We got Ofsted’ed at work last term. ARRRRGGGGGHHH That’s better!! 

It’s been horrible not being able to blog about the events given my “Blogging Tourettes” … you won’t believe how therapeutic it is to be able to mention it.

Before I go on I should make it clear that this, and the next couple of posts about the experience are being written from my perspective but I hope to ensure that they are factual about the process. The outcome is as important as the Ofsted experience because for me, it links to the pressure of accountability on schools and how this feeds down at classroom level to teachers…it’s also got me wondering what can be done to share concrete strategies both “upwards” and “downwards” as to what constitutes best practice in maths. I’ve been wondering to what extent influencing Maths pedagogy can be done in isolation by the Maths Hubs/NCETM and what can be done to help the dissemination. I’m digressing again but promise to come back to that last comment at some point.

Let’s give you some context.

We (Seager and I) moved to this school in September 2014.

The school was judged by Ofsted back in 2012 as “satisfactory” (3) and then in 2013 it was inspected again and deemed to be “requires improvement” (3). As a school that had already converted into an academy getting another “3” would have probably meant being forced into an academy chain. There have been considerable changes over this time at all levels of the staffing structure – least of all being a new Head teacher, who took on the position permanently around the time of the second “3” judgement. Along with his Deputy, the SLT, governing body and staff he had a vision for where this school should be. I live in the catchment area and locally it has been considered by lots of people as the third choice in the town for many, many years and together with declining birth rates the numbers on roll (and subsequently the budget!) fell – this was exacerbated when the other schools in the town took on extra form entries a few years ago.

Well no one said it was going to be easy and the whole team are obviously up for the challenge. As the phrase goes …. “in for a penny … in for a pound”.

What was certain is that getting another RI judgement wasn’t going to be an option. We’d had an amazing year in 14/15 … no seriously amazing, the books balanced and now we wanted to get on with the job of repeating the results but there was one more thing to get out-of-the-way. Ofsted. We knew we were due a visit as the last full inspection was two years ago – we certainly weren’t putting on a show or doing anything that we wouldn’t be doing anyway but for the first 4 or 5 weeks of the academic year Wednesday would arrive and it was almost as if the whole academy felt slightly let down that we hadn’t had the call yet.

In good fashion, we relaxed and got on with it. Then … Tuesday October 20^th, Paul (our HT) was chatting in my room and his mobile phone went off. He answered the call and all we heard was “on my way” and as he left he turned to myself and Seager and said “it’s going to be a busy couple of days” and he was off. Well you can imagine what was going through our minds … we looked at each other and both said “Ofsted?”

Yep .. it was THE CALL. The protocols kicked in – no one ran around screaming “don’t panic Mr Mainwaring” – meetings were held, students, staff, parents and governors were all informed. Some staff stayed later than usual, pizza was provided I believe, and staff were turfed out at respectable time to get a decent night’s sleep. We were ready for this.

Me? I came home and planned lessons as normal. It was “shit or bust” and if they didn’t like what they saw well I had nothing else to give. I don’t mean that in an antagonistic way AT ALL – I suppose I mean it in the way that if what I was doing wasn’t good enough then I was at a loss as to what else could be done. My husband uses Tiger Woods changing his swing as an analogy to me wanting to tweak things I do in teaching but that’s a whole other blog post. I take what I do very seriously and want to be the best I can be. Always have done. I’m not perfect and know I have my flaws and a lot to learn but I couldn’t work any harder if I tried (smarter yes, I’ll give you that, but harder no!). The self-doubt crept in and I didn’t want to be the one that let the team down.

It’s late but I’ll be back tomorrow to talk about the inspection from my perspective and I think I’ve said enough to set the scene to be able to write in more detail about the outcome…

Hang on ….

SPOILER ALERT

Read that tweet again (and yes I know my grammar and spelling is awful but it’s a tweet and I was running out of characters and was rushing!). Yep you read it right – the inspectors came to the conclusion that the school was Outstanding and this was given as the “provisional judgement” at the end of the inspection. However during the “quality assurance” process it was downgraded to good. You can read a lot from the fact (as I have done!) that it has taken until today for the report to be published given that the Ofsted School Inspection Handbook states that “in most circumstances, the final report will be published on Ofsted’s website within 19 working days”.

Don’t get me wrong – getting a “Good” judgement is brilliant …. but it has a slight bitter taste knowing that it “could have” been outstanding.

Let’s just say you couldn’t make this shiz up! Anyway I’ll be back tomorrow once I clear what I am allowed to say without getting myself or the school in trouble! I do wonder if there are any other schools out there with similar experiences … maybe time for a freedom of information request to Ofsted asking for the number of schools given provisional judgements that are different to the final report … hmmmm…

Now double checking everything I’ve written is factual before pressing “publish” … yep.

POST SCRIPT: Freedom of information request has been made … watch this space!