OFSTED Meeting School Governors. What will they ask us?

[ImADadButThatsOKIsntIt]

They are coming. If you’ve had OFSTED recently what did they ask you if you are a school governor?

Am following! We are expecting Ofsted soon too!

We have recently had a 'mock' Ofsted. They were very keen on the Delegation of duties, strengths and weaknesses of the school, including the latest data from IDSR. The wider curriculum and whether Y5/Y6 were being offered a full curriculum or whether just being crammed for SATS. Safeguarding, behaviour, welfare of staff. Every time I answered a question I was asked to back this up with evidence, either visit notes or minutes from meetings.
You can take papers in with you.
Good luck. I am dreading a real Ofsted. Seems a real tough ask for volunteers.

One of the last for the previous inspection framework and he basically came in with his judgements pre-made and just bollocked us all for one specific aspect of the data - didn't want to see the tracking and progress for the kids in that particular data set, just wanted to go on and on and on about one figure (gender gap - which ironically we've actually closed for the years further down the school).

Little bit of how did we know what was going on in the school but very much an hour of him not listening to anyone but himself.

We were advised by our LA training to put a dossier together for the Inspectors and ourselves.

This included our policies, evidence of all progress being made by pupils, our minutes of meetings with evidence of knowledge of strengths and weaknesses, our improvement plan and evidence of whether its working, evidence of pp and SEN Pupils progress and evidence of governor engagement as required with head teacher appraisal and performance. Our vision and evidence of self improvement was also included. You might think of additional info that proves you are doing your job, eg evidence of learning walks and training undertaken.

If you can divide up the dossier into the three areas described above, you will have the info at your fingertips. You cannot do it the day before but anyone thinking an Ofsted is due, it’s the best thing to do. It helps you think about what you don’t know too.

Head teachers reports to Governors are also invaluable. Our LA gives Heads a blue print that covers all Ofsted angles. If you run meetings effectively, have relevant info and evidence, know your strengths and weaknesses and are making progress with addressing the weaknesses, you’ll be fine. A dossier gives you confidence and you don’t have to remember everything!

Ofsted shouldn’t really ask Governors about how the curriculum is delivered in y5/6. This is operational. If Heads were told to amend what they taught in y5/6 by Governors, this would overstep their role.

Your Head should provide a Ofsted cram sheet personal to your school.
They will cover
Your understanding of your role and school
Quality of education/curriculum
Use of funding
Safeguarding
Personal development, behaviour and attitudes

What is the governing board’s vision for the school and how is this shared?
What are your school’s priorities?
How do you, as a governing board, ensure the priorities are moved forward?
How do you hold the headteacher to account?
Do you have a governor skills audit?
What training have governors done?
How do you keep up-to-date on your training?
What training can governors access?
Tell me about your safeguarding training.
Do you have any gaps on your governing board?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the school?
What issues does the school face?
How do you know?
What do you want for your pupils by the time they leave the school?
What do you want the pupils to be?
How do you monitor the curriculum?
For link governors
What is your link subject?
How are you linked to the subject leader?
How do you know the needs of disadvantaged pupils are being met?How were governors involved in planning the curriculum?
How well do your pupils achieve?How are you kept up-to-date with school spending?
Are you aware of how the school’s finances are being managed, or how staff are recruited?
How is the pupil premium funding being spent?
What impact is this spending having?
How do you know?
For primary schools only
How is the additional funding for PE and sports being spent? How effective is this?
What impact is this funding having on pupils’ fitness and health? How do you know?
For secondary schools only
How is the year 7 literacy and numeracy catch-up premium being spent?
What is the impact of this?
How do you know?
How do you make sure that policies are kept up to date
How do you make sure that policies are put into practice? How do you make sure that welfare requirements are met?
How is safeguarding training monitored?
Have you made sure that all staff have read Keeping Children Safe in Education?
How effectively have possible risks to pupil safety, such as female genital mutilation (FGM), radicalisation and sexual exploitation, been addressed in training, policies and procedures?
How do you make sure that safer recruitment practices are followed?
How does the school manage safeguarding for pupils off-site, such as those on work experience placements or on residential visits?How safe do children feel?
How do you know?
For secondary schools only
How is health and safety monitored in workplaces where pupils undertake work experience?
For special schools only
Does the school keep a record of its use of restraint with pupils?
How does the governing board monitor this record?
How does your school ensure consistent behaviour management?
How do you monitor attendance and persistent absence figures?
How effective have efforts to address persistent absence been?
How do you monitor your school’s effectiveness in ensuring that pupils don’t bully or harass others on the basis of their race, gender, sexual orientation, disability,What are the current exclusion rates for your school?
How do you monitor these?
How is the school promoting pupils’ appreciation and understanding of difference and diversity?
How do you monitor how the school prepares pupils for life in modern Britain?
What do you know about how well pupils have developed respect for:
• The values of democracy?
• The rule of law?
• Individual liberty?
• Tolerance of, those with different faiths or no faith?

How do you manage the wellbeing of the headteacher and staff?
Can you give an example?

If they do a deep dive of a subject they expect what the subject lead and policies etc say is to be delivered is actually being taught. They will ask the students what they have been taught and why and verify it with staff and governors for that area. They may do it face to face or online at the same time. This is less likely in smaller schools.

You should have an understanding of your school's performance and know:
How pupils’ attainment and progress compares to other schools nationally, especially if the school is in the top or bottom 20% in the country
Trends in your school’s performance over time
The performance of pupils eligible for pupil premium funding compared with their peers
You should also be aware of the messages in the Analyse School Performance (ASP) report. See how to analyse your data using ASP if you're a primary or a secondary school.

There is a focus on the environment so you should be able to explain strategies for Behaviour management, attendance and bullying.

Safeguarding. You should know all statutory requirements and know you are compliant. ie

How you keep policies up-to-date and compliant?
How you ensure policies are implemented?
How effectively your school addresses not just general risks to children but also those risks that might be specific to the communities you serve (e.g. risk of female genital mutilation or radicalisation)?
How safe the children feel and how you know?

Hope that helps

That is very helpful cabbageking I might borrow that for our governing body. I have started drafting a crib sheet but not included everything in that list. It's a huge responsibility.

You really will not need all of that list! A lot of it is secondary for some odd reason. This is the primary thread.

Please do not expect your Head to do all of this work. It will be obvious where the answers are if you have minuted meetings and covered appropriate topics. You must have robust progress data and have analysed it. This will all be in the minutes and reports of the Head. None of this should be news to you.

One of the big topics will be: How do you know teaching is effective and children are making progress? Most schools have a poor inspection because of lack of progress and therefore poor teaching. These topics are absolutely key. Unless the inspectors are really concerned about the breadth of your curriculum, they probably will not mention it. You do not really know what they will ask but they will have done lots of work before they see you. However you should already know where your challenges lie.

They will not see the whole GB: just who is available and that should be (hopefully) the Chairman and Chairmen of committees as a minimum. However with no notice, people are not always available. Every govenor should have a role but every governor will not be present. PP and SEN are useful too. The minutes of meetings and associated reports will clearly show how you are monitoring the school so make sure these are readily available and are marked to show evidence.

There is only one secondary question. The rest apply to primary but you will be told the key lines of enquiry beforehand.

If everyone chips in you will be surprised how that stimulates ones memory.

Well, we only had 1 days notice, and many parent governors couldn't make it. I managed to leave work early, and simply introduced myself and my role. They didn't appear to want any more interaction and were content with that and didn't have any questions! I think at that stage they had determined that the 'good' school was still 'good' and the inspectors were happy to leave! So, I had no need to be nervous (admittedly the Head of Governors and other Governors who were in all day did have lots of time with Ofsted, but not really the parent governors).

Practise Ofsted seems a great idea.

Since Ofsted introduced their new framework in September it is still a bit of a guessing game as to what the inspection team will focus on. From schools that have had an inspection in this term it is clear that whilst Ofsted do not like it being called that, the three Is are important. These are intent (what the school is looking to do) , implementation and then impact. The inspectors are looking for these being joined up, so that what they see in the school vision and strategy is translated into a school impact statement and onwards to the day to day teaching and learning.
It is important that the subject leaders for a subject are able to talk about how the subject evolves as pupils move up the school and what is expected of each teacher. Some inspectors have definitely been translating that into asking governors with specific subject responsibility as to how they interact with the subject leader and what they know about progression in the subject.
They have also been doing deep dives into specific subjects to aid their understanding.
I would also brush up on safeguarding as it is always an important consideration. Personally I would always be looking for the GB to be organised - all appearing with the same coloured wallets with appropriate information in them is always going to give an important first impression that this GB know what they are doing. Also make sure that there are if at all possible at least 4 governors, so that it does not all fall on one person.

Talking about folders most of our documents etc are on a private webpage, we don’t print them off. We also review and comment on them online. During our meeting we look at them on the screen.

I do print off a copy of the agenda and the minutes (for signing) but that is about it.

For our ‘mock’ OFSTED I did print a few documents including a crib sheet but I don’t really want all Governors printing everything off

One of the last for the previous inspection framework and he basically came in with his judgements pre-made and just bollocked us all for one specific aspect of the data - didn't want to see the tracking and progress for the kids in that particular data set, just wanted to go on and on and on about one figure (gender gap - which ironically we've actually closed for the years further down the school).

Little bit of how did we know what was going on in the school but very much an hour of him not listening to anyone but himself.

Exactly the same experience bas we had. Homes in on one particular aspect (not a very important one either) and was completely disinterested in anything else about the school.

We actually had a headteacher on our FB who said it was the worst ofsted that they had ever seen.

all appearing with the same coloured wallets with appropriate information in them is always going to give an important first impression that this GB know what they are doing.

Ofsted give no shits about the colour of your wallets!

They want to check you know the school, how it operates and have an idea of pupil progress. They know you are volunteers and don't expect masses of stuff.

It is perfectly acceptable for a Governor’s Dossier to contain the evidence of progress in pp, Sen, and anything else they might be asked. Unless you can remember everything, get some help with a few sheets of data! We went through the useful info.

Every school has policies on line. You don’t need these, unless you want to refer to one. You probably need evidence of impact and this can be put into the dossier. Generally speaking though, if you have decent agendas, decent minutes, do your job, you will know the school and will be able to reply. We went through a series of questions set up by our LA and found the evidence. It’s usually all there in a good school. You should know the weaknesses and show you are addressing them. If you can get 4 Governors at primary you will be doing well. As I suggested, Chair and chairmen of committees (3) is good enough. Subject Governors are not necessary for Ofsted at primary. Chair of Teaching and Learning should be there to cover all of this. After all the evidence will be available!

As for being asked about the rule of law, individual liberty and fgm - in primary this is highly unlikely!

Ofsted are very evidence driven and if there is a glaring issue they will want to know what you are doing about it. They don’t want you painting a picture of the school. They are experienced enough to do that themselves. They don’t need fluff on top. Anyone who sees Inspectors and thinks this, simply isn’t prepared. Also by the time the Governors are interviewed, the Inspectors have probably seen the Head. They will have an insight into the direction of travel. Learn from this.

By the way, our LA has Ofsted Inspectors. They do the governor training so Governors can get up to date info on the new framework if your LA is organised!

I had everything on my ipad in various documents open that I could flick across to to have a figure immediately at hand if required (others had made their own crib sheets with data they thought they might want to refer to). I over-thought it really - although did manage to pull the obnoxious twerp up when he got the date and name of our previous inspector wrong.

Ours was a full 2 day job to see if we could go from good to outstanding as the previous inspection had seen evidence of the latter but they don't just upgrade the current inspection anymore, and come back (and unfortunately we got obnoxious twerp).

Basically they were checking that we weren't just yes-men and women who'd agree blindly to everything the Head said as gospel and that we held the Head to account - which we do have very clearly indicated evidence of throughout and he DID appreciate (was about all he did do). He was such an unpleasant man though that over the two days we downgraded his coffee cup rating from a posh one to the crappy supply agency ones out of the staff room cupboard in retaliation.

There will be a deep dive on reading in primary so knowing something about this area is helpful.

To update you I think from a governance perspective it went well and we gave a good account of ourselves. We got 5 governors in the room which helped to give a broad range of answers to the questions.

The night before I embedded every document I could find into a single Word document so I could click for easy opening. Certainly helped for PP expenditure.

From what I can remember;
We were asked about our results and how come a dip in reading hadn’’t been spotted.
Asked about PP expenditure and how we knew it was having impact.
Asked about the pace of change in school.
Asked about well-being of staff and headteacher.
And there my mind goes blank....

Thanks to all previous posters for advice

You don’t have any excuse for the first observation! Pace of change in the school is an interesting one. Did the inspector look at your improvement plan and think it was too big and too broad? Or you were too slow to react and amend improvement plan? Just interested.