Too much OFSTED. Full stop.

Abstract

Too much OFSTED. Full stop. two heads in the last two years – and both gave us conflicting reports about our teaching, the school’s recordkeeping and special needs provision. Who were we to believe? Now it is all over I do not feel great though we have ‘passed’. One of my colleagues received two ‘unsatisfactory’ grades for her lessons. Some reference to this will almost certainly appear in the final report, as she is the only teacher of that age group in the school and she has taken a few days off in this, the first week back after OFSTED. It is a small school, in a close community. I cannot imagine the pain for her of facing parents and children when the report comes out. This teacher tries very hard and was, in fact, badly advised about one of the lessons, which received the unsatisfactory grade. It was with a great sense of relief that I heard, today, the news that OFSTED may change to do more frequent, but lowerkey inspections. This will reduce the sometimes extreme and totally unnecessary stress that teachers face under the present system. Surely it is possible for the checks (that I think we do need) to be made on teachers and schools in a less stressful, less all-or-nothing way. This may give teachers like my colleague a chance to do justice to themselves, instead of having low, and maybe unfair, grades hanging over them for six long years!