Ofsted are coming this week

[in2theblues]

Hair de-badgered, shoes polished,
all is in order apart from some photocopying and paper stirring.

I'm PT. Any chance they'll mot come into one of my classes?

I tend to lead from the front as students can be timid or disruptive. I do go to pieces if anyone's observing.

Any helpful hints gratefully received.

Thanks in advance.

*not (typo)

Deep breath now, in2theblues. You know that the shiny shoes will swing it for you, although you may have been better to keep the badger look as proof that you are working hard enough.

Seriously though, I think that now, more than ever before, they are looking for what usually happens, rather than for you to be delivering an all singing/dancing lesson, so marking in line with school policy, evidence of progress in books will count for a lot. rather than the progress in 20 minutes nonsense This is to the advantage of teachers like you and me who hate to be observed.

Ofsted are not supposed to promote any particular style of teaching as long as the children are learning, so too much teacher talk/passivity of learners should not be a problem.

Good luck and hope they came in while you are not teaching

Don't worry. They will be more interested in looking in books and talking to students than they will in whatever you're doing at one particular moment in time.

Good luck.

They will spend more time looking through books. Can't say they won't come in because who knows? But from what I've heard they prefer to scrutinise books because we all know the only way people learn is by writing

Thank you for the replies - really useful. Some of the students like to keep their own work, some have notebooks, others have files that I keep hold of. I'll go through the files and make sure everything is marked or commented on.

For the future you might want to have one system for all, so it's easier for you to keep track of.

I agree with Coolas-how on earth do you know they are coming this week!!??

Try to let them be independent, they are all about progress at the moment and so you need to try and let go of the tight control and let them onto their own activities as soon as you can. Good luck.

How did it go?

Tell me all.

?????

I'm totally baffled by this post. How did you know they were coming on Sunday? How much notice did you get? Are you an academy?

Please come back, OP.

FE colleges get the call on a Thurs am for a Monday - Friday visit. Observations and learner walks from Mon - Wed and then upstairs for 'all the other stuff'

Oh, I didn't know that. Why so different to schools, I wonder?

No idea. Sorry!