Michael Gove’s and Sir Michael Wilshaw’s plans to use Ofsted to drive up standards in schools have been much vaunted in the press recently.
Hit squads of inspectors started arriving in schools in January to force the ‘satisfactory’ schools into special measures and to force schools to rapidly rid themselves of their ‘satisfactory’ teachers. The fact that ‘satisfactory’ is a categorisation used for all qualities of service about which there is no cause for concern and which often includes highly regarded practices which don’t tick the boxes Ofsted has defined for higher classifications (especially in teaching) does not concern them.
But it is concerning the teachers and communities who are suddenly finding their schools facing special measures despite them being well run. Special measures is a brutal process which is deemed to be successful and constructive by…….Ofsted. Respected and experienced staff who go through it and are find it more damaging than constructive are rarely heard.
But not only is Gove and Wilshaw’s behaviour deeply alienating for teachers, it is also illegal under the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act (2006) to which Ofsted became obliged in October 2009 (see part 1A point 17), as I pointed out to Ofsted last July and regarding which I received no response when I asked Graham Stuart to query this with Michael Gove in January.
Last Wednesday, one of the first schools to be put into special measures under the new regime successfully challenged Ofsted in the High Court in London. Furness Academy had Ofsted’s judgement of their performance as being unsatisfactory overturned. Mr Justice Collins concluded that although maths results did not reach nationally expected levels Ofsted must issue a covering letter with the report, “making it explicitly clear that but for Maths the Academy would have been judged to be satisfactory”.
This judgement means that Ofsted will now be subjected to a Judicial Review regarding its practice which should require it to demonstrate that its future practice will be ‘proportionate and targeted only at cases where action is needed’ as the law demands. Given the number of similar cases of inspectors descending into schools intent on creating the evidence they need to force those schools into special measures I have heard of this year it is likely other such judgements will follow in which case an Independent Commission will be convened. An Independent Commission would look not only at the wording of the law but also at the interpretations of it by our other regulators who take seriously their duty to protect the organisations they inspect from counterproductive intervention by themselves or politicians in accordance with Hampton Principles (page 2 point 9) which the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act (2006) was designed to enforce.
I would strongly advise the Lib Dems to lead the way in demanding an Independent Commission to review Ofsted’s behaviour. Otherwise they will be seen to be endorsing Gove and Wilshaw’s ignorant and illegal bullying of schools.
* Rebecca Hanson is a teacher, a lecturer in education, an education adviser and a member of the LDEA committee. She was the Liberal Democrat candidate in the Copeland by-election in 2017.
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44 Comments
School Inspection is subject to the quantum process, whereby the act of observing something changes its state.
There are some big flaws in the current system:
– a 4 rather than 5 step rating which makes it impossible to fit school performance to a normal distribution
– no advance notice of inspections
– insistence on referring to pupils as “students”
According to the OECD ‘PISA’ study UK secondary school pupils went from 7th in reading skills in 2000 to 25th in 2009 and from 8th to 28th in Maths.
That should be of rather more concern to the author than schools wasting public money suing Ofsted.
43 schools took part in PISA 2000, 65 in 2009. Our performance didn’t change very much.
I am familiar with all sorts of craziness, but are you sure that the inspectors “force the ‘SATISFACTORY’ schools into special measures and … force schools to … rid themselves of … ‘SATISFACTORY’ teachers”? I have looked up the word in the dictionary and cannot make head or tail of what is being said.
Hello Simon,
Much analysis has been done on the PISA results and constructive and coherent suggestions have been made as to how these issues can be addressed. I have not heard any commentator suggesting that forcing all the schools with below average headline stats into special measures is one of those coherent suggestions. Special measures forces schools to focus on key short term exam results rather than on improving their longer term teaching strategies, which is what’s needed for us to learn to use the kind of teaching methods which are being used so successfully in the Pacific Rim. I’ve written more on this in my blog starting with this entry: http://mathseducationandallthat.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/how-do-chinese-do-it-introduction.html
I completely agree with you that schools should not be wasting money taking Ofsted to court. In fact most are not doing so because they simply don’t have the resources. So I’ve written this morning to a local Labour MP to suggest that he raises a question in the house regarding the Judicial Review Ofsted is now subject to due to its illegally placing schools in special measures to ask that the process of special measures be suspended (in all cases for school where there is a clear and coherent objection from staff and leadership) pending the outcome of the Judicial Review to protect schools in his constituency from having to incur this cost. However I do this with mixed feeling because if there are several successful calls for Judicial Review an Independent Commission would need to be set up to examine the way other Inspectors and Regulators interpret the law and this would clearly lead to the creation of a much more effective and less counter-productive Ofsted.
Richard – yes, it is crazy; but it has been decided that ‘satisfactory’ is not good enough (though that is actually what it means to most of us). I have lived through about six Ofsted inspections; none of them told us anything we didn’t know already, all were expensive (in cash terms and stress).
Hi Richard Dean,
Here is one of many articles about what’s going on:
http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2012/01/ofsted-to-end-satisfactory-rating-for-schools/
This is direct contradiction to all the standard protocols of inspection and regulation which say that intervention is only legally allowed where there is a specific cause for concern and satisfactory is a grading which states that there is no cause for concern. You are quite right to be confused. Everybody else is too.
In fact in teaching many highly effective and well respected varieties of teaching (especially those that start from the child and subordinate teaching to learning) are regularly graded ‘satisfactory’ by external inspectors because they don’t tick the boxes on their sheets for higher categorisation. This has not been a major problem before as a satisfactory grading prevents intervention under the law (as it is interpreted by other inspectors and regulators) and it used to prevent intervention by Ofsted.
“Hit squads of inspectors started arriving in schools in January to force the ‘satisfactory’ schools into special measures and to force schools to rapidly rid themselves of their ‘satisfactory’ teachers.”
I’m sorry, Rebecca, Richard Dean queried that and I couldn’t see how your response explained the above statement of yours. In fact the article referred to specifically says “Any school in this category will have to improve within a three-year period or be subject to special measures.” So Inspectors might be coming back in 2015 to do what you claim, but I can’t see how they have “started arriving in schools in January to force the ‘satisfactory’ schools into special measures”.
As a School Governor for over 25 years I welcome the proposal to change the description of a grading which lies 3rd on a scale of 4 from “satisfactory” to “requires improvement”. If existing school management had failed to secure “improvement” after three years I can see the logic of considering Special Measures.
Hello Simon Shaw
I am aware that there are many Lib Dems who think that putting schools who are judged to be satisfactory into special measures is a good idea and there are many who think that the Ofsted gradings introduced this January are reliable and objective. Both assumptions are natural however neither assumption is, in practice, valid or true.
What is actually happening is that schools which are being well run and have failed to achieve a key performance indicator (for valid reasons which they are being addressed) are being visited by teams of inspectors who have no intention of properly inspecting the schools but are instead there to find the evidence they need to fail it and put it into special measures. The move towards making ‘satisfactory’ ‘unsatisfactory’ will simply remove their need to generate evidence that the school is unsatisfactory.
It is essential that Lib Dems who share your beliefs go back to their routes and ask those who they respect who are actually teaching and running schools what is going on.
Special measures is a process which causes schools to lose teachers and students dramatically constricting what they can offer. Middle and senior management are rapidly forced out but are proving harder and harder to replace. The implications of the loss of students and the costs of recruiting and relocating experienced staff to fill the gaps created when staff are forced out or collapse with stress for school budgets are very severe and are deeply counterproductive. Special measures is a tool which has traditionally been used for schools which are severely failing and it is not suitable for schools which have some issues which they are coherently addressing.
You many not think it is not now being applied to such schools but, as I said, it is essential that you spend time talking to people who are actually working in schools at present about their experiences of inspection under the 2012 criteria before you express your support for the current behaviour of Ofsted.
Bullying – which is what the Gove approach amounts to – is NEVER a good management strategy though it is one commonly employed by weak managers who haven’t a clue about what they are doing but are under pressure to get results.
And I have to say I really doubt that all the inspectors will get it right. If they are so good why aren’t they teaching? A friend of mine used to teach maths but, as he says himself, in his own idiosyncratic way. As a new teacher and after two successful years in the school but teaching only to GCSE he was given the B set for A level and then promised a pay increase. Then the inspector arrived, was very rude about his unconventional approach and told the head he should rescind the promised increment which – to his eternal shame – he did. Then the results came in. The B set almost all got the top grade handsomely beating the A set. The embarrassed head flip flopped some more but my friend resigned and left the profession.
Sure that is only one random anecdote but I would put money on the fact that Gove’s sausage machine will never work.
Thank you for this Liberal Eye.
It is an ongoing problem that the most experienced and able teachers who used subtle teaching methodologies are frequently underrated by inspectors who come in, watch them for 30 minutes, don’t talk to them and often have little relevant teaching experience.
Many of our best teachers teach in ways which do not demonstrate all children making good progress every 30 minutes to someone who does not talk to the them and ask them what they are actually doing. I and many I know have experimented with teaching in the same way in different inspections and have learned to our horror that the judgement given bears little relation what we are actually doing and relate instead to the experience of the inspector and the predetermined outcome of the inspection unless we stick to special ‘Ofsted’ lessons.
@Rebecca Hanson
“I am aware that there are many Lib Dems who think that putting schools who are judged to be satisfactory into special measures is a good idea and there are many who think that the Ofsted gradings introduced this January are reliable and objective. Both assumptions are natural however neither assumption is, in practice, valid or true.”
I genuinely still don’t follow you, Rebecca.
1. I’m not aware of any proposal to put “schools who are judged to be satisfactory into special measures.”
2. There appears to be a proposal that could mean that a school graded as “requires improvement” could be placed in Special Measures if there was no or insufficient improvement within a three-year period. This seems to me to be something completely different, or am I misunderstanding?
3. You claim that Ofsted gradings introduced this January are invalid. Why? Are they any more or less valid than previously?
4. You say that there is a move towards making ‘satisfactory’ into ‘unsatisfactory’ I thought the new grading was “requires improvement”. Surely that is something different?
Maybe schools should be resourced and structured to do more internal quality control and we should rely less on special measures
Rebecca writes that “It is essential that Lib Dems who share your beliefs go back to their routes and ask those who they respect who are actually teaching and running schools what is going on.”
I did just that, and the head I respect said that special measures was the best thing that ever happened to the quality of education in his school. He said it gave him a lot more authority, a lot more outside assistance, and it made a lot of teachers realise that it was not acceptable for kids in their school to do badly just because their parents were poor, and kids in that school had always done badly. His school is now out of special measures, and those children’s life changes have been transformed.
Simon Shaw’s comments are spot on.
TL – valid points, which also have to be backed up with effective sanctions to remove disruptive pupils.
For Simon Shaw:
3. You claim that Ofsted gradings introduced this January are invalid. Why? Are they any more or less valid than previously?
I am claiming that significant elements of Ofsted’s behaviour have been illegal since October 2009, since it became obligated to the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act (2006). There has always been substantial variability in the quality of inspections and interventions. If they are performed by very able people who deeply understand the contexts in which they are working they have been, on balance, positive. However over time there seem to be less good inspectors and more box tickers. In my early days in teaching the top Ofsted inspectors in their specialist fields in education were people who could command everyone’s respect in major sessions at conferences. They were people who could have been leaders in education or academics of education or who could have held senior roles in may areas of education. That seemed to stop 5-10 years ago and there seemed to be fewer and fewer inspectors who could personally command the respect of those they were regulating and when this happened they seemed to slip further and further into box ticking rather than dialogue. I’m part of many very active networks in education (in real life as well as online) and through them I am hearing very worrying stories of a substantially negative shift in the behaviour of and the implications of Ofsted since the new 2012 criteria were adopted in January.
It’s difficult to get precise information as there is a significant time-lag between the inspection and a report being published. Furness Academy were on of the first schools through under the new criteria and the Judicial Review of Ofsted they have prompted has only just been announced. I am hearing of many other schools experiencing similar issues which I cannot yet write about as they are still in the time space between deeply disturbing inspections and reports being published. Such issues have always existed but they now seem to be more serious and more prolific.
As I said before, the purpose of my post is not that Lib Dems should be convinced by my account alone but that they should be made aware of what I consider to be very serious issues which are arising on which they will soon be required to comment and that I am advising them to go and talk to those who they respect in education who are experiencing these dynamics so that when they are called to speak they say intelligent things. It is my opinion that if they endorse the view that this is a good thing for education they will be seen to be very seriously out of touch with those who are working in education.
2. There appears to be a proposal that could mean that a school graded as “requires improvement” could be placed in Special Measures if there was no or insufficient improvement within a three-year period. This seems to me to be something completely different, or am I misunderstanding?
I’m hearing various details of the specific details here but they seem to be along the lines that if a school has been graded satisfactory twice in the past then if it is not graded ‘good’ by the next inspection it is placed in special measures. I’m also hearing that inspectors are turning up at schools with an agenda to create unsatisfactory gradings no matter what they actually see and that positive evidence is being ignored. The new criteria are so subjective this is quite easy to do.
4. You say that there is a move towards making ‘satisfactory’ into ‘unsatisfactory’ I thought the new grading was “requires improvement”. Surely that is something different?
It’s all a big mess Simon. Under inspection law judgements should be that something either created a ’cause for protection’ (in which case there should be specific intervention to fix it) or it doesn’t in which case there should be no intervention. There seems to be all sorts of language floating around which is being used by people like Sir Michael Wilshaw to describe what they think should happen but he and others using it clearly have no understanding of the processes and best practice surrounding inspection and regulation.
1. I’m not aware of any proposal to put “schools who are judged to be satisfactory into special measures.”
The proposal is that schools which are currently judged to be satisfactory (no cause for protection) should be judged to be ‘requiring improvement’. A regulator has no legal right to force intervention where there is no ’cause for protection’. The reasons why they do not have this right is that to give them this right required the to create categories of quality of provision. The Hampton Review on which the law is based deemed this unacceptable because it has been shown in practice firstly to militate against healthy diversity and innovation and secondly to create inspection environment where those being inspected show the regulator the practice which is in their pre-defined categories instead of showing them what they actually do.
As with the health bill, what’s being proposed seems to be being implemented before it becomes policy. But what’s being proposed is completely incoherent so what’s now being done is also an incoherent mess.
oops! back to roots not back to routes! 🙂
Tim – as I’ve said before – where the is genuinely very substantial failure in schools Special Measures, implemented by very able people, can lead to positive outcomes.
Please be reassured that I am not remotely suggesting that Ofsted be abolished.
I am only recommending that Ofsted be obliged to explicitly adopt the best practice for inspectors and regulators to follow in their duties to as defined by Hampton in 2005 and to which they became obliged by law in October 2009.
1. protect consumers and the public against unacceptable practice
2. drive quality improvement and
3. report to government regarding what is happening in the area they regulate.
These standards are there both to improve the quality of what regulators do and to protect organisation from unnecessarily counterproductive or narrow intervention by regulators.
Alastair,
Indeed, other regulators require organisations to have details explicit systems of internal and external communication and consultation with substantial scope and to have professionally recognised systems of continuous quality improvement. Not to have any of these things properly in place would be a ’cause for protection’ and would lead to an intervention designed to rectify that issue.
Tabman.
Indeed – it is essential schools have the power to remove disruptive students from class. Yet during special measures the processes for removing disruptive students from class can be shut down as schools are required to hit targets for student inclusion in lessons.
Simon Shaw – I notice you live in Birkdale so I’m guessing you may well know HMIs who work at the HSE at Bootle? If you’d like to explore the law and best practice in inspection and regulation you might find they are able to help you make sense of it.
Reconciling the law and best practice with anything coming from Ofsted at the minute will remain difficult as the two are substantially incompatible.
I cannot believe that teachers’s performance is judged on a 30 minute inspection in a classroom. Surely we are not in the Victorian age? Surely the basic question is something like how well the pupils learn, and I guess this is measured by their performance in exams? I imagine we are more sophisticated than in the 3rd world …?
I taught at a 3rd world university where exam results were used as part of the assessment of a lecturer’s performance – some student failures were expected but a 25% failure rate was taken to indicate a fault of the lecturer rather than the students. Lecturers had all sorts of ways to argue agaisnt it, but generally recognized some truth in it.
Rebecca, yes I do live in and represent Birkdale.
Although Birkdale is close to the HSE at Bootle, it is (more pertinently) the home to Birkdale High School. To quote our local newspaper from 7 February2012
Birkdale High in special measures after damning Ofsted report
SOUTHPORT’S first academy, which only converted in August, has gone in to special measures after an Ofsted inspection found major inadequacies.
A damning report published yesterday criticised the teaching, behaviour and management at Birkdale High school, ruling it “inadequate”. …….
http://www.southportvisiter.co.uk/southport-news/southport-southport-news/2012/02/07/birkdale-high-in-special-measures-after-damning-ofsted-report-101022-30275221/
The inspectors visited Birkdale High on December 12 and 13, 2011, according to the report quoted by Simon Shaw, so this presumably is not what Rebecca’s article is about – which is Gove’s inspectors starting January 2012.
It would certainly be interesting to know more of Birkdale . The areas in which it was ruled inadequate look mostly difficult to assess. Did all this collapse really happen in the few months since August last year, when the school was “the best performing [school] in the town based on last year’s GCSE results”? How hard is it to change into academy?
While there may be some possible sources of political motovations in Salford, It seems difficult to believe Rebecca’s claim that “inspectors are turning up at schools with an agenda to create unsatisfactory gradings no matter what they actually see “. I seem to recognize here the claims of those under-performers who simply don’t want to change.
Richard Dean your final suggestion is a very easy one to make and a difficult one to disprove. Which is why it is essential people go and ask teachers and school leaders they respect and trust about what’s actually going on.
Right – let’s start to look at Birkdale High.
The Ofsted report categorised both the Head and the Governing Body as being unsatisfactory.
The head is disappointed and surprised by the judgements. He and the governors will be staying on. The head wrote: “The inspector paints a picture of the school and its pupils which regular visitors, staff, governors, parents and the community will have great difficulty in recognising.” The school already seems to have robust improvement processes in place.
This sounds like it might have been a school which have been visited by the kind of team of inspectors I’m talking about. In order to diagnose what’s going on you need to talk to teachers there who you really respect. Ask them whether the inspectors were credible inspectors or whether they came across as not being capable of actually understanding what was going on at the school. There are a lot of inspectors out there with little or no experience of actually working in schools in tough areas so they don’t understand what good teaching is in such schools. It is the nature of schools that there are always people in them and in the community around them who will criticise them. Until you’ve raised children it’s difficult to understand how any failings in their education can get to you and make you very angry with their school. Did these inspectors really have the experience to understand the difference between ‘normal noise’ and ‘systemic problems’? Did the exploit and exacerbate ‘normal noise’ to justify a pre-determined conclusion. Go and ask those teacher Simon and listen to what they say. Do also feel free to find me on linkedin.com and link if you want to chat going forward. I’m easy to find although I wasn’t wearing glasses and had longer hair in that photo.
I’ll also try to continue to check here and respond to any comments but I’m new to Libdem Voice so I don’t know how well that will work.
The other thing which puzzles me is that that you seem to be saying that this school is not in special measures despite this report. Is this true? If so I’d be very interested to hear what’s going on instead.
Rebecca. Are you asking us to make a judgment between parties – inspectors versus teachers – by pre-judging that one side, the teachers, knows what is “actually” going on? That would not sound right to me.
@rebecca “Right – let’s start to look at Birkdale High.
The Ofsted report categorised both the Head and the Governing Body as being unsatisfactory.
The head is disappointed and surprised by the judgements. He and the governors will be staying on. The head wrote: “The inspector paints a picture of the school and its pupils which regular visitors, staff, governors, parents and the community will have great difficulty in recognising.” The school already seems to have robust improvement processes in place.”
Hm , tough choice who do we believe the Head rr the inspectors. Know which one I would go for.
The last time I had an Ofsted inspection, I was teaching in the nursery class. The inspector who was responsible for assessing my performance came in, and her first comment was: ‘Oh my goodness, aren’t they little!’ I explained that we always put the littlest ones in the nursery … needless to say, I wasn’t thrilled to be assessed by someone who plainly had no experience of young children. On another occasion, I was slated for deviating from a planned maths lesson; I spotted that some children hadn’t grasped the point of the previous lesson, so revisited it. These kids went on to achieve above the national average in their SATs, in a socially/economically deprived area.
Richard – are you suggesting there is no situation in which experienced and respected teachers may have a better perception of what is going on in their school than inspectors? None at all? No matter what the qualifications and abilities of the inspectors and no matter how they behave in schools?
Simon McGrath – I do understand that people are likely to respect the judgement of the inspectors and ignore the possibility that there may be problems with the way they are behaving. That’s a natural and human thing to do. Therefore it is essential Lib Dems are actively aware that there are serious concerns being actively and credibly discussed throughout the education community.
I was horrified last year to find Ofsted seriously and systematically misrepresenting their legal obligations and mandate last year. You wouldn’t expect that to happen. But it did happen. You would assume I was mistaken or driving some inappropriate agenda in suggesting this happened. But neither suggestion is true: http://mathseducationandallthat.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/ofsted-part-2-journey-to-heart-of.html
Rebecca – No. I am suggesting in this type of situation that observers need to find ways to assess what is going on without starting by assuming that one particular group of participants is in the right.
As you have mentioned, it is natural to start by assuming that the inspectors are right, particularly since the nature of their task will inevitably bring them into dispute with teachers sometimes. Indeed, for this very reason, if we have to choose between judging inspectors as inxcorrect or judging teachers as incorrect, we need methods of judging that do not start by assuming the result of the judgment.
Of course I appreciate that it is sometimes difficult to be heard.
Sid – Neither of your two examples are as obvious as you seem to thnk they are.
Saying “aren’t they little” doesn’t indicate incompetence – there are plenty of other explanations and one would be that the inspector was pointing out that you didn’t need to be so rough with them! Of course I have no idea of the situation, but perhaps this example might make you think how differently different people can perceive events.
For your maths lesson, you seem to have deliberately held back part of the class in order to bring another part up to speed – an alternative would have been to bring them up to speed outside of that class, so the choice you made would not necessarily be judged to have been the correct one by every observer.
As it happens I have deviated many times from lesson plans, and for the same reason, and it is always good for the other part of the class to revise, so I do understand your point. But I wonder if you understand mine?
“Rebecca – No. I am suggesting in this type of situation that observers need to find ways to assess what is going on without starting by assuming that one particular group of participants is in the right.”
Agreed. I’m hearing more and more frequent reports of teams of inspectors visiting schools with predetermined judgements and who then work to generate the inspection reports they need to justify those predetermined judgements. These teams clearly do not possess the skills to which you refer.
Rebecca – I don’t think you are understanding me at all!
The please try to explain again Richard because I do want to understand your point. I may struggle to respond now before tomorrow evening but I will respond. Or you can get me through my blogs or linkedin.com.
Rebecca. Look at what you have written: “I’m hearing [something]. These teams clearly …” But you are not exercising any kind of judgment at all, you are simply taking what you are hearing as gospel.
Just think …. there are certainly some teachers who under-perform. What will they say? Why, they will say that the inspectors have pre-judged them! You are observing a situation – you are an observer of a situation in which some people tell you the inspectors are doing wrong. As an observer, you need ways of finding the truth that do not involve simply assuming that one particular side is telling it.
I am a different obsever. I am not observing the situation that you are observing. I am observing you. I am observing the way that you observe a situation. I am seeing someone who does not have independent criteria by which to make judgments. On this basis, I conclude that I cannot rely on your judgments.
I am just an example of a member of the public. As such, if you want to convince me of your case, and if you want me to support you, you need to show me that you yourself are not make pre-judgments. I’m not talking here of what you are told, I’m talking of the way you approach the task of assessing whether what you are told is reliable.
I hope this helps explain what I mean, it is not meant as any kind of personal criticism. Quite apart from our own involvement, people see an event and they need ways to understand and judge it that do not bstart by assuming one side is right – or at least allow room for the possibility that the side that they assume is right might noit be so. This ways need to be independent of trust, in my view.
Anyway, thus is making my head hurt! 🙂 so I am going away for a while to rest!
Hello Richard,
I’ve been ‘hearing things’ since I started out as a teacher in 1998. I’ve heard them from the best teachers who have inspired me within my career always to strive to be the best teacher I was capable of being. They were dark stories of the very damaging consequences of the process of special measures for those member of staff with extremely well developed skills in transforming the life outcomes of our most challenging students. The teachers use skills which could be approximately described as being a mixture of the most respected constructivist teaching methods and ‘parenting skills’. These teachers and leaders in education were swept aside in the clearance of ‘failing teacher’ and there was this circular logic which seemed always to prove that because they’d been swept aside therefore they must have been failing teachers which, close up, was very obviously not true – not by any criteria.
Yet still, when I went to be head of maths at a school in special measures, I was confident that the process would be constructive because our HMI was a top respected inspector in mathematics education. I did everything I personally could do to engage positively with the process of special measures but, in the end, like so many teachers I gave in and ended up engaging with the charade of how the insights from Ofsted and the actions taken as a consequences of them had been constructive and had help us transform results at the school just to do whatever it took to get us out of special measures. As Head of Maths the four externally examined year group I was responsible for all surpassed their toughest targets despite, not because of, the process of special measures. To have started to discuss the truth of the horrific consequences of that process on staff and students would only have complicated things and, as we were all way past breaking point, would have involved a reserve of energy none of us had. Now you may accuse me of being unable to objectively assess the wider picture because of my own negative experiences by please hold off from making that accusation because it is not valid.
I am part of many long established person to person networks in education. I found that within these networks people would talk to me about their experiences in special measures and that my own experiences were not unusual. They were the norm – what varied were the positive benefits special measures brought – which we took time to explore too. These are greatest when very good people are brought in as has happened in some cases. However there are also cases where this is perceived to have happened while in fact the people brought in have not been good – it’s just been in everyone’s interests to pretend they are in order to get out of special measures. This is why the sudden increase in schools going into special measures is so toxic – we get all the bad effects but the supply of very gifted people who can come and have a positive impact has dwindled. In an average school the best people to manage it are the people already in place because they know it and they know the community and they have many important, established relationships.
It is through these same networks that I have become aware of the sudden increase in the rate of profoundly ignorant and damning inspections. I am prepared to talk to people directly to explain far more about the details of my networks and influences but I can’t do this in public as, a week after I first wrote on the internet suggestion it was necessary to improve Ofsted, I became subject to extreme cyberharassment which translated into real life campaigns where people were writing to organisations I was associated with or worked for systematically spreading lies about me to try and discredit me and I started to receive word that their being associated with me was threatening their funding.
There are many reasons why people working on the front line of education are unable to speak out about what is actually going on. This is why it is absolutely essential that Lib Dems go back to their roots and ask the teachers and schools leaders who command the respect of the community they serve what is actually going on.
How is this degree of central, national interference in schools and central setting of standards and methods acceptable to Liberals? Let a thousand flowers bloom, provided they’re all the same colour.
@Simon. Every gardener knows there are good ways and bad ways to tend flowers. In the same way, there are good ways and bad ways of ttrying to school children. Somewhere there is a school of gardening that knows much of what those ways are, and it makes sense to use that school’s knowledge in designing the care schemes uses in gardens nationwide – while allowing that other approaches can also be successful!
@Rebecca. I’m sure that special measures are tough. Things like ” ….cyberharassment … people …. systematically spreading lies … was threatening their funding” should not happen, of course, but such statements also tend to look a little paranoid! Good luck!
Of course they do Richard. So I would not make them without robust evidence which I am prepared to share.
If you have any concerns that I’m not telling the truth please do get in touch. Should you choose to use my comment to dismiss my credibility without doing so I’m afraid that’s indicitive if your character, not mine.
You’re a very complicated person Rebecca! 🙂 My character is very bad, and irredemable at my advanced age. Paranoia is my middle name, and the struggle to distinguigh it from reality is familiar. It’s even right sometimes!
Here’s one of my attempts to distinguish the two Richard. A sideways topic but one I find easier to get my head round than English education at present:
http://cyberrhetoricbyrebeccahanson.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/how-to-manage-agenda-of-form-if-you.html :-/
I do have emails with copies of most of the posts from that discussion. Unlike the hundreds of my posts that were systematically deleted form the TES forum.
@Rebecca – Google “deep root drive eroor”. There’s nothing on that exact topic, but there is something on deep file paths. All it means is that you have too many subdirectories of subdirectories of subdirectories … of … etc! I’m sure it’s nasty, and shouldn’t happen), but I find it difficult to believe that it is Israel’s fault. Maybe your friend offerred an explanation designed to fit your expectations, rather than one based on objective fact?
He said that if his suspicions were correct then others who made contributions to the discussion which were a threat to the managed agenda would have been targeted in a similar way. I contacted the other person who had done this, who was someone I had never met before to find that his computer had suffered very severe problems and he’d been unable to get it going again at pretty much the same time mine went down. He’d had to spend $800 getting it repaired. He was in the USA. If you want to find me on linked.com I could introduce you to him if you want to check. Neither us have experienced anything similar either before then or since.
Here’s some more stuff to fuel your paranoid instincts…. it’s only the stuff after 3rd December in the comments that are relevant. Plenty here to convince you I’m a total nutter should you wish to believe I am.
http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2011/11/academy-conversions-slowing-down/
Somewhere I have the correspondence between myself, my MP and the administrator of the Ofsted Enquiry last January where we got Graham Stuart MP (Chair of the Education Select Committee) to watch the deletions from the TES forum in real time. Suffice to say they didn’t relate to me breaching T&C but they did relate to my attempts to discuss Ofsted, Gove’s policies and the horrors of the destruction of the normal processes of consultation in the early days of this government. There were also systematic lies being posted about me on that forum and spread between participants by private message. TLS have threatened to hit me with legal action if I write about what was happening on their forum which is a battle I’d rather not have to fight but on the other hand it’s really hard to conceal and I don’t see why I should.
These are the standards I try to apply in the way I contribute to forums by the way. I don’t always manage it but I do try:
http://cyberrhetoricbyrebeccahanson.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/mozilla-festival-notes-on-cyberrhetoric.html
Ofsted have been in touch today to assure me that the BBC were not correct in reporting that Ofsted will now be subject to Judicial Review as a result of this case.
Given what’s going on it would surprise me greatly if they were not soon.