Lesley Collinson

8 Reasons for abolishing OFSTED or at the very least stripping it of it’s powers…. 1.Unfair judgements - as inspections last for 2 days and are done by a small group of humans (sometimes 1), the chance for unreliable judgements is high 2.OFSTED doesn’t help schools to improve - following an inspection, OFSTED doesn’t help a school or it’s staff. For example ‘this school has bad behaviour in it’ - they walk away post inspection not to be seen until the next inspection. There is no school improvement arm to OFSTED. 3.Impact or a poor grade - this links to 1 and 2, but the community impact can be as follows: a) parents don’t want to send their kids to the school (each child is worth money to the school) b) some teachers don’t want to join the school as scared off by rating c) and prob the biggest - the psychological imprint of a poor grade is something I can’t imagine having to deal with as a school leader. But what I know is - it can be devastating for an individual and their family. 4.Pay and budgets - HMI pay is 72,000 a year, day inspection pay is £330. OFSTED budget is £150 million a year. Bonuses are awarded to OFSTED senior leaders usually between 5000 and 20000. OFSTED haven’t disclosed what these bonuses are for. In a school funding crisis, where teachers and TAs are having to battle for relatively small increases, surely this is wrong. 5.Impact of OFSTED pressure - it won’t take you long to find examples of leaders needing healthcare as a result of the pressure of upcoming inspection. Grades can be career defining but, as previously mentioned, are not reliable. The lottery of ‘who you get through the door’ and ‘what their lines of enquiry might be’ causes uncertainty, doubt and stress. 6.‘Doing it for OFSTED’ - OFSTED say no one should do anything for them which is easy for them to say when their own careers don’t rest on OFSTEDs judgements. Schools feel they need to ‘do’ all the time - new policies, new protocols, to ‘keep up’ with other schools and OFSTED themselves. The competition culture OFSTED inspires is damaging. 7.There are alternatives - the grading system doesn’t have to exist, neither does the OFSTED inspection system. Other countries do things very differently - take Italy, Ireland, Finland and Germany as just a few examples very close to home. It can’t possibly be argued that the English education system is better off than any of these by employing the system it does. 8.There is no evidence everything would fall apart without OFSTED - what’s the harm in giving it a try for a year or two? What’s the harm in a 5 year experiment - no OFSTED gradings whatsoever for 5 years and then survey schools, parents and children to find out about what’s changed for them positive or negative?