Petition: Urgently review the current Ofsted Framework and associated methodology

[Learningisfun]

To British citizens and UK residents,

Please sign and share this petition with your UK contacts. The goal is to reform or replace OFSTED for the benefit of all. If you have already seen this petition, thank you for your support and please pass it along to others.

Sincerely,
A concerned teacher in the UK.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/635055

I personally think the current Ofsted framework is the best I’ve ever known. It’s flexible and moved them away from favoured teaching styles and rigid data-driven stuff. We were inspected in the Autumn and found the inspectors reasonable and pleasant. They communicated well with the staff. They seemed quite happy with teachers with very different styles so long as the kids were learning and the lessons matched what departments had told them to expect.

We have a policy of not marking exercise books or classwork, only marking identified pieces of work once every few weeks to half a term. We don’t do tracking sheets in books. We don’t do written reports. We don’t do lesson plans or formal lesson observations. There is no set lesson framework. We have a minimal approach to setting homework. They were happy with all of that.

One department caused a slight issue because they had a departmental policy that said kids would have tracking sheets and work would be marked every two weeks and they weren’t following it. That department have been told to reduce their policy in line with every other department in the school now. Ofsted don’t require any of that stuff. School leadership need to strip it all out of their policies because it only becomes an issue if you say you’re doing it but aren’t.

We are a very small school. Our inspectors were 1) a secondary head and 2) an executive head of a large secondary MAT. They couldn't understand our school at all. Had no idea about the workload, the multiple roles of people etc.
It was an awful experience.

We are an LEA one form entry Primary in a very deprived area. We are dreading Ofsted to the point of it being the main reason some of our teachers are considering leaving the profession, despite currently being 'Good'. The current inspection framework is so unfair on smaller Primary settings, with many teachers having 2 or 3 subjects/area lead roles, and especially ones that have an already heavier workload due to high numbers of SEND and additional needs in all areas.

Takoneko - the framework is so biased towards a Secondary model that it makes it very hard on Primary schools, especially small ones. And as for EYFS settings - it's ridiculous.

So much of what is required goes against what is good practice and developmentally appropriate for younger children, especially EYFS and KS1. Knowledge acquisition and regurgitation should not be the main focus of education for children 4 - 11 years old, and inspectors should have a real understanding of what the reality of life in a Primary school is like.

@Takoneko That is pleasantly surprising to hear. What kind of school do you work for?

My experience and the feedback I've heard from other educators across the country are more aligned with LilacSorbet and Thebookeatinggirl.

From your descriptions, there seems to be minimal paperwork, which often is a positive thing. It would be beneficial for the forum if you could share what type of data your school collects, to help others understand the priorities when it comes to paperwork.

TIA

We’re secondary, so it could be a primary vs secondary thing. We were outstanding under the old framework and kept our outstanding this time under the new, but it felt less like a box tick this time and more holistic. We were nervous because we weren’t outstanding in all areas at the last inspection and thought that could trip us under the new framework, but it was fine.

We collect a “working at” grade once per term for each kid. And then once per year (twice for year 11 and 13) collect an internal exam grade and once per year (all year groups) ask teachers to give a 1-4 mark for behaviour, effort and homework. That’s it. Teachers do 3 SIMS data entries per year for each kid. 2 are just a grade and one has two grades and The 1-4 marks. Anything else is for their own markbook. We aren’t constantly grading and assessing.

When the inspectors asked us how we know they are making progress, we said that we use questioning in class and monitor key pieces of work. Most feedback is verbal and we don’t record it or write it down. We know it works because they do really well in external exams.

We don’t really have a lot of paperwork priorities. We’ve been stripping everything out since we were last inspected about a decade ago. We’ve ditched almost all lesson observations, written comments in reports, cut down our number of reports and the complexity of them, got rid of the after school, Saturday and holiday “intervention” programme that we used to be obsessed with, brought in centralised detentions so that teachers don’t need to supervise their own, ditched tracking sheets in exercise books etc.

Our teachers are still overworked. The extent of budget cuts means everyone is teaching higher loads and we are all more likely to teach more than one subject or have otherwise “messy” timetables because there is just a lot less slack in the system. And as everyone will know there has been a huge increase in mental health difficulties and other complex safeguarding or child protection issues since Covid. I don’t know how teachers in schools who have kept all that paperwork can function.

I think with the new framework you just need SLT to be brave enough to have a very minimal policy on paperwork, assessment, feedback, marking, curriculum “intent statements” etc and then stick to it. It seems that schools run into issues where SLT and subject leaders tell the inspectors “we do x, y and z” when that isn’t feasible or realistic. Therefore inspectors see classroom after classroom of people not following school policy.

Thank you @Takoneko for your detailed and helpful account.

What you describe sounds ideal, and I'm pleased to hear it's working at your school. Only, in my experience, I've seen and heard that the "We know it [verbal feedback?] works because they do really well in external exams" is insufficient for OFSTED.

There's a particular school I know closely that ranks in the top 40 on National League tables and yet is marked as RI.

An interesting study would be how closely National League rankings and OFSTED ratings are correlated.

All I can say is that wasn’t our experience. Obviously, I don’t know the ins and outs of why that school got RI, but it seems unlikely to be because they had a policy of not writing down verbal feedback.

Ofsted are saying very clearly now that they don’t require a particular style of teaching, they don’t have a preference about how feedback is delivered or how often work needs to be marked. We took them at their word and, when they came, our experience confirmed that.

Great results weren’t the end of it. Whilst we felt we were given a fair hearing, we definitely didn’t feel that we had it all sewn up just because our results were so good. They didn’t come in with their minds made up already. Like everyone else, we’d read what happened at HBS last year, so we were definitely not resting on our laurels. We were however confident that what happens in classrooms is way more important than paper trails and they made it pretty clear that they weren’t interested in looking at paperwork or data and trackers from the outset.

Same here, and I know of two other v small schools (fewer than 60 children) in the area that experienced the same as us. Questions included why we were teaching two year groups the same topic. How, physically how, can I teach Y1 and Y2 something different at exactly the same time? And why is it necessary? Ofsted wanted reams of paper to prove things we could show them. Did we have a list of poetry books for the reading corners? In what way would having a list possibly make any difference? 6 year old children were grilled on learning from 6 months previously, and the inspectors, two strange men in a school where children are used to having the same female teacher for up to four years, were surprised children were anxious and didn't say much. It felt in no way a fair or transparent inspection. LA advisors before and after disagreed strongly with the judgment. Oh, and being a small school we were basically observed or interviewed all day, including over our lunch hour. I genuinely think I might refuse a lunch hour interview next time.

@Amdecre , your experience is almost identical! Makes me feel a bit better in a way - you really beat yourself up over it and wonder what you could have done better.
The children were very intimidated by the inspectors - especially Inspector 2. She never got down to their level, had her laptop constantly open (even when talking to them on the playground or in lessons) so it was a barrier between them.
She asked about past learning and phrased it a particular way "Tell me something you learned in Subject last year". I rephrased it for them - "Tell Inspector 2 something you learned in Subject in Miss X's class" and got told off 🙄 She should have gone the whole hog and given me a negative Dojo 😄

... only joined mumsnet yesterday and saw this. Would have signed.

But I also want to deal with SLTs getting rid of UPS teachers by trumping up conduct or capability issues. If you, or anyone else reading this, wants to help send me a message.