Osted - in need of special measures

When I was a teacher (which was a long time ago), I only once had an Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills) inspector observing one of my lessons. Mr C was, in my memory, a large man. He had taught modern languages in a grammar school. My class was what was once known as a ROSLA year (students compelled by government dictat to stay on a year longer than before). They were students who had not done well enough at GCSEs to take A levels, and so we had to devise a curriculum for them, which would give them decent qualifications when they left. 

As head of English, my part was steering through the innovative vocational Royal Society of Arts 'Basic Clerical Skills' module (at a similar level to NVQs). It was one of these lessons that Mr C came to witness. My students were a bunch of Oxford east enders. They were rough diamonds whom I liked. The lesson, I seem to recall, was quite mundane but very orderly. No one left their seat. No one kicked up a rumpus. I was able to go round the room with appropriately encouraging and helpful advice. With that group, it was a triumph. Not as exciting as our trips down the canal or to local historic buildings, but a triumph of self-restraint on the part of the students. Well, that was my view at least!

However Mr C didn't see it that way apparently, as the headteacher told me after. Mrs Storrar was a remarkable woman who had returned to teaching following a time in industry. And she had more faith in most of her staff, including me, than in the inspector. I can't remember what status this inspection had, but it was certainly not a whole-school inspection. As the head and I observed, Mr C had (or appeared to have) no experience of teaching our kind of students. I assume his verdict had been that my lesson had been inadequate. Since then I have been governor of a number of schools and have witnessed the more recent Ofsted régime in education - and at second-hand in social work.

I've long relished what Anton Chekhov, the Russian playwright, said about critics: "Critics are like horse-flies which hinder the horses in their ploughing of the soil. The horse works, all its muscles drawn tight like the strings on a double-bass, and a fly settles on his flanks and tickles and buzzes. And what does the fly buzz about? It scarcely knows itself; simply because it is restless and wants to proclaim: 'Look, I too am living on the earth. See, I can buzz, too, buzz about anything.'" A word of comfort to teachers when irritated by inspectors, who criticise them.... 

But the truth is that Ofsted is far worse than an irritation. Schools were once given a week or more's notice of an inspection. I believe notice now is the day before. I suppose the idea is to prevent schools rustling up paperwork to impress the inspectors arriving seven days later. "Keep them up to the mark!" In my experience in the areas of public service with which I'm familiar, there is little more than a scintilla of evidence for lack of dedication. It's true that Baroness Casey's year-long review of the Met Police revealed enough going wrong for her to describe it as institutionally sexist, racist, and homophobic, but it is a huge unwieldy institution which is asked to do too much.

But why am I writing about Ofsted now? You'll notice that I began to comment about it at the beginning of this week - this was because of the delayed local news concerning the suicide in January of Ruth Perry, headteacher of Caversham Primary School, in anticipation of a negative Ofsted one-word verdict of her respected school: "inadequate". A single word gets repeated on estate agents' details. The reaction from local heads was to take Ofsted rankings off their websites and to threaten to keep inspectors out of their schools. and to demand Ofsted suspended inspections out of respect for a good headteacher. Since then it has hit the national news, first with the head of Ofsted, the upper-crust, Amanda Spielman, whilst expressing her sympathy with Mrs Perry's family, refusing to pause inspections, and then the eye-wateringly wealthy, privately educated Rishi Sunak backing Ofsted as giving parents the information they need. I wonder whether his parents would have been satisfied with a single-word summary of his years at Stroud School. Even if it had been "Outstanding" or "Requires improvement", they would have deserved more. And that is the problem with Ofsted. "Ofsted inspections 'provide independent, up-to-date evaluations on the quality of education, safeguarding and leadership, which parents greatly rely on to give them confidence in choosing the right school for their child,' a Department of Education spokesperson said." Maybe... However, it does not really give parents a true picture of a school or organisation - because although the report is many pages long, that's not what parents look at and neither is it what teachers hear. They see and hear only the headline. 

Ruth Perry's sister, Professor Julia Waters of Reading University, had no doubt why her sister took her own life. The Caversham report was sensationalist and drawn from scant evidence. “In our (family's) opinion, the findings of Ofsted were disproportionate, unfair and, as has tragically been proven, deeply harmful in their (implied) focus on one individual.” I suppose the theory behind Ofsted inspections was a good one; indeed school inspectors have a long history. But the idea of publishing grades in order to "push up standards" dates, I think, only to 1992. It is just one example of governmental obsession with targets, like SATs, instead of education. The only competent Secretary of State I've known was Estelle Morris (now Baroness) whose term in office was far too short (2001-2). Her virtues were honesty, humility and that she had been a state school teacher. She was a breath of fresh air. Here at last was someone who knew what they were talking about. Others tend to use the position as a step up the political ladder. There seems to be an idée fixe among others to set out to oppose those they should be championing - as was revealed in the disgraceful WhatsApp exchange between the Secretaries of State for Health and for Education and during lockdown. As the BBC reported, "In other WhatsApp messages released by the paper, Mr Hancock described teaching unions as 'absolute arses'.                                                 "Sir Gavin replied that they hated work"

One feels that Estelle Morris would have been on the side of teachers - which is, as every teacher knows, is the best form of pedagogy. And it is without doubt the best form of inspection. Collaboration and encouragement would be a far better way to raise educational standards than the present emotionally draining regime, which drives conscientious teachers to mental ill health and even to despair (as I have witnessed). Ofsted needs to look at itself if it really seeks to be a force for good. If its effect is drive teachers out of the profession, it is clearly of no help to children and is failing. Otherwise it should be replaced. Maybe, like the Met, it needs to be reconstituted. 

A good article on this subject can be found in the Guardian here. 

Let the teachers teach

I’m sorry to report this, but I spent a depressing evening last week in a group discussing religious education. Among those there were two parents, one foundation governor and other interested people, all, I guess, grandparents. I was the only one who confessed to having been a school teacher. 

We listened to a podcast from the “Beyond Belief” series. The impression left by the BBC conversation was, as someone said, “dire”. Poor teaching, non-specialist conscripted teachers, confused aims. Well, that’s not my own experience in secondary schools where I taught and where my children went. Of course, inevitably, in primary schools teachers are in effect non-specialist in all subjects except their own. They are on the whole experts in bringing out the best in children.

However what depressed me most was the wholesale buying into the widely peddled myth about state education. That narrative goes that our state schools and their teachers are generally failing children. The truth is that it is politicians who have long failed schools. In my lifetime I remember only one Secretary of State for Education who was any use, and that was Estelle Morris, who held the post for barely a year. Her great qualifications were 1) that she had taught in a comprehensive, and 2) that she worked to improve schools, not to change the system. Every other Education Secretary from Margaret Thatcher onwards used the state school system to advance their own political career, by leaving their mark on it. One can hope that Justine Greening will prove to be an exception.

Whether it was changing the exam system, raising the school leaving age, introducing more and more testing and school league tables, introducing academies and free schools, changing inspection regimes, fast-track entry, there has scarcely been a minister that has not introduced a new pet scheme, while at the same time effectively talking down the teaching profession. If they refrain from overtly criticising teachers, they fail to respect their expertise and reward their hard work. Hardly ever have I heard a minister defending the long hours of overtime that teachers put in or praising their skill in communicating the excitement of a subject to a class of variously motivated teenagers. More often, as I’ve indicated, Secretaries of State will complicate the teacher’s lot by introducing yet another innovation for her or him to grapple with. And when you examine those politicians’ qualifications, they are usually nothing but having been a school and university student themselves. When they have a bright new idea, they would do well to listen to David Hare’s plea, in a different context, in Racing Demon, “Don’t do it, Charlie – it’s not fair.” Bishop Tom Butler quoted this on Thought for the Day (8thJanuary 1992) in a well-directed plea to politicians to leave teachers alone. “Continuous revolution,” he commented, “is not necessarily a helpful hallmark of an educational system.”  Well, teachers have been living with it for over 25 years now.

When I was learning to teach, there was a great little book called The Craft of the Classroom by London headteacher, Michael Marland. It is full of advice about to structure lessons and inspire pupils. It ends, “"The craft won't work without a spirit compounded of the salesman, the music-hall performer, the parent, the clown, the intellectual, the lover and the organiser, but the spirit won't win through on its own either. Method matters. The more 'organised' you are, the more sympathetic you can be. The better your classroom management, the more help you can be to your pupils." I don’t know whether the book is put in the hands of new Education Secretaries. It ought to be. If they would only allow teachers to develop their craft and hone their skills without constant interference, they would be surprised at the results. 

There are two teaching tips which ministers (and all managers, for that matter) would do well to heed. One is that you need to earn your students respect (and you do that by respecting them). The other is that they respond better to encouragement than to criticism.

Coming home to roost

If, as a habit, you denigrate a particular caste, or class, or profession, especially if you are a government, you ought not to be surprised when that profession, or class, or caste deserts you.

So if you tell people who are unable to find paid employment, such as the disabled, that they are shirkers, not workers, don't be too surprised that they are less than impressed.

Last week, Sir Michael Wilshaw, chief inspector of Ofsted, told us that in a year more teachers were going abroad than are being trained as graduates. There is such a "brain drain" in the profession that he was urging politicians to impose "golden handcuffs" on newly trained teachers to prevent them leaving for more lucrative positions in the burgeoning industry of private (public) school offshoots abroad. Of course the very concept of handcuffs at the bottom end of the employment ladder is indicative of the regard in which teachers are held. They would be less golden handcuffs than iron shackles - the gold lies abroad. I suspect most teachers would not mind their profession being regarded as serving their pupils, but handcuffs are more redolent of slavery or crime.

Photo: Association of Teachers & Lecturers

I doubt that it is so much a matter of pay levels that lures our highly trained, able young teachers overseas, but the constant low regard in which they are transparently held by our government. The curriculum is so closely prescribed that there is no room for creativity in the classroom. There is such a lack of trust that inspections focus in on the extensive record-keeping which consumes so much of teachers' time and energies. The low regard is of course reflected in pay. There are other countries such as Germany and Holland where pay reflects higher regard. An informative article in the Guardian shows how far down the comparative table the UK comes. The first and major step the government should take to stem the flow of teachers abroad would be to stop denigrating (or "dissing") the profession and to begin showing appreciation for it (or "bigging it up").

Incidentally, I see that Nicky Morgan, the Secretary of State, is considering importing someone from America to replace Sir Michael when he retires. A fairly eloquent indication of her low regard for our home-grown educational talent.

Talking of importing from abroad, today's news announced that 69% of NHS trusts are actively trying to recruit staff from overseas. 23,443 nurses' and 6,207 doctors' posts are vacant (BBC News) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It's true, apparently, that the NHS is employing more staff than ever, but unfortunately the demand is bigger than ever. However if you treat highly trained and intelligent men and women as obdurate bolshies, and demand they do more and more with less and less resources, you have fundamentally undermined their respect and their working conditions. No wonder so many leave the service or find employment where they are more highly valued, better resourced and better remunerated. I know one senior doctor who has crossed the border for that very reason.

Photo: British Medical Association

There are two pernicious effects of this shortage. One is the inevitable resort to agency staffing to plug the gaps - which is of course more expensive than in-house staffing as well as less effective since it militates against creating teams who work together. The second, which is sometimes linked to the first, is the effect of denuding needy nations of medical expertise, of which, bluntly, their need is far greater than ours. Salaries here will always be attractive to those in developing countries. And so we have the grotesque spectacle of our government excluding asylum seekers while at the same time encouraging by their policies an exodus of essential skills from impoverished nations. In my view it fails the test of morality.

It was the good book, I seem to remember, that said, "You reap what you sow." Well, we've sown lack of respect for teachers and many seem to want to find more rewarding environments. We've sown antagonism and mistrust for the medical profession and many look for where their expertise is truly appreciated - and we are all the losers. Let's have less rubbishing, and more honouring, of the women and men on whom our essential services rely. Try it and you'll be surprised at how things change.

That's what teachers do

"'Child,' said Aslan, 'didn't I explain to you once before that no one is ever told what would have happened?'

"'Yes, Aslan, you did,' said Lucy. 'I'm sorry. But please - '" (CSLewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, p 137). Sadly I don't recall the previous occasion that Aslan has a similar conversation with Lucy. (I have a feeling it's after the sacrifice of Aslan.) Answers below, please!

OK. I admit it. It doesn't take much to make me cry. But I've just been crying. I've watching this:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWeKiZS-dxM. It's an extract from the last episode of Educating Yorkshire, the fly-on-the-wall documentary series which has just ended on Channel 4.

Jane and I made the mistake (possibly) of watching nearly the whole series yesterday. We'd watched the first episode when it was broadcast and decided to record the rest after that. So it was time to catch up. I have to say I loved it. It's all about Thornhill Community Academy in Dewsbury in West Yorkshire, but it could be in any normal school in the country. In post for two years the first-time head, Mr Mitchell, has a clear vision, a lot of energy and a great affection for his students. There's a real vibrancy about the socially and culturally mixed 11-16 school. The students are like any other cross-section of youngsters of their age - sociable, loud, fun and usually friendly. What it had in common with the last school at which I taught is that clearly for some children it was the place of greatest security in their troubled lives. Learning that some adults in life really do want the best for you and are prepared to believe in you in spite of everything was a transforming discovery for even the most "hopeless" cases. It was really impressive seeing a team of teachers and pastoral staff really united in creating a compassionate and hope-full environment for the children. It is no wonder that the production team chose to reserve the story of Musharaf's GCSE English oral ordeal to the last episode, since it was emblematic of the school's whole philosophy and practice. 

It was by no means the only moving story of the series.

There was the posse of bolshy blond Year 11s who had "failed" their GCSE Maths on their first attempt, whom Mr Steer, the deputy, allergic to practically everything except teenagers, takes on determined to get them up to a grade C. There's a typically affectionate assessment of their teacher by "Shezza" (Sheridan) who reckons he's even cleverer than that Stephen Hawking guy! When their results come through in August, she's missed by 4%, but we're told they're having continuing tuition from their teacher, all determined to achieve that crucial qualification. Can I really have heard that Mr Gove is proposing denying such children the opportunity to resit exams?
   

Then there were the awkward lads like Tom and Jack who test the authorities to the limits of their patience and resources with their disturbed behaviour and bad language. There were teenage fallings out between best friends, Safiyyah and Hadiqa. I can imagine military men and leaders of industry "standing no nonsense" with such people, quickly throwing them out on their ear, letting someone else pick up the pieces. However these are young people, adolescents, and teachers are there to educate, to bring out the adult in them - and they will spare no effort and miss no trick to achieve the best for their charges. Not that they'd claim to get it right always, but they are honest hard-working professionals whose aim is transparently the children's best. (There's a local TV interview here with Mr Mitchell.) As Miss Uren, an English teacher, says, "When you go into the teaching profession, it's not just about teaching them English, or teaching them Maths. It's about teaching them how to become young adults, how to grow up, and we teach them just as many life lessons as they learn at home. That's part of our profession. That's what we do."

I sincerely hope that Channel 4 transmits a rerun of the series soon. When they do, I urge you to watch it. I trust too that the Secretary of State and his advisers examine it, and bite their tongues before indulging the all too easy and frequent pastime of politicians and lazy journalists of slagging off the teaching profession and comprehensive schools. (It's also on 4oD.)

An unexpected by-product of watching the programmes was that I realised what a buzz I used to get from my teaching especially in the later years. Maybe distance has lent enchantment, but I don't think I've experienced anything comparable in any other job. It made wonder what if....

The challenge of helping young people steer their way through the stormy formative teen years and the reward of witnessing them make a fair fist of the journey is unlike any other. People, among them some who should know better, like to smear the teaching profession as corrupters of the youth or as work-shy stick-in-the-muds do not know what they're talking about. They should take a leaf out of Mr Jon Mitchell's book - and instead write letters of appreciation to their children's teachers and to the staff of their local schools. I can assure you Thornhill Academy is not unusual among state schools. Its staff are like the vast majority of their colleagues.

Quis custodiet custodes?

Jane read me some letters from The i newspaper today, which I found it hard to credit, about the head HMI saying that teachers don't know what stress is. I found it hard to believe until my brother came to tea and confirmed that Sir Michael Wilshaw had indeed been saying this to headteachers. So I looked up the report on line. There, along with a pose which he likes to adopt, I gather, looking down on us lesser mortals, was the article:
Teachers don't know what stress is, says Ofsted chief

from The Independent

"Teachers don’t understand the real meaning of the word stress, the new Ofsted head, Sir Michael Wilshaw, said today.... Sir Michael told a conference of headteachers... : 'Let me tell you about stress. Stress is what my father felt, who struggled to find a job in the Fifties and Sixties and who often had to work long hours in three different jobs and at weekends to support a growing family.

“'Stress is, I’m sure, what many of the million-and-a-half unemployed young people today feel – unable to get a job because they’ve had a poor experience of school and lack the necessary skills and qualifications to find employment.'

"He added: 'Stress is what I was under when I started as a head in 1985 in the context of widespread industrial action. Teachers walking out of class at a moment’s notice, doing lunch duty on my own every day for three years because of colleagues who worked to rule, covering five classes in the sports hall when there was no one to teach them....'"

What a crass and unprofessional inaccuracy (to use the noun Lord Leveson preferred to The Sun's "a lie and a slur")!

It puts me in mind of Brutus' description of the rise of a tyrant in Julius Caesar:

                           "But 'tis a common proof,
    That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
    Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;
    But when he once attains the upmost round.
    He then unto the ladder turns his back,
    Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
    By which he did ascend." How well Shakespeare understood human nature! In case you're not clear quite what Brutus means, he's saying something like it's common experience that ambitious upwardly mobile characters, having climbed the ladder from the bottom, when they reach the top, regard themselves as gods and despise the lower rungs by which they climbed. Sir Michael's comments display not a little scorn for the ranks of the profession by which he attained his present lofty position. 

They also display an amnesia of the elementary principles of good teaching and good management - as I'm hearing Ofsted inspections are doing too. It's almost as if he and his cronies are kicking the ladder away regardless of the number of young teachers who fall off in the process. (No doubt Ofsted would regard it as a justifiable "rattling" of the professional ladder.) However, encouragement achieves better results than destructive criticism, as all good teachers know. There's of course a place for constructive criticism, and it's the job of HMIs to point out to schools where they could improve. But now, it seems, if one element of a school's performance, let's say, for the sake of argument, its academic results, is weak and in need of improvement (which might, to be fair, be a result of a weaker cohort of pupils following a particularly good one), no other elements can be rated higher (such as pastoral care, behaviour or community involvement). In other words, no recognition is given to the parts that are good, and thus all the teachers' efforts are rubbished and their morale undermined. It is not the way to treat people. 

A good teacher is not uncritical of an essay, for example, but he will find both good and bad aspects to comment on. To concentrate simply on the bad is a mere exercise of destructive power. To tell teachers, whose job patently is stressful, that they don't know what stress is similarly is an abuse of power.

In church today we were considering the commandment, "You shall not steal", and it occurred to me that officious Ofsteding (if there is such a word) is a form of theft. It's an irresponsible stealing of confidence and undermining of competence. And it's theft both from the teachers and also their pupils. Professional enjoyment and pride is replaced by fear as the motivation for performance - and as Britain's Got Talent proved last night enjoyment produces far better results than fear, even for dogs like Pudsey, whose reward is an appearance at the Royal Variety Performance and possibly Hollywood. Teachers' monetary rewards are not great, but the job satisfaction is - which is why most teachers teach. To have the job that you do rubbished by the equivalent of Simon Cowell must cause you to wonder why you bother. The question is "Who keeps an eye on the Inspectors?" Quis custodiet custodes, as the saying goes in Latin.

Having said all that, I noticed that Jesus didn't write off the likes of Zacchaeus, the Bible's archetypal "fatcat" who gave himself whopping bonuses. In fact he got him down off his perch, and described him and those like him as "the lost" and "also a son of Abraham". I find it quite challenging to love chief HMIs and top bankers, as Jesus appears to have done.... 

Unsatisfactory

One of my favourite lines of poetry comes near the end of T S Eliot's The Journey of the Magi:
"It was (you may say) satisfactory." It is the precisely accurate word for the magi's discovery of the baby after their cold coming at the worst time of the year. Eliot rescues the word from its debased coinage of "passable" or "mediocre", and returns it to its pristine meaning of "making enough" or "giving satisfaction".  After a good meal, when offered more, you reply, "No thank you, I am satisfied." Eliot resisted the contemporary habit of throwing in superlatives or adverbs to lend weight to a word, knowing that it merely serves to drain the original of meaning. You know the sort of thing, "That's really really good (or wicked)!" or "That's mega-cool!"

So in a way I was pleased to hear the news yesterday that Ofsted intends to scrap the "Satisfactory" category in its assessment of schools' performance. Previously there'd been four: "Outstanding - good - satisfactory - inadequate". Yesterday an Ofsted press release announced: "Ahead of a government summit on ‘coasting schools’ to be held at Downing Street later today, Ofsted’s Chief Inspector, Sir Michael Wilshaw, has confirmed his intention to scrap the ‘satisfactory’ judgment for school inspections. The move is designed to tackle the number of coasting schools that have remained stubbornly ‘satisfactory’ over a number of inspections, as highlighted in Ofsted’s Annual Reports over recent years. The proposals, which will be subject to consultation, would mean that any school that does not provide a good standard of education will be given a new “requires improvement’ grade." (Pity that even Ofsted managed to make a punctuation error - which is less than satisfactory and requires improvement.) 

Sadly too Ofsted isn't acting from as disinterested a motive as restoring the power of language. So Chief HMI and former whizz-kid headteacher (credited with turning round failing schools single-handed...), Sir Michael Wilshaw, says, "Of particular concern are the 3,000 schools educating a million children that have been 'satisfactory' two inspections in a row. This is not good enough." (As I've explained, "satisfactory" precisely means "good enough".) It sounds as though the idea is to amalgamate the present "satisfactory" with "inadequate", creating an even blunter hammer to crack the nut (or the NUT perhaps). In fact, dark suspicions lurk that it's a ruse to prove how unsatisfactory state schools are after all, proving the need for academies, free schools and all the other devices for diversifying (or confusing) the system. The government might like to know, what every effective teacher knows, that workers, whether students or employees, respond better to encouragement than to threats.  


It is devoutly to be hoped that the promised "consultation" will be more of the John Lewis "forum" model (favoured by the deputy prime minister) than the commission-and-ignore approach which the government seems to be meting out to the Dilnot Report.