There's only one F in OFSTED

Not my words, but those of an old friend and highly respected head teacher who's had enough of.....

OFSTED

First of all, I along with all practicing and former heads, alongside school staff everywhere can only offer condolences to Ruth Perry’s family. It’s appalling.

However, there is an inevitability about this and I believe it has happened before. Those of us that have served , know only too well the pressure that this organisation has placed on staff in schools… it is, and always has been, a very blunt instrument used by successive governments to somehow prove to the electorate that they are taking a firm grip on standards in schools.

The outcome has been that OFSTED is not seen as a helpful critical friend, it is viewed as a threat, a challenge to be overcome, an expensive time stealer, an extra job to manage. At worst, and I have felt this, a visiting boot boy who turns up at intervals to give you a good kicking. I survived 26 years of headship. I was an okay head, got good grades for leadership and management but still got a kicking from time to time.

I have known good heads who left the service because of the regime. I have known inexperienced heads who buckled on first contact, suddenly aware that this straight faced, humourless bunch were not prepared to hear the whole story and were only interested in judging the professional acumen of staff in a school on spurious data.

Schools are way too complex to be judged via a framework that is so inflexible and only really comes to that final grading through the scrutiny of arbitrary academic outcomes. I write fairly proficiently but I personally wouldn’t recognise a fronted adverbial or split digraph if one reared up and bit me. All ten year olds are expected to know this stuff……and it is youngsters having a grasp of this ‘guff’ that schools are now judged on.

I support heads who are taking a stand. Heads who are refusing for themselves or their schools to be defined by OFSTED. School staff, governors and parents know what their strengths and areas of development are without an OFSTED badge on their headed notepaper, website or an ugly, bragging, plastic banner tied to their railings.

Other than the statutory sign posting of the most recent inspection report on a school website there is no obligation for any school to advertise OFSTED anywhere. So I applaud schools that are no longer giving them the oxygen of publicity.

It isn’t just the recent tragedy of our colleague Ruth Perry. There are so many who have suffered in so many ways because while heads and staff are not defined by OFSTED, broadly speaking their work is valued and upheld by the communities that they serve.

Where there is a confusing mismatch between the perceptions of a school community and an infrequent, inflexible random, data based snapshot and words like ‘inadequate’ or ‘outstanding’ being bandied about, this bunch can damage reputations that have taken decades to mature.

OFSTED costs about ￡150m per year. Per school inspection it operates at an average of ￡7,300 across all sectors. It, by its own admission in 2018, had no way of assessing whether it represented value for tax payers money.

Listen OFSTED, I guess the majority of school staff judge you at best, to be ‘inadequate’ , a waste of time and resources….

At worst, it would seem that you are capable of actually being dangerous…….

…….OFSTED, you should ask yourself why your practices lead you to be considered ‘the enemy’ and feared by most schools…

Ex avenging OFSTED chief Michael Wilshaw says that the majority of schools welcome OFSTED, I believe this to be a cynical falsehood. I have known hundreds of heads and never met one that actually put a celebratory cake in the staffroom because friendly old Auntie and Uncle OFSTED had signalled that they were going to visit and sprinkle joy and goodwill.

This ought to be a watershed moment. There should be a suspension of their activity while there is an enquiry. Heads, staff and governors should be consulted on the best way that the inspectorate can support schools within the framework …… ahead of judging them.

…. and seriously, in that order.

Above all, there should be some recognition that even accomplished headteacher’s offices can be very lonely places when the judging begins and your reputation and self esteem are at stake.

Would I have posted this when still in service? ……… No chance! Wouldn’t have dared!