Ofsted, Ofgem, Ofwat, Ofcom…is there a regulator that is fit for purpose!?
> It’s like trying to measure a cloud with a ruler.
Irrespective of the rest of the article, this is a brilliant idiom and I’m using it everywhere now.
Great, now we can start Ofofs to regulate the regulators.
OFSTED is quango created by Thacter’s Tories because the HMI (the independent Her Majesty’s Inspectors said nearly all teachers were good). This flew in the face of the government’s fictitious narrative of thousands of bad teachers. The government appointed the adulterer Chris Woodhead (had an affair with a student when he was a teacher) to run OFSTED. Woodhead announced that he would root out these thousands of bad teachers. This OFSTED spectacularly failed to do. What OFSTED did do was to close good schools for no reason.
Eventually the government set up the GTC which took up the mantel of being judge jury and executioner for teachers who displeased their HT but weren’t actually breaking any rules.
OFSTED recruiter random people with no educational experience to come into schools and judge them in spurious industrial measures.
OFSTED is and has been advising schools and teachers on running schools and classroom teaching. Much of what has been wrong with teaching comes from this. For decades the teaching profession were forced to follow spurious and untested ideas such as the now discredited VAK. Good unbiased scientific research in education has been sadly lacking in the UK.
League tables of schools inevitably lead to gaming of exam results and massively favoured selective and independent schools who were and still are allowed advantages such as being able to choose exams not available to state schools.
OFSTED now deny the “advice” that many inspectors gave. I recall an inspector saying that he really wanted to see triple marking (deep marking).
A return to the independent HMI and the dissolution of the Quango OFSTED would be a step forward.
It will take years, if ever to undo the damage done to education in the UK. The notion of schools being allowed to fail is one such insanity.
*’An inadequate school is very rarely inadequate in everything it does and, likewise, and outstanding school is very rarely outstanding in everything it does.’*
This quote from him gets to the heart of the issue for me. OFSTED has become far too blunt a tool to regulate the complex communities schools are, particularly post-Covid.
It’s absolutely right that schools are rigorously regulated but where they need to make improvements, they should be supported in doing that, not just left to burn in the aftermath of chaos that OFSTED often bring.
As a teacher, it also would help if they weren’t such dicks when they visit as well. I was really shocked how rude they were to myself and the kids when they came to my school. This isn’t a particularly important point, but being that rude isn’t necessary!
This is pretty much the same for all government mandated inspections.
You get a bunch of people from a profession offered an easier job as an inspector, they maintain that position by making findings against their former colleagues. In institutions that are doing their jobs properly, findings still need to be made otherwise the inspectors job is moot, in these cases findings are often pointless, non-sensical or incredibly arbitrary but add additional permanent workload to staff who are already burdened because they’re the ones doing their jobs properly. No manager with any sense argues against these findings, because that just pisses off the inspector, and that results in more findings.
Ofsted do it for schools.
CQC do it for hospitals.
UKAS do it for laboratories.
The problem is, without the threat of inspections, bad institutions become worse. The only way this would be solved is by penalizing inspectors who make arbitrary findings.
6 comments
Ofsted, Ofgem, Ofwat, Ofcom…is there a regulator that is fit for purpose!?
> It’s like trying to measure a cloud with a ruler.
Irrespective of the rest of the article, this is a brilliant idiom and I’m using it everywhere now.
Great, now we can start Ofofs to regulate the regulators.
OFSTED is quango created by Thacter’s Tories because the HMI (the independent Her Majesty’s Inspectors said nearly all teachers were good). This flew in the face of the government’s fictitious narrative of thousands of bad teachers. The government appointed the adulterer Chris Woodhead (had an affair with a student when he was a teacher) to run OFSTED. Woodhead announced that he would root out these thousands of bad teachers. This OFSTED spectacularly failed to do. What OFSTED did do was to close good schools for no reason.
Eventually the government set up the GTC which took up the mantel of being judge jury and executioner for teachers who displeased their HT but weren’t actually breaking any rules.
OFSTED recruiter random people with no educational experience to come into schools and judge them in spurious industrial measures.
OFSTED is and has been advising schools and teachers on running schools and classroom teaching. Much of what has been wrong with teaching comes from this. For decades the teaching profession were forced to follow spurious and untested ideas such as the now discredited VAK. Good unbiased scientific research in education has been sadly lacking in the UK.
League tables of schools inevitably lead to gaming of exam results and massively favoured selective and independent schools who were and still are allowed advantages such as being able to choose exams not available to state schools.
OFSTED now deny the “advice” that many inspectors gave. I recall an inspector saying that he really wanted to see triple marking (deep marking).
A return to the independent HMI and the dissolution of the Quango OFSTED would be a step forward.
It will take years, if ever to undo the damage done to education in the UK. The notion of schools being allowed to fail is one such insanity.
*’An inadequate school is very rarely inadequate in everything it does and, likewise, and outstanding school is very rarely outstanding in everything it does.’*
This quote from him gets to the heart of the issue for me. OFSTED has become far too blunt a tool to regulate the complex communities schools are, particularly post-Covid.
It’s absolutely right that schools are rigorously regulated but where they need to make improvements, they should be supported in doing that, not just left to burn in the aftermath of chaos that OFSTED often bring.
As a teacher, it also would help if they weren’t such dicks when they visit as well. I was really shocked how rude they were to myself and the kids when they came to my school. This isn’t a particularly important point, but being that rude isn’t necessary!
This is pretty much the same for all government mandated inspections.
You get a bunch of people from a profession offered an easier job as an inspector, they maintain that position by making findings against their former colleagues. In institutions that are doing their jobs properly, findings still need to be made otherwise the inspectors job is moot, in these cases findings are often pointless, non-sensical or incredibly arbitrary but add additional permanent workload to staff who are already burdened because they’re the ones doing their jobs properly. No manager with any sense argues against these findings, because that just pisses off the inspector, and that results in more findings.
Ofsted do it for schools.
CQC do it for hospitals.
UKAS do it for laboratories.
The problem is, without the threat of inspections, bad institutions become worse. The only way this would be solved is by penalizing inspectors who make arbitrary findings.