Ofsted plans to punish schools that chase meaningless “badges and stickers” and turn themselves into exam factories, chief inspector Amanda Spielman told a recent conference. What schools should be doing, she says, is getting back to the real “core” work and offering children a good, well-rounded education.
These are undoubtedly laudable aims, but how did we get into such a situation in the first place?
For years, many of us have felt that schools have become exam factories and we are well aware that we are not delivering a well-rounded curriculum. It’s good to hear Spielman acknowledge this, but it’s successive governments giving ever more credence to the often meaningless data we create that have got us to this point.
Ofsted has, of course, gobbled up this approach and it has sat at the very heart of our school accountability system for many, many years. Governments have then delighted in creating league tables and graphs so that we can compare schools, even though the professionals have said that this is impossible to do.
In doing so, countless schools have suffered from Ofsted’s approach. Therefore I found it difficult to hear Spielman say: “This all reflects a tendency to mistake badges and stickers for learning itself. And it is putting the interests of schools ahead of the interests of the children in them.”
It’s absolutely true, but as teachers, we do not need to be told this. Instead, she should be telling this to her Ofsted team and to the government. It is they who have turned our education system into a narrow one that is almost devoid of creativity and divorced from the fun and the reality of everyday life.
Why, as teachers, did we allow this to happen?
Well, some of us took chances, but we quickly became known as “maverick” headteachers, and genuinely talented teachers just left. Why? Because we all put the pupil ahead of the system when we were told not to.
As a profession, we have been ground down by Ofsted and successive governments. Teachers know what they need to be teaching. They know they need to invest in a pupil’s wellbeing. They know pupils need more than maths and English. But those waiting at the door to “‘punish” them for straying from Ofsted guidelines have exerted their powerful influence.
The chief inspector’s comments almost lay the blame on both schools and their teachers. But they are the ones who have been driven into submission. And at what cost? Teachers and heads are leaving in droves and no one seriously believes our system is strong.
I applaud her desire to overhaul the dinosaur that is Ofsted. But it won’t happen overnight. In the meantime, however, what we can all do is acknowledge this move towards change and embrace it. But while Spielman takes on the dinosaurs within her Ofsted team and the government she needs to remember one thing: Ofsted seldom moves a school forward, but it can wreck it.
Colin Harris led a school in a deprived area of Portsmouth for more than two decades. His last two Ofsted reports were ‘outstanding’ across all categories.
To read more of Colin’s articles, visit his back catalogue.
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