any OFSTED inspectors out there?? Please

[imamissandamummy]

Hi all, im looking for any kind OFSTED school inspectors who would be willing to answer a few planning & teaching related questions i have...

my school is expecting an inspection 'any day now' and as a frantic response, we (as teachers) have been bombarded with new planning proformas for the whole school, and fixed instructions on how to manage our planning files, and even which font to use for labeling our own files!

i shall wait to see if theres anyone kind enough to respond before i pour my heart out with my list (not too many) of questions, but i would be interested to hear what is considered 'good practice' from an inspector themselves as the current state of play at work is leaving many members of staff totally demoralised and feeling undervalued in terms of teaching skills.

awaiting all OFSTEDers....

thanks in advance :)

Okay, not an inspector but can help you with some documentation.

Here is the NUT advice, which quotes extensively from this document ('Planning Guidance for Primary Teachers, compiled jointly by Ofsted, Dfes and QCA').

It says things like:

'Planning is an essential aspect of teachers?work. All teachers need to plan what they will teach and how they will teach it, but spending excessive amounts of time on long, detailed plans does not necessarily lead to better teaching and learning.There is no prescribed format or length"

'HOW TO CUT UNNECESSARY WORK IN PLANNING? - Your plans are for you and other
professionals working with you.
Occasionally, others will need to see
your planning.When Ofsted inspectors
arrive they will look for clear objectives
that show your intentions for what
children will learn and how these
objectives will be achieved. Inspectors
will not expect to find a particular
model or format for planning; they will
be much more interested in the impact
of planning on your teaching and the
children?s learning.'

'You don?t need to start from scratch
with a blank sheet of paper.Good
quality plans are already available, such
as National Numeracy Strategy Unit
Plans and National Literacy Strategy
medium term plans and planning
exemplification, plans written by
colleagues and plans on the web.
For medium-term planning, the QCA
schemes of work contain the detail you
need for each subject. It is not necessary
to write things out again; QCA schemes,
for example, can easily be converted
into lesson plans if accompanied by
post-its, notes and annotations to add
detail of your own. Planning in this way
will meet with Ofsted?s approval
providing it has a positive impact on
teaching and learning.'

And, well, I'll let you read it at your leisure - but it's there to protect teachers from just the kind of thing you are experiencing at the moment. Fwiw, we were inspected earlier this year - we provided our own lesson plans when observed (usual weekly Literacy/Numeracy planningg, for example) but they never asked to see medium term planning at all. We were found to be good with many outstanding features, and teaching was never less than good.

Good luck, hope the document is useful and that you manage to talk some sense into your panicking SMT!

thanks Feenie, i'd love to think i had some influence in changing the smt's views, but moreover i think its important that my colleaugues know what this guidance says. there are a few points that contradict what we've been told to do and at the moment its a case of smt -1, staff -0, but the staff as a whole are all singing from the same hymn sheet, its just management can't see what their doing!

thanks for the links, will have to decide where we go from here... just i dont have the guts to speak out even when i think what were being told to do is unnecessary

wonder if you can help with this: one of the things that is causing extra work for us (but being masked as "we think your doing too much planning") is that the whole school have been asked to use the exact same planning sheets from year 1-year 6, we have all been instructed to produce robotic, identical files with file dividers labelled with the same headings, the order in which to display everything, everyones file must be identical. (and more recently how to arrange classrooms has cropped up)

the richness of having a school full of wonderfully diverse teachers is disappearing into a conveyor belt of clones - to the smt's design.

any advice on whether it is better for everyones files to be identical and colour co-ordinated, or whether its actually ok to continue as we were with key stages following the same format as each other, but not through the whole school, and organising by weeks - week1 lit, num etc, week2 lit, num etc (which is more logical to me and others in school for planning purposes) than all the lit together, all num, the all others mixed into one...?

ahhh, its half term and this is driving me crazy lol!

I teach in a school that underwent the new OFSTED inspection at the end of March this year. What you describe is how our school functions at all times. We were graded as Outstanding. It is slightly concerning that you see it as a battle "there are a few points that contradict what we've been told to do and at the moment its a case of smt -1, staff -0"

If I were you I'd be working, not on here looking for an OFSTED inspector. Some changes benefit the children. If your SMT's approach is wrong OFSTED will highlight it - since it will be obvious which changes are relatively new and not embedded in your practice.

As for folders, when I was a relatively new teacher to the profession I organised my folders week by week. However, having taught for many years now, I recently switched to organising them how your SMT are encouraging you to do so. I now have good resource files for any year group I move to.

Good Luck in your inspection, i'm sure it will be fine! :)

We were OFSTEDed at Easter and no one looked at my planning even though I left it out for the inspector.
Our head believes planning is for the teacher and how we organise it and which font is down to us (let's face it uniform fonts across the school don't improve teaching).
New staff couldn't believe we weren't running around like headless chickens spending the weekend in school putting up new labels and dusting WALT & WILF ...

good luck with your SMT and it will soon be over.

Ofsted inspectors are being a little coy

Generally, OFSTED inspectors will only look closely at the planning if they think a lesson is going a bit wrong.

There is a far greater focus on teachers being the facilitators of pupil-learning, rather than the leaders of it - so anything that encourages group work etc is good, as is anything in which pupils demonstrate skills in working independently.

The main deal now is on how much progress is made: even if they only see a snapshot of a lesson, they will want evidence that pupils have progressed within that time-slot, so aim for lots of chunking and lots of mini-plenaroes to measure progress throughout the lesson.

Good luck. :)

Speaking from experience there does need to be proper organisation and as Lew83 has indicated a well organised school is one that functions well, but that should not stop teachers showing their skills in teaching and learning in any way that they wish.

However whatever your thoughts on that, the key issue for me is that lots of new folders and ways of doing things introduced in the few weeks before Ofsted come visiting is far to easy to be sussed out by even Ofsted inspectors. OK it is expected and assumed that you will have wonderful lessons plans for the days when Ofsted are there but a two minute conversation with your year 6s on the playground at break is going to reveal how much has been put in place in the last few weeks. And watch it unravel completely when the inspection team sit down with the TAs!

plenaries - MUST learn to preview messages.

Agree with Belligerent. My db is an inspector and he says the worst thing that a teacher can do during an inspection is to talk constantly. The inspectors are interested in the students learning therefore group activities are useful.
As a parent, i am concerned that some teachers only make an effort when there is an inspection. Surely this much effort should be made ALL the time.

Forehead - believe me, I do try and make that much effort all of the time. For Ofsted, I just try to make what I do a bit more explicit, I guess. Eg: okay, let's move onto the mini-plenary now; let's go back to the mark scheme to see what progress we've made so far - just in case the inspector happens to be a numpty who needs it spelling out to them!

Must admit though, that the last few Ofsteds we've had, the inspectors were brilliant.

BelligerentGhoul some schools only do make an effort for inspections. A neighbouring school had staff in until 10 pm after the call came and the head told them to cancel plans for the weekend. They took down every display and produced immaculate planning. Staff were stressed and exhausted when the inspectors arrived on Monday and guess what! They only got satisfactory!