Is anyone out there a Governor who has faced the Ofsted inquisition?

[Hassled]

Have you any top tips? How long did they talk to you for? What sort of questions?

I'm a relatively recently elected Chair and am terrified!

they dont enquire any more i thought.

I'm a vice chair - so missed a lot of the flak, but my impression was they were interested in my view of how things were going; how successful the school was/any problems - the sort of thing you would expect. I would say bone up on the composition of the school:how many free school meals; how many EAL; how many SEN and the provision for dealing ; how the school does on SATS - if it doesn't hit the targets, why not? What's happening with the budget. what's happening with numbers.

What you would expect really. They were only in for a ocuple of days and seemed pretty fair. they told us what their thoughts were and gave us an opportunity to comment. So don't worry.

I'm a CoG of a primary school and was interviewed by an ofsted inspector in 2007. It was about half an hour I think. It wasn't too bad and they do understand that governors aren't educationalists.

The sort of things he covered were:

Strengths and weaknesses of the school
How the GB monitors school improvement and how we hold the school to account
GB involvement in school development plan
What is the school's vision
How governors get involved in school life

He used the phrase 'I'm checking if you and the headteacher are singing from the same hymnsheet' a couple of times, so I'd suggest you chat with the head in advance to clarify the above points if you're not sure. Also have a read through your school SEF (self-evaluation form) to get to grips with everything.

One top tip is that staff will be very stressed by the whole thing, so it's really nice if you can just show moral support during the visit, wish them good luck, make tea & biscuits etc.

Your council governor support department will also be able to help you.

Hope that helps, good luck!

Thanks - I've been told to expect an hour or so of "chat" with the Inspector. I can basically recite the school's SEF at this stage, know all the SIDP stuff in theory, although matching it to practice is less good. But there's loads more I'm still a bit flaky on - I have 2 days in which to cram.

I think the key is to be able to point to evidence - we know the school is doing well in Maths because of these iniatives and these results. Also being able to say that governors have asked incisive questions in meetings, try to think of something a governor has asked which probed a bit. I didn't see the inspectors when we had an OFSTED last September, but this was the feedback I received from the governors who had the meeting and now we are coming up with questions and making sure things are minuted more carefully. We still got a "good" though.