Are Ofsteds getting more difficult? Have they raised the bar?

[casey]

All six of the secondary schools nearest to us six have been inspected in the last 2 years:

1 - good
2 - satisfactory (narrowly scraped in by all accounts)
3 - failed and gone into special measures

used to be 1 excellent 2 very good 3 good 4 satisfactoty 5 poor.
but now 3 is satisfactory so this is a big change.

But surely moving from 5 categories to 4 doesn't mean the 'fail' point should change dramatically?

It doesn't mean there has to be a direct correlation:
old 1 excellent = new 1 outstanding
old 2 very good = new 2 good
old 3 good = new 3 satisfactory
old 4 satisfactory and old 5 poor = new 4 unsatisfactory

Plus the expectation is now that the inspection grades the learning rather than the teaching.

So if you have a child in your classroom, who is in a horrible state because his girlfriend just ditched him/ family member is dying/ just been in a fight, whatever and he doesn't learn. He alone doesn't learn. then your lesson is deemed to be unsatisfactory

Crikey MB that is really strict! No wonder there are lots of failing schools.

MB- How did they arrive at that then? You can't make someone learn.

Go figure!

Crazy isn't it?

The same 'rational' that says that any misbehaviour in a class is always down to poor planning/ not being engauging enough.

My PGCE tutor (who was an OFSTED inspector and an uuter idiot) told me that any child will learn as long as you have the right lesson for them.

Yeah, right.

So we spend out lesson plans designing ' objectives' that will allow us to prove that the child has met the lesson aims.

Which is fine for some lessons, but is a straitjacket for others

Madness I can see how that could be restrictive.
Regarding the point your pgce tutor made - I think the point that any child will learn with the right lesson is probably true but not in the way your tutor meant.
For example, if the right lesson for the child is geography then no matter what lesson you have prepared for say, maths, then that child is unlikely to learn if they hate maths. A bit of a simplified example but maybe you see what I mean.

the point that she was making was that as a teacher, you are expected to get every child to learn in every lesson, regardless of how they come into the classroom and the emotional 'baggage' etc that they bring them.

By having the 'right' lesson plan for every child in the classroom, and the perfect calm atmosphere, every child would learn in every lesson.

Which is bollocks, because they are children not automitans.

While I would agree with proper planning and differentiation for lessons, you simply cannot make evey child learn everything, every lesson. Life is too random.

But she thought that you could

I totally agree with your assessment of your tutor(utter idiot).

I always wanted to drop her into the most challenging set on a Fiday afternoon, after a rainy lunchtime and say 'Go on, show me!'

The sad thing is that we have so little control over what we can teach them during years 7, 8, and 9 many of the most disadvantaged children learn that they are failures.

I have been in the hideous situation of trying to teach children Chromatography when their IEP targets are to learn the high frequency words from year 2! And is it any wonder that they cannot access the material that I have to give them?

So by the time they get to year 10 they have switched of, the hormone fairy has come to visit and they just don't want to try any more. And a bit of me can see why!

Some bad behaviour is a result of a poorly planned lesson, but in many lessons, kids come determined to wreck it. No planning can deal with this type of disruption.