We've Had The Call (Sort Of)

Staff meeting first thing on Monday morning and the Head tells us that Ofsted have written to them informing us that our school will be inspected this term ( summer term – wind down time) under the “new Ofsted criteria”. We are fortunate enough to one of just 150 schools to be trialling this new criteria, which means the following: the judgement will either be phenomenally good or phenomenally bad because the inspectors don’t understand how the new criteria work.

Apparently this new criteria focuses on the teaching and marking rather than just going to the senior management and asking them what going on. You’d think that this was a good thing, and in theory it is, but you have to remember that Ofsted inspectors are made up of the following people:

• Due to Ofsted having so many different “hats”, many Ofsted inspectors have never actually been a teacher. Bear in mind that Ofsted check up on social workers too. Funny how schools and social work are lumped into the same bracket isn’t it.
• Those who have been teachers haven’t been full-time teachers for a long time, and probably weren’t much good at it since they have “moved upstairs”, a policy common to public sector work where if you’re not very good, you go up the pay scale. 
• A very small minority have recently been teachers.

If you were to hand-pick your inspectors you’d clearly go for the final grouping, due to the fact that they might know what they are talking about. Unfortunately, you can’t do that.

There has been a mild amount of panic since the announcement of course, with whole staff meetings being called to discuss the predicted inspection and how it will work. How false is that? If you are going to do these inspections, don’t bother giving schools any warning, as many school use funds that they can ill afford to use, redecorating the lobby and buying pot plants (no, not that type!) to put in strategic places around the building. I’m not kidding people, it really does happen.

We will be expected to produce fully typed up lesson plans for all our lessons, something that never usually happens I hasten to add and is a total waste of time for teachers who have been doing the jobs for more than 5 minutes. We will be forced to assess each child’s learning every 20 minutes or so, something that normally happens organically but when the inspectors are in, we will have to make a big show of it.

You do feel like a performing animal during these things, and ultimately the teachers are. The inspectors are not seeing how the school works from day to day, they are seeing a show, making their judgement of the school totally false.