Secret Teacher - letter to Ofsted Inspectors

Penstemmon - that's what I call "value-added" - but that's not what the teachers are being asked to do. We have the school improvement officer on our backs telling us that our results are well below the national average and we will have problems with OfSted. We know that there are sound reasons for being below the national average, but we are being told this is irrelevant.

I know it's a long time since I have done Maths, but if there is an average, it surely follows that some schools have to be below it. No matter how much they push the average up, there will always be winners and losers.

If results are below national standards you will have to show that the children/students have made good progress despite the levels of attainment being lower. I think that is OK!

I see stunning teachers every day, working hard and making a difference to to the learning and progress of children from all sorts of backgrounds. Occasionally I see teachers who are really lovely, kind, hard working people but they are not making a difference to a child's academic development. Is that ok?

I think too much importance is given to Ofsted. My DGD's school has an excellent report and she is quite happy there. But she has half an hour homework every night plus extra at weekends in order to keep up. She was five in July. Is this normal? It seems a lot to me.

Also if the teachers are getting over stressed by these inspections what knock on effect is this having on the children?

(And yes, it is a CofE school and yes, I've signed the petition!)

I think that is too much Nfk ! As I said on the other too much too soon thread in Infant school a bit of daily reading with parent/carer and a weekly task should be quite enough!

It's the spelling she has problems with. Five to learn - but she's hardly mastered the letters, can barely form them and is already learning th words.

It doesn't allow for the differences in ability that can occur in a year group. It takes so long to explain it, which has to be done over and again.

Many ofsted inspectors are head teachers who take time off from their own schools, or change jobs to become full-time inspectors. Increasingly many head teachers are younger and have not had as much experience of being straightforward teachers, as few of them now have any time left to teach because they have so much paperwork. So there is not as much sympathy for the teachers from either side. Also the inspectors seem to be far harsher on the schools they inspect than they were on their own teachers, according to a BBC report a couple of years ago which stated that many ofsted inspectors had once been heads of failing schools.

Glad you liked the chocolate cake idea, steal away! I am thinking I may use it again at this school. Every time they get a new head, they get another inspection. Even if they have had an excellent report only the year before. It's not as thorough, it's still unsettling though.

Hmm..I was a class teacher for very many years as a 'working mum' before I became a head. I trained as an OFSTED inspector when I was a head to make sure I knew properly what to expect and to prepare my team to manage the inspection positively. I underwent four OFSTED inspections as a HT. You will not find many inspectors now who do not have a track record of success in school. I do not understand the need for sympathy for professionals undergoing a QA system! Yes teaching is hard work and for 40 weeks of the year the hours can feel unending but there are 12 weeks when we can organise our work more flexibly round our annual holiday. That is luckier than a lot of other professions.

The teams of staff that I have worked with have been caring, hard working and committed professionals wanting to improve the learning & skills and to broaden the experiences of the children they enjoyed working with..even the ones who were tricky and troubled!

What I object to is not so much the process of inspection per se as any good school should never fear that but the fact that inspection takes place within a wider framework of education being a political football. Often the government demands /priorities are themselves the things that block learning! I agree the 'splash' on the local paper,that a,school is not doing as well as it could, often actually mitigates against improving it , I am not an advocate of league tables or early formal education but I do think that all children are capable of making good progress with good teachers.

Honestly if a school can demonstrate that the vast majority of its children/students are making good progress it really should not have anything to worry about.

Jane schools do not automatically get reinspected because a new head is appointed. There is usually something else as well! I know several schools where a new head had an inspection 3-4 years after taking up the post!

Perhaps it's just been coincidence in our case then. I think DBH said something about them being inspections that were tied to the Head and not to the school. So that the Head started off at the school as it is when he comes to it, then he is retested later on.

I managed to find the news item, I remember reading about it in the Times Ed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-18512428

www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/11/genetics-teaching-gove-adviser
Article in today's paper about the man who is leaving before the end of the year to set up his own free school.
Is this why Gove is as obnoxious as he is?
My son's partner did a job share last year as an NQT. She gave up at the end of the year as her head was also the head of another primary school and an Ofsted inspector as well as being her mentor.
He kept forgetting her observations and would arrive late. Then he would leave in the middle and come back in later, but never give her any explanation as to why. It's not good enough.
We had inspections when I was teaching, but the inspectors worked for the local authority and were there to help you, not just criticise, which is what many teachers feel these days.
My daughter-in-law is a language teacher. This year the results were well below what was expected, and there was an article in the paper that A level results have been downgraded this year. So lots of universities are now not providing courses in modern languages. Then not so many children will take modern languages because they know it will be difficult to get the results needed to get on the course of their choice at university. Then schools will get blamed for that, of course.

It's all got a bit out of hand, hasn't it. I would hope that schools give students a love of learning for its own sake, a chance to discover in which area their interests and abilities lie and finally some idea of how equipped they are to go on to study further if they feel so inclined. Now we seem to be in races with other schools and other countries and I'm not sure why.

because 'market forces' & business models now run education! Apparently the only reason we need to educate children is to make life easy for business and to keep the economy going.

I know we need a strong economy and I know that the world of effective business /finance is key to this. However there is little point in having a thriving economy if there is no joy or delight in people's lives. It is time we stopped seeing this as mutually exclusive and value education as an end in itself as well as a means to earning a living.

The world is a different place today than when Michael Gove and his immediate 10 or so predecessors went to school.. but they keep looking back and not forward!

According to Dominic Cummings, Gove's favourite SPAD, it is all in the genes
www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/11/genetics-teaching-gove-adviser
So I guess it doesn't much matter what schools do?
(I know Jen posted this link above, but I am amazed that it hasn't provoked more comment.)

Mamie maybe people agree with him but don't want to admit it.

Hmmm. There is little doubt that IQ (which just measures how good you are at doing IQ tests) is to some degree genetically determined. But that does not excuse a poor education system - people of all abilities need to be educated as appropriate to the individual. I am not sure what this guy is really trying to say - that we should write people off because they are not academically gifted?

I do find this nonsense so tedious. When will we get away from the idea that academic qualifications are all that matter? This ridiculous mindset is what has created second class qualifications (degrees in the most outrageous subjects etc.), because a degree is seen as a goal at all costs - we need to start to value vocational non-degree training - and more importantly valuing those people for whom these qualifications are most suited.

Our education system is ruled by men in suits who have been to private schools and have such a narrow idea of what education means. The result is that those who cannot make the grade in the department's terms finish up feeling undervalued and bored, and do not enjoy their education.

The teachers know all this - but they are straight-jacketed from above and are not able to use their professional skills and judgement to do the right thing for their pupils - they just have to meet the targets. Sigh.

There is something so creepy about Gove - I can hardly bear to look at him!

If genetics are everything, why bother educating anyone? If that is so, the cream will rise naturally to the top, and the rest is just unskilled labour. What a prat.

Every teacher should and most do have high expectations for their children but OSTED and Gove have impossible expectations for many then blame the teachers when the children fail to achieve.

I agree, Mishap, particularly about Gove being creepy. He looks like he's straight out of Dickens, as well as sounding like he is.

Just to say that there are schools where the children do make the good progress that Ofsted expects and these r in a range of areas. The outstanding schools also offer a wide range of subjects &not just basics. When u see it u want it fod all kids.

A local school got outstanding for behaviour. We all were stunned as it's well known in the area for having a lot of challenging children. Every week we heard stories (from the staff there ) of children swearing at them and each other, chair throwing, playground fights, assaults and children walking out of school. Somehow OFSTED failed to see any of that and oddly not see the records and reports.

Penstemmon...I've never had the opportunity to ask an OFSTED inspector any questions so would you mind answering a couple. Don't worry if you'd rather not.

A child enters a school half way through Year 4 with no English and no experience of the English curriculum so doesn't have the KS1 previous learning that leads into KS2 learning. How can that child be expected to achieve 4B at Year 6?

65% of a class speak either no English or are still learning the language and only speak their mother tongue when out of school. How can they be expected to move through the sublevels as quickly as children who were born in England and speak English all the time?

A school was given satisfactory (old system) for behaviour even though there were no incidents during the inspection. When this was queried they were told that the inspectors couldn't give higher as they'd seen no evidence of how poor behaviour was dealt with. It seemed as if the school was being penalised for actually having well behaved children.

The snapshot that OfSted get of a school is not valid in any way. I absolutely agree that the previous system of LA inspectors, who couild stay alongside the school through the process of improvement after a problem had been identified, makes a great deal more sense. This "dive in, criticise then b****r off" routine is so negative and must be soul-destroying to our hard-working teachers.

As I've said before, the OfSted reports have become a devalued currency for parents seeking to choose a school, as they are now giving a lower grade to everyone as far as I can see. Gove wants them to be stricter and he is shooting himself in the foot.

Asking schools to teach to national targets is nonsense - it all depends on the abilities of the children in the school.

And here's another piece of nonsense for you - I am told that in order to qualify as Gifted and Talented (G&T!) and thus attract additional funding for extra help, a child is measured against his/her peers in that particular year - so if there was a class of predominantly extremely bright children one year, none of them would be classified as G&T because they do not stand out from that particular peer group. This is a prime example of the sort of micro-managing target-driven nonsense that these poor teachers are struggling with every day.

Mishap, it isn't about a simple measurement against national targets. It is much more about progress data. Schools are now able to measure progress against similar schools, so for example, if you have a high-achieving cohort on entry at KS2 you have the data to measure levels of progress against schools in a similar socio-economic group for pupils of similar ability (though it is much more complex than this simple description), We used to do this for the schools in our LA with a local "basket of seven" schools, but now there is national data available. Ofsted uses this extensively and masses of data analysis goes on before the inspection. The analysis of progress used by the school leadership and the measures put in place as a result of the analysis very important.
Ofsted inspectors simply do not work as you describe, in my experience. It is a rigorous and careful process. Yes, inspectors sometimes get things wrong; it is a very pressurised process. I have done many inspections (LA and Ofsted) and I simply don't recognise what you are describing. It is a very intense and stressful experience for schools, but at the end of the day, you are there for the children. I have seen people very upset by Ofsted, but many, many good schools who are thrilled to have their achievement recognised.

Gove's not shooting himself in the foot, Mishap. He's doing exactly what he wants, discrediting LA schools and setting up academies and free schools.
If LA schools are seen to be doing well, then move the goalposts.