Anyone had Ofsted yet?

[BG2015]

I've been reading Twitter and a few people have shared their 'deep dive' experiences- it's absolutely terrifying.

I teach in a small primary (200 on roll) and lead history and geography. I say lead but I've got a couple of folders with planning and examples of work.

I certainly couldn't talk with confidence about them.

The new framework is explicitly mindful of teacher workload in a way that I certainly haven’t seen before in fifteen years in the profession.

What changes are there-can you elaborate?

Certainly @fedup21:

"- teachers and leaders use assessment well, for example to help learners embed and use knowledge fluently or to check understanding and inform teaching. Leaders understand the limitations of assessment and do not use it in a way that creates unnecessary burdens for staff or learners"
"- teachers create an environment that allows the learner to focus on learning. The resources and materials that teachers select – in a way that does not create unnecessary workload for staff – reflect the provider’s ambitious intentions for the course of study and clearly support the intent of a coherently planned curriculum, sequenced towards cumulatively sufficient knowledge and skills for future learning and employment" (both from p10, 'Implementation')

" - leaders engage with their staff and are aware and take account of the main pressures on them. They are realistic and constructive in the way that they manage staff, including their workload " (from p12, 'leadership and management')

I urge every teacher on this thread to read the new framework. It's only 13 pages long, including the front cover! It could not be clearer in its expectation that the leaders in your schools are mindful of your workload.

Absolutely.

There is no need for intent statements. Teams of paper.

Know what you teach, when. Why you do it in that order. For example we teach tectonics before Japan so we can examine how Japan's tectonic past and present influences the country.

Not all OFSTED inspectors are on message - IME only the HMIs really reflect the message coming from OFSTED. We are a tiny primary with mixed year groups. We have one NQT, the rest of our staff are multiple subject leads and it’s insane that we would be expected to put out the same kind of curriculum that a 3 form entry primary can do. I’m not sure that this will be adequately appreciated by OFSTED. It’s not that our children get a poorer quality education, but it looks very different from how a larger school might deliver it.

I guess someone in a primary school should have an overview of how science is taught throughout primary and those questions do not seem unreasonable to ask of that someone (although the bit about WALTs seems a bit bullshit).

However if that someone is merely a bog standard classroom teacher with a couple of years of experience and no time to actually do the role, then that also seems like an unreasonable workload expectation.

It always surprises me that it’s secondary suffering from a shortage of teachers. Expectations of primary teachers are insane.

I couldn't do it for all the tea in China. The workload is bonkers for all teachers but primary definitely get the brunt of it.

Coming in next week.

How do you know @jbraise?

Thank you everyone.

I didn't have a good day yesterday. Hormones. Monday and little patience on my part.

Today I feel more confident and my head is giving me next Tuesday afternoon as subject leader time.

Brilliant. Well done HT.

Now get onto schoolology or twitter and find other Humanities leads you can magpie things from.

Don't reinvent the wheel!!

Surely the schemes of work and assessments are already there? You just need to be able to talk about them. Eg we do. History in chronological order because xyz. We teach this skill in Geography year 1 and then build on it through xyz topic in year 2

Schemes of work and assessments beyond the core subjects in primary are basically nonexistent, unless your school; a) has the money to buy an expensive scheme from a company or b) is a large school/part of a MAT who have enough expertise to design their own.

How are they non existent - surely they are teaching history lessons and therefore have a plan for them?

Im secondary but have always created my own.

We have OFSTED in at the moment . I have just experience the deep dive with Reading which I am glad is having a raised profile.

Surely the schemes of work and assessments are already there?

Not in my primary school!! We do have assessment focusses for each year group but we have written this ourselves as the NC is so unbelievably vague for primary non-core subjects. Art for example is one brief page. Unless you buy in an expensive scheme, you make it up yourself. Luckily, I am confident teaching Art but many colleagues are not. Art targets for KS1 AND KS2 are less than 10 sentences!!

I adore history so my Y2s do too. I have next to no knowledge about coding so my Computing lessons are far more basic. I have to use Google a lot....

We teach Spanish in my school. I do not speak a word of Spanish.

Honestly, in primary it often feels like Jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none sometimes.

Is there no FB or schoolology groups? It seems crazy if not.

Get on twitter. Use #edutwitter #planningshoutout #geographyteacher #primaryrocks etc and see if you can find someone to help.

This sounds like something the DfE should be doing when they talk about reducing workload. Why haven’t they??

That's scary re schemes of work. Presumably teachers plan the lessons though? What do you base the planning on?

Teachers plan their lessons and in my experience, they use the objectives from the national curriculum (or the assessment software package sometimes has more specific foundation objectives) and then just Google what other people have done / speak to past teachers. It's poor practice and I agree that ofsted should focus on this to make improvements. However, it's only because they were so English/maths data driven for many years that primaries have become like this. Not to mention the poor quality, one year ITT courses that maybe include a 1hr session on geography for the whole year's training! It's a joke. Honestly I'm fuming about the grilling some subject primary leaders are getting.

That being said, I do want to see improvements in foundation subjects. How about some cash to improve teacher subject knowledge?

And there are NO assessments for any subjects outside of core unless you buy an expensive, subjective scheme. The gov have only recently released science exemplars for end key stages. Before that, it was anyone's guess what science was supposed to look like.

Strikes me that primaries could do with liaison with secondaries for non core?

If we helped with what the kids do at KS3 and gave ideas to what to include at KS1 and 1 would that be useful?

I am thinking about our MAT which is primary and secondary....and that secondary could help out?

If there are no assessments how do you know the students have actually learnt anything? Or does History progress not get reported anywhere because English and Maths have taken over.

We use internally produced assessments at secondary, but they are still there and ready to go.

I'm pretty glad OFSTED have refocused on curriculum if it means students will actually get taught a wide range of subjects properly.

Wow. My kids primary plan across the year group so we know at the beginning of term all the topics and areas they will be doing! And all 3 classes do roughly the same. They def cover history and topics well rather than as an afterthought (usually with some "home learning" project.) Im not always in fan of a bigger school, but they do teach other subjects and well.

I'm an avid Edutwitter follower (hence my post above) and also follow a number of groups on Facebook. They are very supportive.

We've often tried to liaise with our local high school to no avail.

On the point of the DHT can sit it, we're so small we don't have one! We have 2 full time class teachers and a part time head. I lead 5 areas and to be honest think it is hard to explain real progression in eg DT when all of KS2 are taught in one (massive) class. As a class teacher, I already have to plan multiple objectives for every English and Maths lesson to cover several different year groups (and then the usual differentiation within that); with the best will in the world I can't do the same for foundation subjects. It is incomparable to teaching in a 3 form entry primary (which I used to).