Teaching & Ofsted = Snowflakes?

I get the feeling that Ofsted is more like an Ockenden review than CQC. Try chatting to some obstetricians about those

I get the feeling that Ofsted is more like an Ockenden review than CQC. Try chatting to some obstetricians about those

oh I know all about Ockenden reviews in detail, but thats slightly different. Ockenden was paid on a case by case basis ie the more patients that came forward then the more Ockenden got paid, in essence that is a private company investigating for profit. Ofsted is not.

TBH I tend to stop listening when people use the term snowflakes.....

You're not a teacher who's gone through offsted then OP? It shows.

TBH I tend to stop listening when people use the term snowflakes…..

Sorry I was too late to change the thread title to include snowflake - shun responsibility/ownership

You’re not a teacher who’s gone through offsted then OP? It shows.

thats my point, thats why I am asking !  I am not the only person who doesnt understand why regulation in teaching is so harmful, so please explain !!  The 2 HT's on the BBC this morning certainly didnt explain it very well, they just said it was unfair to call a school inadequate, and that a HT shouldnt have to keep quiet about a report for 50+ days.

From the teachers / head teachers I know:  My impressions - I am not a teacher

the measures you are judged on are unrealistic and bear little relation to actual teaching
many of the inspectors have little or no education experience

its adversarial and punitive not collaborative and nurturing.  You are marked down on what you are doing wrong not praised for what you do right

It creates huge amounts of unneeded bureaucracy

Its highly prescriptive so no room for innovation and flair and reduces schools and teachers ability to be creative

Scoring can be very arbitrary

the inspections take up huge amounts of time and energy of the staff but add little vvalue

Little note is taken of the starting point of the pupils only the end point.  So an excellent set up in a sink estate scores lower than a mediocre set up in a leafy suburb

Wot TJ said, I've also heard that there is no feedback on routes to improvement,so OFSTED rock up, tell you you're good/shit and then it's your problem to sort out, which given that they are the "experts" you'd think they'd have a wealth of strategies on how to improve. This is likely related to the prescriptive nature of the inspection/schooling, stuff like every science lesson needing to be a practical.

The grading at schools that Ofsted do looks at separate domains in the school, so for instance teaching can be outstanding or good, but at the same time it's leadership may be graded as good or even inadequate. the Domains are aggregated and the school is given an overall grade. Some Domains are weighted more heavily, and in this case, although the school was in most domains graded as Good, Ofsted felt it's leadership was poor, and so it dropped from Outstanding to Inadequate. Which is going to be clearly a blow to those involved in the school. Ofsted can feel like interrogation by the Inquisition and in the couple that I was just tangentially involved as a governor and Head Governor were stressful enough,

It's the grading in Leadership that the sister of the Head has called into question and suggested that the Ofsted team relied on poor or little evidence which then was a major contributing factor in her suicide. The fact that Ofsted has said that they'll continue inspections seems on the face of it to be a poor reaction to continue with a regime that has been a contributing factor in the death of some-one frankly

In GP world we have a similar system under the CQC, and while I think there's clearly evidence that standards have been dragged up over the years, with now 88% of GP practices rated as Good, there needs to be a better system that reflects the fact that we all pretty much know what we're doing and can be relied upon to get on with the job - largely because we're all professionals and it's what we do. I imagine school leaders feel broadly similar.

This is a good article about part of the problem

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/ofsted-complaints-procedures-are-a-cause-for-concern/

I work in a highly regulated and often inspected work environment. The purpose of inspections IS to find something. I would much prefer little or no notice, rapid review, an honest critique and a realistic plan to address the findings. We do get warnings and preparation, but this is a relatively short timeframe. I don’t want to know how we worked when watched, I want to know how things are done without being watched!

Inspectors have the power to close us down, withdraw drugs from the market, stop trials. We don’t get outstanding to inadequate, we get pass or fail (and worse, stop immediately). I’d like to see ofsted do the same.

so OFSTED rock up, tell you you’re good/shit and then it’s your problem to sort out

It's not quite like that. while Ofsted can feel demanding, they ask for evidence of what you claim, not look for reasons why you're not performing well. So if you say something and claim that it's improving attendance or whatever, the next thing Ofsted will say is "demonstrate that", or "show us the evidence you've gathered to back up that claim"

Good schools are good because they can (largely) jump through the hoops that Ofsted set. Schools (and GPs for that matter) have been regularly inspected for so long under the same regime now that honestly if you can't get a rating of Good, you broadly don't deserve it.

Thanks for the responses from the non-teachers who have been quite insightful  🙂

To me regulation is something that does need to be there, and it sounds like teaching does need a review, but why haven't teachers called for that in the past as part of pay reviews etc? It is awful that it has taken a death to highlight it and still no action taken.

Unfortunately regulation via Ofsted/CQC etc is difficult as it is still the government marking its own homework so it can be very flawed, and I have seen it in hospital settings.

In GP world we have a similar system under the CQC, and while I think there’s clearly evidence that standards have been dragged up over the years, with now 88% of GP practices rated as Good, there needs to be a better system that reflects the fact that we all pretty much know what we’re doing and can be relied upon to get on with the job – largely because we’re all professionals and it’s what we do

I disagree with that - safety needs regulation and you can get bad apples in all walks of life, but yes frameworks need to be effective and fit for purpose, it potentially sounds like the Ofsted framework is not currently fit for purpose.

From an NHS perspective, I learned more about the CQC when they responded to concerns about a failing Trust. Ockenden said not only did the Trust fail, bit the regulator failed. The CQC's response was that they outlined the issues, asked for plans to remedy and monitored that plan. The head of the CQC then pretty much shrugged his shoulders and said thats our job.

The calls to stop inspections are ridiculous. Yes the head should have not been in such a bad place mentally but calling for a stop to inspections is stupid. We no to little idea about this particular case so no good offering judgement.

TBH I tend to stop listening when people use the term snowflakes…..

You should avoid this mindset. To stop listening to someone because you don't like one thing they said or where offended by something means you have closed off your view and mind to information that although you may not agree with can help you understand something from other angles.

Ofste inspections are now announced the day before, leaving little to no time for the school to 'prepare'. In the past schools did have the lead time to 'go in to a false state and everything gets review, policies updated, curriculum changed, behaviours change, and teachers work even more hours', however that opportunity has now been removed.

My objection is the sporadic nature of inspections- the 4 local primary's that are outstanding were last inspected in 2007, 2008, 2012, 2017. Our 3 local secondary's are all outstanding- inspected in 2008, 2009, 2012.

That's half a generation ago for some of those schools.

chatting to a friend about it, he was saying safeguarding is a big deal, the school is rated with one word 'inadequate'.
an extreme example, ofsted is in on monday, on sunday night the school perimetre fencing falls down due to high winds, the school is no longer secure, it fails at safeguarding marked 'inadequate'
doesnt matter that the kids grades have improved ten fold..

maybe ofsted should have a better balance. and rate different things to then give an overall rating.
not a failure based on one little item

I think one of the thing Ofsted look at also is value added so you may have school that gets force results than another be get a better Inspection result as it uplifts the students more. At least my partner goes on about this subject a lot.

Mrs Sandboy is a Headteacher.
TJ, a few posts up has it spot on.
Realistically, it’s an impossible job. The key is to focus on the kids.

safety needs regulation

The CQC inspection does not, and never has looked directly at whether doctors at a particular practice are safe. They do use indicators and look at patient information to tell them things about (for instance) how well certain drugs are being controlled, but CQC is largely about processes, not efficacy of treatment

TJ and Nickc are bang on. Ofsted inspectors aren't actually paid that well and don't get expenses eg for accommodation so it could be argued they're not necessarily attracting the brightest and the best. A very good state school in Sheffield has just been downgraded to 'inadequate' and hence being forced into joining an academy chain (it was the last one to remain indepedendent). It does make you wonder.
It can create animosity within schools if you happen to teach an option subject that bright and motivated kids sign up for and the poor souls who get the also-rans have a much more difficult job which is not necessarily reflected in the evaluation.

That’s half a generation ago for some of those schools.

I think the same thing happened here, the Outstanding grade was from 13 years ago under a different Head.

I've worked in internal audit, assurance and other 'checking' type roles for decades and the key issue is 'culture' - i.e. does it have a blame culture?

One place I worked, whenever a dept was going to be reviewed by Internal Audit the dept would actually perform their own review beforehand to see what issues existed, so they could fix them BEFORE Internal Audit did their review. These as you can imagine weren't cheap, and they employed contract auditors to do these reviews (such as me). This was because in that business a poor Internal Audit review was a career-ending event.

Is this the same for a Head Teacher?

Good analogy on the radio this morning. A one word review might suffice for an ice-tray/cable/keyring bought on Amazon but not for a school. On the flip side, aspiring heads don't want to go to schools with the highest rating because of the fear of losing it.

A team come in an rightly try and find out where they are not hitting standards and produce a report which is then shared with the HT, with items that need improvement?

You dreamer

My biggest complaint about OFSTED would be what I would call policy by inspection.

Some one decides that say differentiation is the order of the day

This isn’t announced. They just go and down grade schools that aren’t going what they want.

This then goes on a ridiculously expensive bush telegraph where experts sense what’s going on and sell this knowledge to schools

Schools start making sure they differentiate more. Until the next new thing

That literally means that each change of what they looking for will end a number of head teachers careers

One other problem with ofsted is that schools graded good or excellent weren't inspected for many years, therefore some schools had jumps from excellent to adequate or requires improvement in a single hit.

I know of more than one head teacher that took early retirement purely because they got nervous that an inspection was coming after not having one for a decade or so.

edit- one of those schools still hasn't been inspected since, and their last one was June 2009

Just to give you some idea.
Mrs Sandboy was taking a Governors Meeting on Zoom at home on Wednesday evening and because she needed a quiet house, me and the kids had been banned from the living room.
As I was cooking, I could hear some of the conversation, I asked her later some questions based on what I had overheard and she said that a parent Governor still hadn’t done their Safeguarding training and if the school was to be inspected, it would receive a “requires improvement” based solely on that!!

Ofste inspections are now announced the day before, leaving little to no time for the school to ‘prepare’. In the past schools did have the lead time to ‘go in to a false state and everything gets review, policies updated, curriculum changed, behaviours change, and teachers work even more hours’, however that opportunity has now been removed.

Mrs Pondo worked till midnight the day before her last Ofsted, then was up before six to crack on again - I doubt that's unusual. And she's well organised!

I suspect few would argue that schools don't need inspection, but a regime that imposes this much fear is not fit for purpose.

Thanks for more helpful contributions, they do help me understand the situation a little more. It still shouldn't have taken the death of a colleague though for senior staff to start raising concerns about regulation, or have they always done so and it has been silenced?

a parent Governor still hadn’t done their Safeguarding training and if the school was to be inspected, it would receive a “requires improvement” based solely on that!!

I can see that this would appear minor in the scheme of things, But having worked in well performing organisations and poorly performing/poorly led organisations, its this kind of thing that does show where the cracks are and bigger issues can start from.

Most teachers will be at work now, is the timing of the original post a coincidence? Most will probably ignore a thread that includes “snowflakes” in the title anyway!

Inclined to agree with TJ.

As others have said, several things are graded. I understand the inspection for the head involved in this tragedy was good in all aspects but one, but still came out inadequate. As in so much of life, no one can deal with nuance.

MrsMC has dealt with ofsted as a governor, and as a social worker. Seems to be no allowance for funding and staffing crises as I understand it.

Audits in the Civil Service also seem to generate a crisis of fear. Our case audits seem to among colleagues. I get top marks in audits as I keep on top of my record keeping. I also have noticeably lower productivity than colleagues that don't. When ticking the boxes is the priority, the end goal gets lost.

For balance though, a guy on the radio works in tne meat/food industry. He can have up to 50 days a year of government, industry and customer audits that he has to pass. Vastly different work scenario, but he felt teachers were mollycoddled, to use his words. Which says more about the culture around inspections than the teachers, I suspect.

oh I know all about Ockenden reviews in detail, but thats slightly different

I meant in terms of adversarial/fault-finding nature rather than funding

I blame the parents! 🙂

If there wasn't such a bloody bun-fight to get their precious babies into 'good' schools the Ofsted grades would hold less importance.

Stop giving parents so much choice too - go back to sending kids to the local school by default.

And then there's the environmental impact of them traipsing their kids to the other side of a county to a school one grade better than the one a few miles away.

#snowflakeparents

a parent Governor still hadn’t done their Safeguarding training

The question there is by how much? In my industry lapsed training means not being let on site/removed from your role - so in reality if that person hasn't done it for months because they're "too busy" then they shouldn't be a governor anymore.

It's also worth noting that the comment above about the "bush telegraph" is accurate, the college my partner works at got ofsteded last year, and got a "good" because they figured out the boxes they needed to tick and ticked them. Have teaching practices/standards/pass rates improved? Nope, it was all management bullshit (newly implemented holistic stuff which meant that when asked for evidence, there was none, because it was all to new) which tells me that something is very wrong with ofsted itself as well.

One of my relatives works as a consultant to prepare schools for inspection - a 'pre-MOT', if you like.

This seems crazy - heads spending valuable hours, days, weeks even making sure their papers and policies are in order rather than focusing on their day-to-day job, with the threat of an instant rating change from 'outstanding' to 'inadequate', without any chance to correct things before their ranking is set for the next however many years, and their career is under threat.

I can understand the urgency of dealing with serious safeguarding issues that inspectors find, but there should be a period in which schools can deal with less serious problems, particularly paper-based ones, before the hammer comes down. And Ofsted should be working collaboratively with them to do so, rather than issuing a short, damning report and walking away.

Education urgently needs a blame-free inspection culture.

“too busy” then they shouldn’t be a governor anymore.

This was a new governor who basically couldn’t be arsed!
Calling them out in the meeting was the first step to them standing down.

Edit, as I said before, the focus is on the kids. I was in school last week making bird boxes with some of the children when this boy came up to me and said “ this is the best school in the world”. I don’t need to read an Ofsted report after that!

The question there is by how much? In my industry lapsed training means not being let on site/removed from your role – so in reality if that person hasn’t done it for months because they’re “too busy” then they shouldn’t be a governor anymore.

I think the issue that it's not just that person that's penalised - the whole school gets a bad rating.

Most teachers will be at work now, is the timing of the original post a coincidence? Most will probably ignore a thread that includes “snowflakes” in the title anyway!

No not coincidence at all. As I stated it was on BBC news this morning, Teachers will be able to respond all weekend. If someone put some challenge in about my industry I would want to help educate and inform - isnt that what teachers do for a living 😉

I think the issue that it’s not just that person that’s penalised – the whole school gets a bad rating.

And so it should ! Safeguarding is core to a school. If it cant maintain key standards then something is at fault. You could argue some of it is box ticking, but it is also very much about culture and approach.

TBH I tend to stop listening when people use the term snowflakes…..

Likewise.

Sorry I was too late to change the thread title to include snowflake – shun responsibility/ownership

I don't think the objections being raised are shunning responsibility or ownership though.  They are showing concern/responsibility for their staff and recognising that those who get criticised may not have a viable route to challenge the criticism or the power to solve the problem.  Your assumption seems to be: (1) Ofsted are right; (2) Head teachers have the power / cash / resource to fix the problem; (3) Meeting the ofsted target is more important than the children's education.

Now HT are paid well (rich according to another thread) and part of being senior is that you are paid for your level of responsibility, so why is it so bad that they receive this report?

They are paid OK, I don't think its exceptional, but one of the problems in teaching (and many careers) is that to get pay significant progression you had to be promoted.  This results in very good teachers but shit managers running schools and hating it. The training to become a teacher is how to teach children not manage adult staff.  You must see the same in the medical field? where people who were great nurses or doctors are in charge of a group of people and unable to lead them effectively AND (and organisations are very bad at training people to do this for obvious reasons) unable to manage upwards either.   Now when CQC come to visit you, if everything is clean, the patient case is correct, etc but when they talk to the staff they say the management is crazy do they give the whole hospital an "inadequate" badge?  Are you stuck with that badge for years?  Do the "customers" shop around for hospitals based on that badge?  If they did and attendance fell (unlikely in an overstretched NHS) do budgets get cut (likely making the bits that were good before bad now) and job losses follow.

The HT on the BBC were saying that the HT receives the report but can not share it with the senior management team for 50+ days? Why is this?

I don't know - I've never heard of it before - but having heard it, my response is "well that sounds stupid, and seems like more evidence that Ofted is screwed up (or that Local Authorities was of dealing with Ofsted is)" rather than "well that's evidence that the teachers are wrong".

Also that there is no support structure in place for the HT. Why would they need a support structure?

Head Teachers are not the autonomous CEO of a company that people regard them to be.  Many are employed by a local authority and are in effect "Branch Managers".  Any other organisation that had that sort of structure would have a mechanism to support their managers to achieve their objectives.  Schools in England also have this extra weird layer of management - the governors - who can be as much of a problem as a support.  The governors may not be at all aligned with Ofsted on where the priorities should be.  Does the head dance to the tune of their regulator or the governance structure?  (For your CQC analogy its probably similar in care homes - where the board and the CQC may be pulling in opposite directions).

The idea that schools should be subject to inspection is not generally the problem, it has always been the way.  Ofsted don't regulate Scottish Schools, His Majesty's Inspectorate of Education do.  Whilst teachers in Scotland hate HMIE visits (and I'm sure your colleagues hate CQC visits) they don't seem to create the animosity of Ofsted.  Why is that?  Are Scottish teachers tougher?  Unlikely.  Are Scottish schools all better run to start with? Unlikely.  I know one teacher who has experienced both and described them as totally different.  The HMIE experience was much more constructive despite the Ofsted report at her old school actually being far better than the overall gist of the Scottish report.  I also know a retired HMIE inspector.  He is a former very experienced teacher.  I believe all HMIE are.  You may or may not welcome his views but there's no doubt they come from someone who has been in the classroom; has managed other teachers; has balanced school budgets; is realistic about what is possible - and I think most importantly doesn't walk into one school see something great and assume every school should or even could do that.  He describes his HMIE experience as an eye-opener on the different challenges facing different schools with different demographics/parent involvement etc.

The problem with Ofsted reports is amplified in England because parents are much more likely to "choose" their school than send to the local school.  The government has encouraged parents to treat Ofsted reports as a kind of league table of performance but thats a stupid thing to have done.  Now parents who care will pick the best schools (and go to great lengths to get their kids in) and those who don't care, or don't have ther skills to manipulate the system themselves (and those who have caring or other commitments that mean the balance of factors is the closest school) end up in the poorer schools which end up in a spiral of decay.  Ultimately when that happens Ofsted or the Local Authority should be closing down inadequate schools.  But to do that you need alternative local capacity so its almost unheard of to close a school because it is failing the educational needs of the pupils.  Compare that to CQC - they have closed care homes, I'm not sure about hospitals.  But if CQC give a generally dreadful report and its not resolved very quickly its headline news and funding gets found to sort the problem.

If I was designing an inspection regime for schools I would assess, give feedback, ask for plans to correct issues, reassess how those plans were going, then judge them not only on how they were doing but on how they had dealt with the areas for improvement.  I probably wouldn't want to put them in boxes at all - so it would essentially be "areas of excellence", "areas of improvement" and then an overall recommendation to the local authority whether some external intervention was necessary (and before publishing that I'd expect the LA and School to have a chance to agree that plan and include it in the report).

echo much of the above; my wife is not a teacher but is school staff, has worked at three schools and has as luck would have it, given that some haven't been inspected for a long time, she's been through Ofsted at every school she's been at (so much so that she is worried they follow her around)

As I was cooking, I could hear some of the conversation, I asked her later some questions based on what I had overheard and she said that a parent Governor still hadn’t done their Safeguarding training and if the school was to be inspected, it would receive a “requires improvement” based solely on that!!

A previous school had similar so I can well believe it. It was a SEN school so had specific safeguarding issues, and although my wife couldn't discuss full details there was a problem with a pupil who because of particular needs had some classes at home but still under the control of the school. Some sort of form was missing so they couldn't prove that he was at home which failed their safeguarding (and someone lost their job over), and consequently their grading went from outstanding in all areas to inadequate - which I think is the problem. Yes, as an incident that was serious (in theory a SEN pupil with no proof of where they were!) but to grade the whole school and everything it did in one word just doesn't reflect the overall picture.

Most of the teachers I know and mix with through my wife welcome inspection, and value the feedback and opportunities to improve that they bring. It's the final mark and repercussions of that one word that needs fixing.

For balance though, a guy on the radio works in tne meat/food industry. He can have up to 50 days a year of government, industry and customer audits that he has to pass. Vastly different work scenario, but he felt teachers were mollycoddled, to use his words. Which says more about the culture around inspections than the teachers, I suspect.

It probably says more about the subjectivity of the criteria.  In the food industry it is easier to say pass or fail because things are tightly defined.

In a classroom how do you assess behaviour when one or more of the kids have issues which can lead them to go off at no notice?

How do you assess whether the results achieved are down to the school or the affluence of the local community (I suspect this is more of an issue for affluent areas where private tuition is an option)?  I was told recently by one proud parent how they were ‘gaming the university admission system’ by transferring their children to a local state school for sixth form while employing tutors from their public school for extra tuition.  You can guarantee that they aren’t sending their kids to a ‘struggling' school

Is it better for a teacher to deviate from the lesson plan because they realise that a significant proportion of their pupils haven’t grasped the concept from the last lesson?

Ofsed always has been and always will be subjective.  The focus on paperwork is an attempt to make it less so but results on a focus on the inspection rather than the goal.

One can criticize the regime, and TBH, everyone can get behind me in the queue to give inspectors an ear bashing...BUT. The inspection regime broadly hasn't changed now for 20 years. Nothing that inspectors in either CQC or Ofsted look for should come as a surprise to any well functioning school that's even slightly concerned to pay attention to the shit that we have to sort out in order to pass at "Good" i.e. a normal functioning well run school/ GP practice.

Folks saying things like if the wind blows down the fence the school will be rated as Inadequate or Failing are talking bollards frankly, and no school will get a Needs Improving overall rating if just one new governor hasn't done their training yet.

The system is shit, but like GPs nearly ninety percent of schools manage to get Good or Outstanding rating.

I can give an example from my own work as a nurse where inspections can make care worse.  I was working in a care home running a dementia care unit.  It was a specialist built unit designed for patient freedom and safety

One of the criteria we were judged on was the number of falls patients had.  Seems reasonable?  Well my / our ethos was to allow the patients freedom and the right to take risks.  This meant we would have more falls than some units especially given the patient group.

The only way to reduce the number of falls would be to remove patients freedoms either mechanically to stop them getting out of their chair, chemically by sedating them or by staff constantly telling them to sit down ( I have seen all these done)  Restricting patients movements leads to distress in those patients.  I would not do this.  What we did instead was mitigate the effects of the falls and the likelihood of the roaming patient falling ( body armour on patients - yes really!   No sharp edges / corners, handrails everywhere, remove trip hazards etc etc)

So we ended up with a higher number of falls that units which used a restrictive ethos and thus were marked down.  This is despite the fact complaints about falls from families were low - because I explained to families the ethos of the unit and told them that the increased freedom and therefor peace of mind of the patients would inevitably mean increased risk of falls.

I came under pressure to reduce the number of falls from senior management.  I refused to restrict my patients freedoms.

In this case the steps taken to reduce the number of falls would actually make care worse

I think teaching and offsted inspections have similar situations especially if you have special needs kids. context and nuance is needed not a simple pass / fail score

And so it should ! Safeguarding is core to a school. If it cant maintain key standards then something is at fault. You could argue some of it is box ticking, but it is also very much about culture and approach.

It's not just safeguarding - that's just the example quoted, and it talked about a single, non-student facing member of staff. But the point is that a school can be doing an excellent, safe, inspiring job and still be rated inadequate.

Just having four ratings doesn't help, either.

Well my / our ethos was to allow the patients freedom and the right to take risks.

Yeah, that's fair enough,  but did you have a policy that explains it, a risk assessment that looked at what might happen if you allow unsteady pats some freedom and that you made some efforts to explain that to patients and families and had evidence that the overall impact of letting pats roam freely was better for their health? Because you and I both know that's what CQC will ask for.

I was criticized by CQC  because I allowed reception team members to take a standard DBS as they didn't speak or interact with patients in private, (it was a cost saving)  BUT my policy said that everyone gets an enhanced DBS. It didn't effect the overall rating, but the Leadership domain was critical of what I was doing.

TheBrick
Free Member
The calls to stop inspections are ridiculous. Yes the head should have not been in such a bad place mentally but calling for a stop to inspections is stupid

Not necessarily. If inspections aren't adding value, and are driving people to suicide, then pausing and reviewing would be a good idea.

My wife has recently been through Ofsted, though not in a school setting. She was less than impressed, with it being very much a box ticking and paperwork exercise.