All about Ofsted

posted by bin1 on Fri 8th Feb, 08 at 08:31:37

Ofsted. Load of pants. Honestly.

As you may have already read, I'm not a qualified teacher. I'm someone who gets by on a wing and a prayer based on my other qualifications.

We had Ofsted visit this week. New format means you get about 3 weeks notice. The panic is amazing. Paper, photocopying, morons asking you to put posters up, and stress.

Me?

Nothing.

Same as always but with an "official lesson plan". Of course, being slightly sarcastic, this amounted to 4 pages at my best.

There has been much to amuse me over the past few weeks. The posters with typos were good. I forgot to mention that the poster was over A1 in size. Inspring excellence.

Posters in general have been highlighted as fundamental to our college's success. Apparently, if a student sees a poster with some American, white teethed low-20-something, they'll be inspired. Our college's approach? Put as many posters as you can up! I've nothing against the majority of Americans... all the real one's I've met have been excellent... but it doesn't take a genius to realise how detached the reference is for a market town chav. Hardly 'inspring', more often something for them to ridicule to reinforce their own conceptions of rectitude.

Another element has been the lessons themselves. I know one lecturer that repeated a previous lecture before Ofsted arrived to rehearse it with the students.... That's right; she gave the same lecture again (a third time) when she was observed! Its all about ticking boxes, apparently.

Finally, management. Amusingly, for the past 2 weeks (but not the entire 3 weeks of warning) they've been in work before me and tend to be there when I leave. I'm a bit of a night owl - so see that as 9pm. What have they been doing? Lay man's speak: cooking the books. Figures have to be created. Easy. But then they have to tie into the day to day statistics. We don't have anything that robust... so the day to day statistics have to be created...

I know another college that was Ofsted'd the other month... they're preparing for their next one, which could be up to 4 years away. Our college (my fingers feel dirty...) rather, "the college I work at" will ignore the panic they've just been subject to and simply wait until the next 3 weeks warning.... to start the panic all over again.

I'm not saying I'm great... honestly... but if it were me, I'd start thinking about putting accurate systems in place now... so the panic can be avoided, enabling the college to achieve "excellence" rather than satisfactory!

For anyone reading between the lines... yes. I am available for alternative employment. Inspring

Regards.

Can't tell you any more but the results are in.

And I can tell you....

Oh, dear :(

So, was the, uhh, "sub-optimal" result across the board, or was it similar to last time (ie most stuff OK, but management = epic fail)? Regardless, I still maintain that the college has the potential to do Great Things, but that... certain things [ahemmanagementahem] will need to change before that can happen. Still, like you say: perhaps chance to make real change. Or not, as the case has always tended to be.

Two important things:

1) Give me a shout if you fancy trying to do something, alternate employment-wise - I think that there's a few escapees and prisoners that could band together and have a go at doing something. You know, like the-one-who-keeps-saying-that.

2) Please forgive the lack of poker invitage - it was a clash with the post-OFSTED drinking session, so assumed that only the escapees would be coming, so didn't send out any further invites. Next one will probably be in three weeks, and you're most welcome - more details to follow.

3) Don't tar yourself with the same brush as anyone else - let's just say that some of the people with no teaching qualifications do a better job than the ones that do. Also, that thing about the practice lesson - I take it that was also a hint as to who it was?

4) Yes, I know that there's more than two things in this list.

5) I should probably get around to making some kind of "visible to friends only" kind of thing for this, shouldn't I?