When I was working, I declined to work for Ofsted, even at the time when LA staff were rushing into inspection like Gadarene swine. Very like Gadarene swine.
Authority causes me problems, and authority built on such shaky foundations as Ofsted always was doubly so.
The ragtag collection of inspectors, armed with the Framework for Inspection, work on the premise that judging schools was scientific, that if you follow the framework all will be well.
The Emperor's New Clothes come to mind, and all has not been well.
Based on this intellectually squalid and distinctly dishonest premise, hundreds of
schools have been named and shamed down the twenty-odd years of Ofsted's
existence, careers have been wrecked, and there have even been
occasional suicides.
The truth is now, as it always was, that two teams of inspectors will have very different views about the same thing, and will draw different conclusions from the same evidence.
A particular bugbear for me was Ofsted's insistence that inspectors could judge progress made by pupils in a single lesson.
It's bullshit.
We have had one or two outstanding Chief Inspectors, where "outstanding" means "almost human". They tended to be short stay, like car parks. The ones that stood the course have tended to be educational Taliban, extremists with an idee fixe. They are often one-trick ponies, with a small range of one-size-fits-all ideas.
It is very rare to feel sorry that a Chief Inspector is leaving.
And Sir Michael Wilshaw is leaving, probably to a vast and heartfelt collective sigh of relief from teachers everywhere.
It is reported that his next project is at Buckingham University, developing a scheme to fast-track graduates to headship in two years. Oh dear. Oh dear.
If you don't believe me, well, take a look at this excellent piece in the Guardian by Andrew Morrish, himself a former inspector. It's a wonderfully succinct critique of what is wrong with Ofsted. Or rather, of some of what is wrong with Ofsted. To deal with everything this is wrong with Ofsted would take several complete issues of the Guardian. There would not even be room for cartoons. Mind you, if Ofsted filled the pages, there would be plenty to laugh at.
Schools, and the people who work so hard in them, deserve better than Ofsted. They really do. They deserve better. And now.
OMG fast track graduates into headship? Two years training? It takes years of experience to get to know the school, it's community and it's needs. The ones who come up with these ideas obviously do not know anything about schools nor the complexities in which they operate. How many of these fast trackies will actually survive, the test will tell.
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