I’ve been stuck here at home for months. No swooping visits. No deep-diving. No grading. And nobody seems to have missed me at all. Not a bit. 

Stuart, my eldest - very big in logistic consultancy in Ashby-de-la-Zouch - thinks that I’ve been going through what he describes as an existential crisis ever since March.

“Existential crisis, indeed!” I said. “Look at you, with your fancy new words.”

But maybe he’s right. Maybe I have begun to wonder if there’s any real point to my role in life. 

Eddie, my postman - fancies himself a bit, but bulging in all the wrong places - casually remarked the other morning in one of our brief exchanges before he always has to “dash”: “That’s the thing about this national crisis,” he said. “It’s shown what the really important jobs are.” 

“Shown what the really important jobs are…” Spiteful man.  

Ofsted wants to ‘collaborate’ with schools

I’ve tried offering help, now that I can get out. I’ve promised schools that I’ll come in and collaborate with them next term. 

I thought that word “collaborate” might help. Stuart suggested I use it, after some management course he’d been on. 

I thought it would be a real ice-breaker between me and those schools. But no. It was met with the usual chill response. The heads just say I will be in the way - an “unnecessary distraction”, as they put it. 

One head even told me that she’d much prefer it if I came in to her school and simply helped out with the teaching from September. Says she’s likely to be several staff down, given everything - so would I lend a hand? 

Would I lend a hand? Who does she think I am? A supply teacher?  

Starting inspections again?

I’ve also offered to begin inspecting again in January. Well, you can imagine how that’s gone down. 

Did I have any clue at all, they asked me, what it’s going to be like in schools next year? One head asked me how I would feel if I was a soldier on the front line in battle, and someone popped up and began assessing and grading me. Wouldn’t I think it more helpful if that person just picked up the nearest weapon and tried to help out? 

Another suggested I just stay at home for the next few months and use this unique opportunity to have a big rethink about myself. That I should then “relaunch” next year. 

I said to him, didn’t he notice but I had already fully relaunched myself last year? How many relaunches does he want? But he just said that my makeover last year “hasn’t really helped anyone”. 

They all say that I need to stop calling people names, stop summing them up as “‘outstanding’, ‘inadequate’ and all that crap”, as one of them put it. They say I should use my years of experience and wisdom to help schools produce full, honest reviews of where they are, where they could go and how best to get there. Genuine collaboration.   

Then, they say, I could become an “inspirational body”. Inspirational body. I liked that. No one’s ever called me that before.  

And do you know what? I’ve a feeling they could be right.

Stephen Petty is head of humanities at Lord Williams’ School in Thame, Oxfordshire