“Stuart from Ofsted is in the online lobby, requesting to attend your lesson.”
Oh, bless. At least you have to admire the resolve there.
Given the seemingly robotic inclination to carry on inspecting schools whatever the circumstance, I have begun to wonder what Ofsted’s initial reaction might be in the aftermath of a nuclear strike or a Martian invasion. (“We intend to continue with a limited range of inspections, though now just focusing on schools previously ‘inadequate’ or ‘requires improvement’?)
Similarly, while reading the new novel Three Hours - a tense story about a school in Somerset where a gunman is on the premises - I now turn each page with trepidation, half-expecting Ofsted to announce that it is still going to drop in, though it is promising “not to include grading on this occasion”.
Well, that’s how Ofsted is coming across to me, given the evident reluctance to withdraw from inspections over the past few months.
Coronavirus: The desperation of Ofsted
But we cannot really blame them. These people are programmed to inspect schools, and this has been constantly thwarted over the past year. That most recent suggestion - that they now drop in on a few online lessons - smacks of complete despair and desperation.
These people plainly need help. We need to think of ways in which they can somehow carry on their work without getting in the way of ours. Perhaps they could turn their attention instead to inspecting other types of school instead. Why not spread the net wider, literally, and try inspecting schools of fish?
There are thousands of schools down there, all swimming around uninspected in the nation’s rivers and seas. Not one of them has ever had an Ofsted. Many of them have been coasting in a sea of middle-class complacency for millions of years; it’s high time inspectors moved in and began to start grading that often substandard, submarine world. Time for some proper “deep diving”.
Or, if they don’t fancy that, what about inspecting all those other schools criminally neglected until now: schools of thought, schools of painting, schools of architecture, and so on? Again, all of these are long overdue an Ofsted visit and verdict.
The list is endless - the Pre-Raphaelite school, the Surrealists, the Stoicists, Taoists, Existentialists - some dead, some alive - all yet to receive the ultimate accolade of an Ofsted “outstanding” or the shame of special measures.
Hoping for a helpful schools inspectorate
Though, in fairness, we should no more blame Ofsted staff for trying to pursue their mission to inspect than we should blame ourselves for continuing to try to teach children.
What really needs to change there is not the people but the nature of their mission. It is currently built on the belief that it is somehow better for children’s education that their expertise is employed to grade rather than to help schools - that they must inspect rather than inspire.
But at a time like this, such an outmoded and unhelpful approach has been exposed for what it is. In an age when the most successful and dynamic enterprises invite in external experts for advice rather than adjectives, we have an organisation still doing the very opposite.
They could still check on safeguarding. They would be still be championing parents and children. And they would still report on schools, but after a positive period of constructive consultation with a school and in a wholly different, constructive and helpful way.
Stephen Petty is head of humanities at Lord Williams’s School in Thame, Oxfordshire
