I was glad to hear that Ofsted inspections have been halted pending retraining for inspectors (Ofsted school inspections to restart on 22 January after mental health training, 6 January), but sad to hear they will be back. They are not necessary, and will still be a regime of fear and harmful to teachers, the last people in the process to be considered.
Imagine something different: you as a teacher have mentors you respect, and best practice champions to support and encourage you. You assess yourself honestly and dare to reveal your areas for development. A framework of peer assessment and guidance by mentors and coaches is offered. This is how you improve and grow people, in an atmosphere without fear and stress.
With Ofsted, even the new improved version, you will be judged by someone you have never met. You will be drilled and pressed by the school to conform to arbitrary standards. You will live in fear and misery, preparing to be inspected for many months, if not years, and in total stress for the weeks the inspection is due. You may be bullied by your managers, who are also subject to stress. You will be focusing on paperwork rather than your students’ learning.
It’s not “fit for purpose” when dealing with human beings. Could we dare to rethink the whole miserable thing?
Paula Grierson
Norwich
• Sir Martyn Oliver’s decision to suspend inspections in order to train assessors in wellbeing is a welcome sign that Ofsted is beginning to take the negative effect of inspections on teaching staff seriously. However, it is going to take a lot more than training in wellbeing to make the changes that are needed to make the inspections fit for purpose.
The Ofsted inspection regime needs to change from its original purpose of “naming and shaming” to helping schools improve the teaching and learning of all children. Schools should be accountable to the government and parents for their pupils’ progress. This should be achievable through regular discussions and communication with schools in a way that minimises the levels of stress for teachers, with Ofsted working with schools, rather than, as has traditionally been the case, against them.
Rosemary Walsh
Retired primary school teacher, London
• The decision by the Ofsted head not to want an adversarial approach to school inspections is welcome, but can only be a beginning. A transition from archaic teaching and the emphasis on rewards and punishment is long overdue.
Teachers report shocking behaviour in schools, and children’s unhappiness and disinterest. In the 1970s, exciting new classroom methods and pupil assessment under the aegis of the reforming Schools Council sparked the flowering of truly interesting and popular children’s work.
The emphasis was on personal skills rather than simply knowledge, problem solving rather than memorisation, confidence in speaking and writing, reflection rather than speed, and group rather than individual achievement. Cooperation, taking the initiative, self-reliance and leadership were encouraged. Self-confidence was uppermost. Sadly Kenneth Baker’s “reforms”, in the Education Reform Act of 1988, put a stop to it all.
Stan Robson
Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire
• The surest way of bringing about rapid and real change in the punitive system of school inspections would be for all those members of the teaching profession, including headteachers and deputies, who have chosen to apply and undergo the training and now work as Ofsted inspectors to resign and return to their former posts full-time. Eventually, their colleagues would be grateful and might even welcome them back.
Bernard Clarke
Oxford
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