By Gavin Mackintosh-
A group of headteachers have launched a campaign against education Ofsted education regulator Ofsted by writing to every school in England urging them to block their employees from working as Ofsted inspectors.
Ofsted , the government’s presumed outstanding regulator of education standards in England is on the receiving end of integrated action to pressure it into bowing to the demands of a union of headteachers who are determined to see the watchdog adjust its process of inspection and consider the pressures schools face more.
As a bitter social media campaign against the watchdog reaches fever pitch, The Headteachers’ Roundtable (HTRT) #PauseOfsted campaign in a bitter complaint against Ofsted alleged high stakes inspections is bound to divide teachers and also question the legitimate efficiency of Ofsted’s work. Ofsted’s job is to make sure schools are up to scratch, and provide recommendations for improvement when they fall short.
They measure schools by the standards they observe during their very short notice visit. The high workload of teachers is not taking into account when assessing the standard of schools, what matters to Ofsted is the quality and standard of education they observe the pupils in a school to be receiving. On the face if it, this is a fair benchmark and many schools are ranked well after Ofsted’s inspections. Many of those not ranked so favourably consider the inspections process unfair for one reason or another.
The watchdog often ranks schools according to its findings on a range of outstanding, good, requires improvement, and inadequate. Disgruntled headteachers disagree with Ofsted’s methods and believe they are driving teachers away from the profession because of their high accountability standards. The Eye Of Media.Com has begun an examination of the problem, by looking at specific issues of complaint.
HTRT chair Stephen Tierney has called on all staff to make themselves unavailable for Ofsted inspections and urged leaders to agree “to no longer support applications from current employees for time away from school to carry out inspections or new applications to be Ofsted inspectors”.
Tierney also calls on school staff to share his letter with “two or three members of head teacher/governor groups across your region”, and meet with other leaders to discuss the campaign. School staff provide plenty of assistance to Ofsted’s workforce and the headteacher’s round table are hoping to pressure Ofsted to compromise and modify how it carries out inspections.
Unions are split on the radical move, with the NASUWT teaching union objecting to its stance, but winning the support of the National education Union. The NEU has now written to every school in England, to invite “all school-based, paid employees to consider standing down as Ofsted inspectors”.
Tierney says he is seeking to build a grassroots movement to reclaim professional agency and responsibility for school improvement.
“England’s current high stakes, cliff-edged accountability system has now served its purpose. Our schools require less externally-driven change, metrics and measurement-orientated education, grading and ranking and fear and anxiety which are damaging our school communities. We believe the accountability system and its inspectorate need fundamental reform,”he says
A spokesperson for Ofsted said: “Our independent inspections of schools are trusted and valued by parents.
“Most teachers and heads find the inspection process positive and use it to improve their school. Ideological opposition to school inspection doesn’t serve parents, pupils or teachers well and we continue to have useful discussions about the feedback on the inspection framework with the recognised leadership unions.”