Teachers, like my profession, are required to undergo assessment by an independent body. Interestingly, I, too, am subject to the Oftead inspectors since the National Skills Academy took over the audit regime of track safety training (although I’ve yet to see one of these folk as they seem to keep missing me out, being peripatetic). For my motorcycle training, I undergo routine observation by DSA examiners – twice in the last year as I was preparing for my Cardington assessment. It goes with the territory. No one likes it much but we go along with it because that is the regime under which we work – and if we don’t, we lose our licence.
Teachers don’t like it either.
In a dramatic deterioration of the relationship between teachers and the Government, England’s biggest classroom union voted to take hard-line action that could prevent the education watchdog from accessing lessons.
The National Union of Teachers said the protest should be launched because of concerns over rising stress levels, paperwork and damage to staff morale.
It was claimed that the pressure of Ofsted had forced some teachers to take their own lives.The union, which represents around 300,000 teachers, called for Sir Michael Wilshaw to resign as the head of Ofsted, branding him “an odious creature” and “Big Brother”, with his watchdog being compared to “the Spanish Inquisition”.
Fuck me, there’s some claptrap in there. Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? When you take a job as a teacher, you sign up to the quality control regime. That means Ofstead inspections. Don’t like it? Leave the profession. Simple as that. If it is so stressful for the poor dears, then perhaps they are in the wrong job. I am subject to two lots of inspections from two different regimes and I’ve managed the stress without topping myself. But, then, I came out of my last assessment by the DSA with a full score, as I’m good at what I do. If I wasn’t, maybe I would be feeling stressed at the prospect… As for “Big Brother” and the “Spanish Inquisition” this is such obvious bullshit, it isn’t worth any more comment.
Any boycott would probably result in teachers downing tools when inspectors enter the classroom and denying the watchdog key data on pupils.
If I did this, I would immediately find my licence to train suspended and quite rightly too. And that is precisely what should happen to any teacher who behaves in such a reprehensible and unprofessional manner.
Ofsted inspections are a compulsory requirement for schools in England and legal experts have already warned that any boycott would be illegal, with teachers potentially facing a fine and criminal record for refusing to co-operate with the watchdog.
Then go on and do it. A few facing the loss of their income will concentrate the minds somewhat. The rest of us have to live in the real world of inspections, so can teachers. I have no sympathy whatever for their position and despise the NUT even more than I did before. Looking after one’s members does not stretch to criminal action or unprofessional behaviour. Not liking the government is not an excuse to breach the contract entered into or to undermine the quality control process (yeah, I know, what quality?). Maybe this is an opportunity to weed out the crap and put in some quality. Any decent teacher worth their salt won’t have a problem with an inspection because they know full well they will sail through it.
You may have a point but have you seen the amount of paperwork they’re expected to keep or experienced an actual ofsted inspection? Every part of the curriculum has been analysed to death by academic troughing friends in the system and every action or minimal achievement must be recorded.
Many of the Inspectors gained dubious success in the education sphere having (been)retired early only to suck up to the establishment and join the inspectorate earning many hundreds of pounds a day to criticize and promote the latest DoE fad.
Too many professions and industries are stripped of initiative through over regulation.
BTW. I left teaching many years ago when much of this was in its infancy. I was even criticized for not introducing religious influences when observed teaching practical technology session and that from an ex-advisor who, many years before, totally failed to appear during the time I was setting up a new food area in the department!!!
I could see then how standards were already being driven down and I’ve recently gained an insight into the present day minutia demanded of reception and preschool staff and children. It’s ridiculous. If you know any teachers simply ask them to show you how every aspect of activity has been ripped apart and you’ll see what I mean.
Given the increase in bureaucracy surrounding track safety training, I can sympathise. However, I cannot sympathise with a refusal to undergo the inspection at all. Interestingly, our inspectors work for a private company, so I cannot comment on the issue regarding nepotism within the DofE. We’ve had mixed results so far what with these people not having an industry background, but it’s a learning experience for both parties, so I’m keeping an open mind.
The thing is that most people have some inspection in their jobs. I’ve written software for clinical trials systems, which result in both internal inspection of my code, and external inspection by the FDA. I must admit that I always get dreadfully nervous for some reason, despite the fact that I generally get a very clean bill of health.
And yes, I’d much rather that it wasn’t done. It would make my life easier. But the people paying me want it done.
So, as someone paying for a school for my kids (indirectly via the tax system), I expect the same. Sorry, but I’m not going to put my kids into a school at 12, and find them at GCSE at 16 leaving with sod all. And whilst I’ve got a rough idea of whether she’s progressing, I’m not enough of an expert to know if the standard is going to be good for GCSE, in the same way that I don’t how to tell if a car is safe (which is why I delegate that to NCAP).
I spent 28 years in a (not British) Police Force where my every action was subject to oversight and scrutiny. It was my job to do the same to those I commanded. No leeway was given. The job was done properly or you didn’t have a job. The system worked, our public both respected and appreciated what we did. Their co-operation was always forthcoming, not through fear but through a genuine desire to help. Crime was kept low, Police morale was high. And the constant inspections, although often a PITA, were the reason why the system worked.
It was checked and re-checked constantly, not just a couple of times a year!
I suspect that, as usual, we do not see the full story.
“The National Union of Teachers said the protest should be launched because of concerns over rising stress levels, paperwork and damage to staff morale.”
That statement (even though it is just a soundbite) suggests to me that what the teachers are worried about is escalation. It may be that the escalation in recording every little thing is eating into preparation and teaching time.
But I must admit that I have no idea if that is the case.
And I would have no issue with refusing to cooperate with the escalation of paperwork, but that ain’t what they are doing.
I have no great respect for the NUT but it is possible that they do have a point. Unfortunately though it’s well hidden.
Teachers’ problems with OFSTED is not I think a problem with being assessed and inspected as such, it is that the current system rarely does what most outsiders think it’s doing. That is, give a fairly objective view of the quality of teachers, teaching and the School.
The complaint about rising levels of stress and falling morale are, I believe an attempt to explain the tension teachers experience between what officialdom thinks is desirable and what is actually possible on the ground. The system is full of paradoxes and perverse incentives and at the heart of it is the official requirement to record everything honestly and in great detail and on the other the practical requirement to ‘speak the truth that is pleasing’ so parents are not frightened off, inspectors are placated and the school survives.
It is, for instance, fine and dandy to insist that schools have a ‘bullying policy’ (and indeed many other policies) and keep records in incidents, etc. but it would be far more useful if these bore the slightest resemblance to what actually happens in the classroom.
It might be accurate for a head to say that ‘Mrs Smith is a poor teacher with a wealth of personal problems but we can’t afford to replace her with someone better’ but it’s not possible to say so. Similarly teachers can’t say the ‘this pupil is a violent bully who constantly disrupts class and is suspected of selling dope’ because somehow they are to blame for not ‘doing something’ about it.
In one recent example of OFSTED stress I know of, a nursery received an emergency inspection at 24hrs notice because the parents of an autistic boy complained that the nursery had not ‘done enough’ to deal with their son’s challenging behavior. In the end the inspectors gave the establishment an excellent report and said they had done more than could reasonably been expected. However, just the meeting took 3 teachers and the head all morning and set all other work back days. They feel they did everything right but still got dumped on.
As mentioned above, I have seen similar complaints in the track safety training field (and having been in the position of the inspector in this regime, yes, some of the clauses in the standard were blatantly silly and unnecessary). However, the distinction must be made between the standard and those charged with measuring against it. If the standard is absurd, then the problem is not with the inspectors. Also, this is not exactly a new phenomenon. This is blatant politicking because the current government and more specifically, the education secretary is a Tory. If it was one of their own puppets, then the noise would be somewhat less raucous.
No, I don’t much like the Tories, but Gove is an elected official (and one of the better ones), unlike the NUT, who represent no one but themselves and are currently advocating criminal activity.
Actually, your last paragraph tells me the process is working as it should. The problem here is not with Ofstead, it is with the spiteful parents who have grown up to expect everything to be spoon-fed to them. The inspectors did the job asked of them and appear to have done it professionally. If it was me, I’d issue the complainants with the bill for the lost time.
Try to imagine this scenario.
Think of the most challenging student you’ve ever taught to ride. Add into the mix that they may not want to learn at all. Give them a few mental health problems and then note that they didn’t turn up for 50% of your lessons, and when they did, they really weren’t interested. Remember, you are not allowed to stop teaching the student (even after they attacked you).
Then have your DSA examiner turn up. They observe your lesson. They comment on how positively you handled a difficult situation, the quality of your knowledge and the planning for the ride.
They will then announce that, because the student hasn’t passed their test within the average timescale it takes for someone to learn to ride a motorcycle, they are going to fail you anyway.
That’s the world of OFSTED. No matter what the challenge, no matter what you do, if the raw data isn’t better than the national average you fail. How does that compare with your DSA inspection?
To be fair, that scenario just wouldn’t apply. I teach adults for the very reason that I wouldn’t go anywhere near a captive audience. I would never, ever teach juveniles.
As for how it compares – as I said, I have two comparisons to go by. The DSA measure me not the student. If I have a difficult one, they measure how I manage the training. They do not measure the student’s progress towards a test because no such measure exists.
With the track safety, it’s early days with the Ofstead people and I am getting limited feedback, not having been inspected by them yet. The most absurd is that they have insisted that we measure the ethnicity and gender of our candidates. There is nothing that we can do with this information as, being private companies, we train the students sent to us by our clients. besides, we don’t need to give people a questionnaire to recognise that the majority will be white middle aged males. Otherwise, colleagues’ impressions seem to be generally positive.
I don’t think I can add anything to what I’ve said above. If there is a complaint with the system, then it needs to be taken up legally with those who set the system, not by taking criminal action. The body that represents track safety training providers managed to get the system changed rather significantly by lobbying Network Rail as there were some pretty apparent and unfair absurdities in the old one. They didn’t refuse to cooperate with the inspectors or the organisation providing them, they behaved in an adult and responsible fashion and got a result.
Of course, it ain’t perfect and they might yet have cause to regret it…
Longrider
“They do not measure the student’s progress towards a test because no such measure exists”.
Isn’t that precisely what ‘Teacher’ above is saying.
Imagine if every student you taught was assessed long after they passed the test, and if they the student caused an accident or god forbid rode at speed or didn’t perform a ‘lifesaver’, you the ‘teacher’ lost your licence. Perhaps you would appreciate the role of teachers.
Are you downgraded or your school given a black mark if one student in a hundred fails to pass the test?….. no didn’t think so.
Given that the DSA has long since monitored driving instructors’ pass/fail rates and used them as a measure of ability – and would like to do so with motorcycle instructors, but only cannot due to the current way that we are licensed (we don’t display our tickets in the vehicle), you would be wrong.
“If there is a complaint with the system, then it needs to be taken up legally with those who set the system, not by taking criminal action.”
Bizarrely, you are in full agreement with the leadership of the NUT here! What happened at conference was that a group of teachers called upon their union to INVESTIGATE whether any boycott of OFSTED might be legal.
The union response, even before the debate happened, was quite clear.
“The Officers of the Union have considered the terms of the amendment in accordance with the remit given to them to examine motions and amendments and remove from them material which is outside the Rules of the Union by
reason of its being beyond the Union’s aims and objects, unlawful or legally
incapable of implementation. The Officers believe that the terms of this
amendment are in order for debate only on the basis that it is understood that
implementation of the motion will be in accordance with the law.”
http://www.teachers.org.uk/files/nut-final-agenda-annual-conference-2013.pdf, Motion 14
So, what actually happened, is this: a group of teachers said they were so fed up with OFSTED they wished they could boycott it, and the union said “No, that’s not legally possible”. Quite why the union allows this to play out in a public forum which then enables the press to stir up the level of response in your previous post is rather beyond me.
Hardly headline stuff in the national press, is it? It neatly deflects the attention of the public from the real debate.
Are OFSTED’s judgements accurate and fair, or are they random and fail to reflect the reality of teaching in challenging schools?
Is OFSTED currently being used as a tool to force through a political agenda?
With regard to the lobbying you propose, what actually happens is that the union has been doing that (unsuccessfully) for 20 years. Our current education secretary is quite public in describing anyone who disagrees with him as a “trotskyite”, an “enemy of promise” and makes “yada yada” noises over the top of other people attempting to engage him in debate. What is currently happening is that teacher frustration is spilling over at the fact that despite all this negotiation, no one takes any notice of us whatsoever!
It is a shame that this whole scenario leads to a public who assume that “any decent teacher worth their salt won’t have a problem with an inspection because they know full well they will sail through it.” That is sadly not the case, which is the root cause of the whole issue.
That does rather put a different complexion on the matter – if the lobbying is entirely legal, then I have no issue with it.
So far as I can tell, in my industry, the inspectors (who are also Ofsted inspectors) are there purely to monitor the quality of learning provided to the students. So the answers to your two questions would be: yes, the are fair and no, they are not pushing a political agenda.
That they might be bringing stuff from their school inspections into the rail industry where it doesn’t apply is another matter…
This is the list of statements which OFSTED automatically fail a school on. Note that ‘groups’ can refer to any collection of children the inspector wants it to.
Pupils overall, or particular groups of pupils, are consistently making less than expected progress given their starting points.
Pupils’ learning and progress in any key subject or key stage, including the sixth form or the Early Years Foundation Stage, indicate they are underachieving.
Disabled pupils and/or those who have special educational needs and/or those for whom the pupil premium provides support, are underachieving.
Pupils’ communication skills (including reading and/or writing) or proficiency in mathematics are not sufficiently strong for them to succeed in the next stage of education, training or employment.
Attainment is consistently below floor standards or is in decline and shows little, fragile or inconsistent improvement.
There are wide gaps in the attainment and/or the learning and progress of different groups.
As a result of weak teaching over time, pupils or particular groups of pupils including disabled pupils, those who have special educational needs, and those for whom the pupil premium provides support, are making inadequate progress.
Pupils cannot communicate, read, write, or apply mathematics as well as they should.
Teachers do not have sufficiently high expectations and teaching over time fails to engage or interest particular groups of pupils, including disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs.
Learning activities are not sufficiently well matched to the needs of pupils.
Pupils’ lack of engagement and persistent low-level disruption of learning contribute to reduced learning and/or a disorderly classroom environment.
A significant minority of pupils show a lack of respect and intolerance for each other or staff and a lack of self-discipline, resulting in poor behaviour around the school.
Incidents of bullying overall or specific types of bullying are frequent, and/or pupils have little confidence in the school’s ability to address bullying successfully.
Pupils or particular groups of pupils do not feel safe at school and/or at alternative placements.
Attendance is consistently low for all pupils or groups of pupils and shows no sign of improvement.
Capacity for securing further improvement is limited because current leaders and managers have been ineffective in securing essential improvements.
Improvements which have been made are fragile, too slow or are dependent on external support.
Self-evaluation lacks rigour and is inaccurate in its conclusions so that leadership and management do not have a realistic view of outcomes or provision.
Leaders and managers are not taking sufficiently effective steps towards securing good teaching for all groups of pupils, including disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs.
Leaders and managers are not taking sufficiently effective steps towards securing good behaviour from all pupils and a consistent approach to the management of challenging behaviour.
The curriculum fails to meet the needs of pupils or particular groups of pupils, or pupils are entered for public examinations inappropriately early, and pupils’ achievement and enjoyment of learning are significantly impaired.
A lack of attention to literacy is impeding pupils’ progress.
Governors are not sufficiently robust in holding the school to account for pupils’ achievement, the quality of teaching and the effective and efficient deployment of resources.
The school’s strategies for engaging with parents are weak and parents have expressed little confidence in the school.
The school’s arrangements for safeguarding pupils do not meet statutory requirements and give serious cause for concern.
See commentary in next post.
Underachieving means not performing in line with national averages. Any school where the kids don’t make the same progress as the leafy school up the road, fails. A disproportionate number of children who don’t speak English is usually enough to do it. Similarly, any cohort with above average numbers of SEN pupils, or more than 2-3 pupils who for whatever reason can’t quite keep up.
Schools can fail because pupils don’t attend. Nursery children not being brought to school by their parents is regarded as truanting by the child.
Data for small groups can be very misleading. Quote from a news report April 2012: “One teacher was told that the 25 per cent ‘success rate’ for male Bengali sixth-formers was a ‘serious issue’ that could lead to a downgrading.
In fact, out of only four such pupils, one was being treated for cancer, another had died in a road accident and a third was in a young offenders’ institution.”
SEN data is always difficult, because SEN ranges from a child who finds it a bit difficult, to the child with a severe learning difficulty. I currently teach an 11 year old (English speaking) whose level of communication, despite intensive intervention, is to be able to write her own name and say single words at a time. The local authority can’t find her a place in a special school. From a level W at KS1 (effectively 0) she will need to reach L2 and will need to be reading Roald Dahl books within the next few weeks. Two or three needy children(or even one in a small cohort) can cause the school to fail.
Any weakness anywhere is deemed to result in failure. Employ someone who is not up to the job and who you haven’t moved on by the time OFSTED arrive (rightly or wrongly, it tends to take about a term to prove incompetency) and your school can fail. In a small village school with up to 4-5 teachers, this one is a guaranteed fail since anything above 10% inadequate teaching is a fail.
For small (primary) schools, a challenging cohort can completely mess up your data. If you are unlucky enough to get OFSTED the following year, you will fail.
We are a junior school in a tough area. Our feeder infant school seem to make up the teacher assessments (ie children who can’t count to 10 when they arrive with us have been assessed as able to do 57+35 mentally). Over three OFSTED inspections, the team have shown no interest in our detailed assessments of the fact that our children arrive well below average, and insist that they are well above because the infant school said so. The infant school, of course, is highly praised by OFSTED since their data is good.
The difference between passing and failing an OFSTED is 1% on your results if you happen to sit on the boundary. One child going on holiday during SATs week will swing it for you.
One (previously outstanding) school is publicly claiming that they failed an inspection because they were unable to produce data due to a complete failure of the school’s ICT network.
OFSTED inspectors can (and do) fail a lesson if a single child appears disinterested and disengaged. One child. This week, I taught one child whose home had been raided by the police at the crack of dawn, and another who arrived on Monday morning not having been fed since Saturday evening because the family had run out of money. To be honest, they didn’t look very engaged to me.
I call BS on this.
Just by you stating that ” A disproportionate number of children who don’t speak English is usually enough to do it”.
If a school fails because of this, it is BECAUSE the school is not geared towards its particular “market” or children, and therefore is not adapting to it. That it then fails an inspection shows that the system works, because it has failed its children.
Especially as multilingual children learn faster than monolingual, the initial setback (if there is, which I do not think is necessarily the case) would be more than compensated in later years.
Ofsted inspection have been simplified but are more difficult (especially for governors, like I am). They will call you the day before they come in, and start asking questions of the head the same day. We have yet to have one, but we are prepared (I hope).
By the way, my children speak 3 languages from having a French father, German mother and living in England. We have never spoken to them in English. They do very well at school.
Left leaning unions who think that the state should control everything complaining about a rise in authoritarian control. You couldn’t make it up.