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So the week before half term, which I’ve just about got through, and our OFSTED inspection! It’s a little under three years since the last one.

Well our school inspection report isn’t up on the OFSTED site yet, so it might be a little strange to write too much detail about the actual specific outcomes. Suffice to say it was very satisfactory, and the school has many many good features and some outstanding ones.

I’ve changed my mind about accountability as I’ve grown more experienced. I now do think it’s a good thing. I still can’t reconcile that with how OFSTED judge schools, nor the intense pressure that schools feel when being inspected.

This was the third inspection in my career, and by far the most stressful. It appeared to me to be more difficult for the inspectors as well. They seemed to be expected to interrogate the swathes of data that is held on the school (such as via RAISE ONLINE, or Fisher Family Trust targets, or whatever), plus interview all the senior staff, many teachers, a load of students and so on to secure judgements on all the outcomes, and they had to sift through the evidence we provided them with, PLUS they had to observe lots of lessons.

I think we were expecting something like 40-50 observations. In actual fact we barely had more than 20.

So this is what I remember about the process:

The first shock was that the phone call came on Monday. We were expecting it on a Friday, for an inspection the following Wednesday, but it arrived on the Monday. I had had a particularly tiring weekend, having driven 150 miles to my nephew’s first birthday on the Sunday (and back), and I’d run 10.56 miles on the Saturday as part of my marathon training. I had also gone out on the Saturday night with a friend from university. So at about 9.30, when the head phoned my office and said “we’re on for Wednesday” I was not only surprised, but fearful. I phoned my partner, to prepare her for the worst.

I can’t really remember Monday well. What did I do? I know that I taught a lesson, to Year 8. I think it was alright. I did a quick check to see that the students knew what National Curriculum levels they were working at, and what they should do to improve. I intended to do some marking. I met with one of our middle leaders to try to ascertain that we were clear on our story (we weren’t making it up, I mean that we were clear as in accurate) about the projection of future results, and how they were due to go. And I liaised with consultants to get them in for the Tuesday to check lesson planning. Ensuring students, staff and parents had copies of the OFSTED questionnaire to fill in.

I think a lot of the day, and much of the evening, was spent trying to organised the inspectors. Who were they going to interview? What information did they need in advance? Was the head ready for the phone call (a lengthy one with the lead inspector the next day at 9am)? Were staff clear as to what was expected (to be fair, the school has been awash with accountability measures for a while now, so they couldn’t be more aware!)? and so on and so forth. I think I left school about 9.30pm, and got a couple of hours sleep. I didn’t eat much. Actually, I had some Indian food in our SLT meeting.

The next day, Tuesday, was manic. It was the day before the inspection. I seemed to spend all day ensuring others were organised; that all the “extra” stuff that was needed. I don’t object to that; it is exactly what I expect given my role. It was just a bit weird planning my lessons at about 11pm on the Tuesday; ensuring I had all the data I needed for the meetings I was involved in (one on attainment, one on Leadership of Learning and Teaching) and the evidence to back up assertions I knew were true about my school.

I didn’t eat, nor sleep at home. I have never before experienced how stress can shed one’s appetite. Actually, that’s not quite true – I have seen it happen with a couple of friends and with one work colleague, but never to me. I probably did “sleep” but it was for single-digit numbers of minutes at a time. I left for work at 5am, and was actually waiting for the caretaker to let me in on Wednesday morning.

The inspection itself was smooth-ish. Weirdly, the students didn’t “step up” at all. I remember in our last inspection, you could have been forgiven for believing we were at Eton – the students seemed to have the attitude of “I can criticise my school, but don’t you dare be coming into my school and having a go at it” (much like an attitude one might have with a sibling). This time, they didn’t blink. I suspect this is because our school has welcomed and accessed extensive support from consultants, plus colleagues are very comfortable with people walking into lessons with no notice – moreso than in any other school I’ve worked in. So “inspectors” are increasingly nothing new to students, and I genuinely don’t feel like students behaved any differently. Of course, with the consequences of a poor inspection being so severe for a school – with it’s marketing, it’s reputation and the potential interventions to a school with “notice to improve” or “special measures”, staff were on edge, but all the staff worked as hard as anyone can have expected. No, scrap that, they worked harder than can reasonably have been expected. My interview was “hard” but I felt I was able to say what I wanted to, and I was pleased that when I couldn’t answer two of the lead inspectors questions, he asked me to go and get the answers and evidence and come back to him (which I did). I also observed a lesson with the lead inspector – our judgements agreed, though the teacher I observed I know is a much better teacher when relaxed (and when they have had sleep!!).

Wednesday night – again I didn’t sleep, though I remember I was mildly more relaxed than on the Tuesday. Actually, I think I did sleep between about 2am and 4am. I went to school with a headache. By about lunchtime, I’d had another interview, and had also muscled in on the head’s interview with a Quality Assurance member of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate – basically there to Quality Assure the inspection. I managed to have my say about how the current OFSTED framework discourages me enormously from intending to become a Head Teacher. He was very good actually. I have some respect for the way he spoke about education and I could see a level of integrity about young people and outcomes that I think my colleagues might say appears absent in some OFSTED inspectors.

When I was doing the lunch queue, knowing we could no longer affect the outcome, I felt relief. I think all staff did. I had a non-contact period the next lesson, and I don’t even remember what I did. I think I had a chat with some of my colleagues, and assisted with a student who wasn’t behaving appropriately in a Spanish lesson, but I don’t remember much else.

The judgements were pretty much spot on. The inspection team, I think, really did capture our school. I felt very pleased with the outcomes because I thought they were fair. Not generous, but not punative. Fair. I think the inspection framework – the tight criteria that the inspectors have to apply to schools – is unfair. Attainment (I mean raw attainment not contextualised for the students you take in or the area the school is situated in) is given too high a priority and leads the inspection too much. In balance, the other aspects of Every Child Matters are seen, and do contribute to the final report.

I also felt pleased because I saw the real team effort that the school put in. Though there are things we have been told by OFSTED we need to do, in fact we already know these, and we pretty much told the inspection team what they were.

I was also pleased for the head teacher, who (obviously) took the lead role in writing the school’s Self Evaluation Form. The lead inspector said it was the first evaluation form he had seen to really engage with the new OFSTED framework, and as a result the Head got a lot of praise. She works hard for the school, and deserves that! The judgements in the Self Evaluation Form were largely accurate, though we underscored ourselves in several areas.

Overall, well I’m pleased it’s over. I slept a lot on the Thursday night, and when I taught my Year 11 class on the Friday (last lesson) they told me that most staff hadn’t really planned decent lessons. This was one time not to make a big deal out of that. Because the Head was at a meeting the next day, I had the pleasure of reading the headline scores to the staff early the next day, which was nice as well.

I’m half tempted to train as an OFSTED inspector, mainly for the benefits it would give the school. But I really don’t know I could be a part of imparting the stress that an OFSTED inspection inflicts on a school.

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