do quite so well found our conversations helpful.

Sorry I didn't finish, this seams very wrong - I'm not judging what qualifications inspectors should have or what I feel about them but purely from an employment law point of view.

I wish you all the best and suggest you get yourself a free half hour solicitors appointment to discuss the exact legalities to see how strong your claim is.

There is far more to a school than just the teachers. A school that fails to manage the support staff well will struggle to teach the children to best of their ablity.

Ie. If the facilties are not up to scratch or the PCs are falling over because of poor IT support, inadequate health and safety or admin is essential then the teachers will not be able to teach.

Judging the management of a large team of people requires management experience rather than teaching experience.

Personally I do not think inspectors should be judging the quality of the lessons if they have not proved themselves to be outstanding teachers. However I am in favour of non teachers judging other aspects of the school which many teachers take for granted.

"the op though has judged for 18 years - never actually stepped in front of 30 students and taught a lesson so no matter how good and experienced she may be the fact is she hasn't any experience of teaching ... "

To be honest, I dont think you need to have been a teacher to be able to judge teaching.

It is strange how Ofsted is run so differently to the Police.
Theresa May would agree that you dont need have been a police officer to judge policing, as otherwise she would not have appointed Tom Winsor as police watchdog! And here Ofsted goes and gets rid of good inspectors because they have never been teachers!

I think it is good to have an independent and ubiased inspection.

I am an ex-student, and despite never having taught, I think my assessment of the quality of my teachers is pretty spot on, some were great some were awful and some were in between !

The one who taught me punctuation would not have approved of the above post though.

I think that OFSTED inspectors should be former teachers or teaching assistants but having been there for 18 years then it's too late for them to tell you now that they wanted you to be a teacher first - they employed you knowing that you weren't a teacher.

JennerOSity going to school doesn't make you an expert in education!

Prehaps nodramaplease could assess the effectiveness of the governors, the ablity for a school to follow employment law, safeguarding etc. This would free up those with a teaching qualification to assess the teaching.

I feel its wrong that nodramaplease has been sacked after 18 years.

ReallyTired I know - was tongue in cheek. :)

this whole hting sounds bollocks to me

eatyourveg - certainly true that there is no consistency in this govt's approach to education! Just one of many examples...

Ofsted inspectors should have teaching experience.

That doesn't mean anyone should lose their job in such a crap way.

Most obvious alternative I can think of is supporting unqualified inspectors through teaching qualifications and teaching sabbaticals (and only hiring those with experience from now on).

Would be very interested to know what the OP did for 18 years before becoming an OFSTED inspector, if it wasn't teaching??! What relevant experience did she bring to the job when she started? (Yes, I know she's been doing it for a while now - but seems a very odd decision to have employed her in the first place...)

I do think it's unfair that they took you on knowing you weren't a teacher and have sacked you after moving the goalposts. You sound very dedicated to educational standards and perhaps the experience I had might have been more positive if the inspector had your insight. As it was, it was clear to me they had never taught and some cheeky questioning by my line manager in their meeting uncovered this!

I do think Ofsted inspectors should be trained/ ex teachers but think they should give you the opportunity to undertake this training after 18 years service. You can do evening courses to train to teach adult ed (PTLLS) and perhaps they should support/ fund you to do this and encourage some voluntary teaching experience rather than unceremoniously giving you the boot after so long.

I'm sure with your experience you'll find something similar- quality standards auditing or the like. Perhaps in a slightly different sector such as IAG.

Hi -- been out shopping with DD this afternoon so not looked at the thread for a while. To answer a few points people have raised:

Qualifications 18 years ago: none were asked for apart from volunteering to do it and the initial training for lay inspectors (who were at that time as someone has suggested, intended to look at aspects of the school other than teaching) was farcically bad, the poorest anyone on it (from a very wide range of backgrounds had ever experienced). My own background in case anyone's interested was publishing. After (I think) two years Ofsted made the decision (which we lay inspectors greeted with initial trepidation) to have us judge teaching and we then had initial training in this and have subsequently done all training and grading exactly as our ex-teacher colleagues. I should add that the training has definitely never been as dire and pointless as that first week!

There are two sorts of inspector -- HMI (Her Majesty's Inspectors) who are employees of Ofsted and Additional Inspectors (like me till yesterday) who are all self-employed and are offered individual inspectors on an individual basis by the contractors who run the whole thing for Ofsted. There are now three of these, for the north/midlands/south of England. HMI are not, incidentally, golden stars necessarily but ex-teachers who have chosen to take a different career path from their colleagues who apply to become Additional Inspectors.

I don't think from what colleagues have been telling me that we will have a case in law because of being self-employed and the terms of offering one-off deals being unilaterally changed. I do think that it was a horrible way to lose my major source of income.

Incidentally, it's not a fantastically high paid job. If you are a lead inspector (which I have never been, although I've been repeatedly asked to do the training) you get £400 a day. If you're a team like me you get £375, going down to £325 next term. This sounds great but last term I got four inspections which totalled five days in all -- and yes, this was STILL my major source of income! We don't get any expenses, we pay all our own travel and accommodation and food, and always have done (HMI get all this paid for, of course). We also pay for all our training. I did my last compulsory training days in December: with the cost of the course, the accommodation, the travel and food it came to £700. The next lot of training is in September and would have cost about the same, so I'm quids in on that anyway.

There are rules about self-employment / contracts and all sorts about what you can and can't do.

I don't know what they are but it might be worth double checking?

To nodramaplease - you are not alone. A number of inspectors have just been dumped by email after many years of loyal service. I have asked the mumsnet people to forward you my email address in case you want to get in touch with a group of us who are considering our options.

Did you not have any warning about this?

Overboard -- a colleague had an interview with the Daily Telegraph today on this subject. Of course they may not use it but they were certainly very interested! Would be happy to hear from you.

Flexybex -- in retrospect (such a useful perspective) there has been a certain amount of preparing of the ground so yeah, we might have seen this coming, but I thought there'd be, I don't know, discussions or something? See this link from the BBC website:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-18512428

Overboard - just pm her!

£375 x 5 is MORE than I get paid - and you only had to work 5 days a month to get this. I worked...hang on....50 hrs a week at school and another 10 hours at home so in total over the month 240 hours. I daren't work out my daily pay rate. I'm pretty sure it's not even minimum wage.

I paid for all my training - currently I owe approx £14,000. It would take quite a lot of £700 courses to be on a par with this. I also don't get expenses or my food paid for.

Now I see why people want to become Oftsted inspectors rather than simply remain a teacher!!

Sorry OP, I do think how you've been treated is not great, but you really shouldn't post things about how much you're paid when it's substantially more than the teacher who you previously might have been 'judging'.

Quite - I think the inspector who doesn't think that £375/day is such a great wage should look at what teachers with years of experience and training are getting - as I said, I do similar work to you (in an FE context) but get far less, and my teaching pays less still, per day. And I'm also freelance/contract based, so also pay for my own training etc etc.

Sorry, as a teacher with over 18 years experience myself, I'd be pretty unimpressed to be judged by someone from a publishing background who'd never taught. I think the new guidance is fair - nothing wrong with you fulfilling your original role of inspecting the non-teaching elelements (though even there I'd expect someone with experience in managing education would understand it rather better), but your training really does not sound like it would equip you fully to inspect teaching quality.

MISUNDERSTANDING!!

Five days in a TERM not five days in a month and I DO think £375 a day a fantastic rate -- if I got it every month!

Also five days last term was the most I've had for ... two years.

Wow! I'm in the wrong game! So while I was getting my sessional teaching rate of £45 for planning and teaching a two hour lesson, the non-teacher who judged me as 'satisfactory' was on £375!!

To those mneters who feel that ofsted inspectors need to have had some teaching experience - how much? If a criteria is put in place, there needs to be consistency. I personally agree with what someone said above in that you don't have to have taught to be able to judge a good lesson. Someone who teaches chemistry hasn't necessarily been a chemist!

Can't and wouldn't deny for a moment that many teachers, especially in the state sector, don't get paid in proportion to their responsibilities and dedication -- any more than nurses, firemen or soldiers. (Headteachers, obviously, are in a different category.) Can't deny either that government may well be said to have its priorities wrong in paying its inspectors more than teachers (and see previous sentence as well). I don't set the rates.

None the less, my original point in starting this thread was not to complain about losing money, but to start a discussion about is it OK to feel annoyed at being dumped so unceremoniously? Bottom line is, of course, shit happens and one deals with it. At the very least, anyone who reads this thread will now be much better informed about inspecting, what they're paid, what they do, etc, and that must be a good thing for the future, whether you are a teacher, a parent, a governor or whatever. Information is power.

I will meanwhile revert to the position of being 'just' a parent in the education maze and exit from the thread ... thank you one and all for a lively and vocal discussion.