Ofsted!

Beyond Good

In this episode Matt and Femi discuss Ofsted. What is on offer is not a position on Ofsted, it is simply a balanced discussion limited to the perspective of class teachers and middle leaders. There is no subject-specificity to this one, so hopefully educators of all stripes will find this useful.

The discussion took in some of the following features of the landscape:

Ofsted preparation and the body of knowledge and skills accrued through daily effort over years versus cramming ‘the night before’. The incremental improvements on paper to the school inspection framework and Ofsted attempts to make that less onerous and to judge whether what you are doing is effective as opposed to telling you what we want to see. The Legacy of snake-oil salesmen cashing in on fear of Ofsted and trying to sell ‘the answers’. Business as normal vs putting on a show and advice for a teacher who was anxious about their classes during the inspection.

Differing stakes and impacts on teachers, middle leaders, senior leaders and heads. Key features of the current inspection framework, the balance of weighting that inspectors give between ‘having your finger on the pulse’ versus the actual quality of outcomes for children.

Pre-inspection planning and workload, and paperwork for inspections such as lesson context sheets. Being honest with inspectors about strengths and weaknesses. Strategies schools use to prepare staff: what’s good and what’s not. Interacting with inspectors – the importance of details like the reception area, staff and the state of the toilets. Briefing students about the inspection, or not. Typicality, and other topics.