OFSTED OR BUST?

You do not have to look very far on Google or indeed (if you have time) speak to your colleagues to conclude that Ofsted needs to change radically. The National Education Union’s recent webpage headline is ‘Replace Ofsted’.  Old news? The elephant in the room? Those lucky readers who work in schools know that this organisation is going badly wrong confirmed by the recent headlines in the press and social media. How many suicides, reported heart attacks and mental breakdowns do our colleagues have to endure before we all quit? The link between the reducing teaching workforce numbers, at all levels, is interesting. Ofsted seems to think that teachers ‘are fleeing to better paid jobs’. That may be true but with the stress of teaching AND Ofsted (the elephant) it certainly does require much better renumeration and free psychotherapist sessions. School management and governors are asked to monitor ‘well-being’ of staff which is then shot to pieces when that ‘day before’ phone call comes from Ofsted. It is reported that Schools are getting so desperate that they are now monitoring Google analytics, particularly around online documents, to ascertain Ofsted’s imminent arrival. I hope this national reaction against Ofsted’s negative tactics of ‘conform or fail’ continues until Ofsted changes its framework of inspection, particularly the single grade. All indications are that Ofsted is in danger of ‘falling off the path’ if it continues to ignore public protests.