Ofsted Under Fire

Monday's edition of the Guardian reported that Ofsted was facing a crisis in public confidence as it came 'under a series of attacks on its authority this week, with the watchdog accused of being "flawed, wasteful and failing"'. (Guardian, 2009)
The report goes on to say that:

The children's services inspectorate will be criticised today by service
heads in every local authority in the country, headteachers' leaders and in a
damning forthcoming report by MPs on the government's school accountability
system.

Its new inspection regime is accused of forcing social work departments to
focus on passing inspections instead of looking after children, giving good
schools mediocre ratings on routine technical matters – such as fences not being
high enough – and more claims that sub-contracted inspectors are not fit for the
job. (Ibid)

The critics include former Ofsted chief Mike Tomlinson (pictured above).

You can read the full report here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/nov/23/flawed-ofsted-fails-inspections

I don't have much time for analysis tonight, but my initial thoughts are roughly as follows.

Few teaching staff will shed tears for Ofsted, and most will hope that the criticism leads to some genuine improvement. But I wouldn't hold my breath. But while government are under pressure to make cuts in public spending, while attempting to not reduce quality, this might be the perfect opportunity to take a close look at what Ofsted has to offer, and streamline it to focus on the things that will really make the difference to education's bottom line.

Parkinson's law says that work expands to fill the time available, but I think that there is an equivalent in the public sector that says remit and work expands to fill the funding available. If the coming round of cuts includes Ofsted we may see the inspectorate forced to focus only on the things that really matter.

Whatever happens, it brings delight to teachers everywhere to see their most ardent critic under critique themselves.

Ofsted - Part of the problem?

I am sure many (if not most) in the teaching profession would say "yes, of course" to the question above. But while the public mood is to place yet more accountability on those in the public sector (which includes teachers) it is not likely to be an easy task persuading people that actually, the very body which holds the teaching profession most accountable - is part of the problem.

According to the BBC this view is supported by the NASUWT in response to Ofsted's report on standards of English teaching in Primary and Secondary school.

While Ofsted is reported as saying:

"progress has been made in the past five years and standards have risen - but
not fast enough." (BBC)

The response from the NASUWT was according to the BBC "extremely sceptical" about the value of such reports from Ofsted. Its general secretary, Chris Keates, said:

"Ofsted's definition of what is 'good' changes on an annual basis, making
it impossible to compare results over any period of time.

"This report says results are not improving fast enough. What does that actually mean? No matter how much or how quickly results improve, Ofsted will continue to move the goalposts. It's a race teachers can never win.

"One of the biggest single factors which undermine the efforts of teachers to raise standards is the amount of time they have to spend meeting the real or perceived needs of Ofsted rather than being able to prioritise the needs of pupils. Ofsted is part of the problem, not the solution."
(BBC)

If you have been in the teaching profession long enough to feel the impact of an Ofsted report you will probably understand where Chris Keates is coming from. If you have never worked as a teacher you may never understand what it is to have government demand performance targets of teachers, when much of that is in fact out of the teacher's direct control (things such as upbringing, parental support, funding, whether the student even has breakfast...).

For the non-teachers I put it this way. Which do you think more likely to increase your child's performance at school, and what would you prefer your child's teacher did?

• Focus on and worry about Ofsted, and the admin Ofsted values?
• Or focus on and worry about your child, and how their education is getting on?

Common sense makes the answer pretty clear. But while we have a government and educational system that values top-down management from afar, over local teachers responding to local needs in creative ways (commonly called empowerment), then what Ofsted is looking for will always take priority over your child's needs.

With that in mind you'd better hope Ofsted knows what your child needs more than your child's teacher does. And you'd better hope that if teachers focus on what Ofsted calls "good practice" and fill in all the paperwork to prove that "good practice " takes place, that somehow, miraculously this will have the desired effect on your child's education.

It is simply a matter of trust - Ofsted don't trust the teachers to do it, they only believe the paper that says it was done, they call that evidence.

Personally, I would prefer to spend more time planning and actually giving quality lessons, than taking time away from that to create paper trails that make it look like I did. But for Ofsted, the audit trail is more real. To be fair, they probably want both the good teaching and the paper trail. But there is only so much time in a week, so while the paper trail is more important, guess where the teacher's attention will be?