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Back off Ofsted (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 14)

Interpretation of the new framework

Inspectors have always been required to use their professional judgement and the criteria set out in the Ofsted evaluation schedule as the basis of their evaluations. According to NUT members, however, this has led to some significant inconsistencies in inspection outcomes since September. Some inspectors appear to have taken the chief inspector’s public statements about ‘raising the bar’ to mean they should be much tougher in how they interpret the official guidance.

“We gained the impression that the inspectors were inadequately trained in the new framework, and inadequate in carrying it out. Their final comment was: ‘This school would have been outstanding under the previous guidelines, but now the goalposts have been moved it’s not possible for you to be outstanding.’”

If it is up to individual inspectors to weigh up the evidence and make judgements, this will inevitably lead to inconsistencies, because of the considerable variation in both inspectors’ interpretations of the guidance and their personal attitudes to schools and staff.

The main evidence of inspectors’ lack of consistency when following the Ofsted guidance, according to members, was their approach to using lesson observations to provide evidence of the quality of teaching and learning.

Ofsted is clear that all teachers who are observed for more than 20 minutes should be offered feedback, and that judgements made through short observations (less than 20 minutes) can only relate to the part of the lesson observed, not to the quality of teaching in the lesson as a whole. Members told us this was not the case in practice:

“An inspector came into my lesson for the final five minutes to observe me, questioned one child, then gave me the feedback that my teaching was good, my activities were good, my classroom was a great learning environment for the children, who he commented I had a wonderful relationship with… How he can judge this on the final five minutes, without seeing any prior teaching or group work from the lesson I don’t know!”

“The inspectors could only evaluate the children’s progress in a small 20-minute window of a 60-minute lesson. This seemed to create a bit of a lottery – which part of the lesson were they going to come in and see?... Now a lot of weight is placed on these snippets of classroom life – enough weight for colleagues of mine (who are very good classroom practitioners) to question their future in the profession.”

Inspectors’ conduct

Although some members told us about the professional and helpful way in which inspectors had conducted themselves, these were outnumbered many times over by stories of rude, unprofessional and bullying behaviour, from which a number of members and schools were still attempting to recover:

“The lead inspector, when she arrived, announced: ‘If you fail to produce just one of the documents we require, I shall fail your school.’ When documents were produced concerning safeguarding children, the inspector commented: ‘How do I know you’ve not just made this up?’”

“To substantiate findings, leading questions were used by the inspectors. Rather than survey neutrally the feelings of students regarding behaviour, in one example a student was asked: ‘Do you not think that behaviour has got worse since the last inspection, because it seems to have done?’”

“The extremely aggressive manner in which staff were interrogated… there is no other word for it… Four members of staff broke down during interviewing when the same questions were repeated over and over…”

“One inspector began her feedback to a colleague with the words: ‘Now, you know we’re here to tell you what you’re doing wrong.’”

Next steps

The NUT has raised many of the worst breaches of the inspection guidance with Ofsted already and is compiling a dossier of the unacceptable ways in which inspections have been carried out since September 2009, which it intends to make public.

It’s not too late to contribute – just email your story, in complete confidence, to inspections@nut.org.uk or use the online form on the NUT website, www.teachers.org.uk, where you will also find a full range of guidance and support on the inspection process, including how to make a formal or informal complaint.