Author: theprimaryhead

You want a piece of me?

theprimaryhead3 Comments

Serious question, asked @yorkshireht, how long do you think you can survive the pressure of headship over a career?

I love education. I absolutely adore it. It consumes me. It fills me up, right up until I’m fit to burst. Like a stick of Brighton rock, ‘education’ runs right through me.

And, believe me when I say that I love education in all its forms. I love the:

children, laughs, graft, pressure, data, policies, learning, breakthroughs, frustrations, changes, growth, teachers, playgrounds, trips, topics, behaviour, detentions, planning, marking, failures, ofsted, support staff, local authority, friends, colleagues, peers, social workers, therapists, parents, innovations, camaraderie, help, governors, arguments, struggles, budgets, office, safeguarding, displays, corridors, libraries, subjects, homework…

I could go on but I think you get the point. There is nothing I would rather spend my time doing than contributing to the legacy of education. It’s noble. It’s honest. It makes a difference. It’s a privilege.

You get me working in your school and, you might not get the best headteacher in the world, but you sure do get a devoted one.

I will be yours and I will act on your behalf at all times. No matter what stake you hold within the community, I have your best interests at heart and I will never give up the belief that we are going to make it, together.

Odd then that my response to @yorkshireht would be: not sure how long I can sustain my role in education.

Why is that? I’m not old. I’ve not been doing it for that long. Why on earth would I want to get out?

It’s not, despite where you think this could be going, the workload. I’m at my happiest when I’m busy. You know that manic feeling in Term 2, just between the assessment deadline and Christmas, I think that’s the most wonderful time of the year. I revel in firing on all cylinders. So when I hear about the endless changes coming our way from way up high, I don’t necessarily baulk. I may not embrace but I aim to embed. I enjoy the challenge of making it work and I’m proud that, as a profession, we constantly evolve.

It’s also not because demands have increased or goalposts have changed. Although yes, both of these facts are making my job quite tricksy. I’ve always been a pretty calm and collected frood, but even I can feel those stress-related behaviours seeping out of me as I try to improve upon the already improved-higher standards that are now expected to be higher than they were last time I blinked. But as I said earlier…I like change, so, no, it’s not because the demands are increasing.

So what is it, I hear no one ask.

I think what is slowly grinding me down is the growing perception that schools, Heads and teachers are public property. Now, I know we work on behalf of the public and I know that we should, quite rightly, be held accountable for anything written in our job descriptions. I understand this and accept it wholeheartedly. But over time this has become confused with being accountable for things that any individual just doesn’t happen to like. There is a growing public mind-set that if something is not liked, not only must it be expressed, but it should also, by virtue of having been communicated, change. This is also the case for individuals’ misunderstanding of national policy or educational headlines: we must respond to what they think and any attempt to ‘put them straight’ through use of our knowledge is smeared as subterfuge, back-peddling and uncaring unprofessionalism.

It cannot be a coincidence that I am feeling this during an era where the profession is on its knees begging for its professional stature to be handed back. When people are told that they can create their own schools with their own curriculums, why should the state maintained parent care what their local school has to say anymore? When schools can appoint unqualified teachers then why shouldn’t parents tell the qualified ones what to do too? If any school can be a coasting school – and no one really knows what the definition of ‘coasting’ means yet – then why should any parent feel satisfied? Why isn’t any gripe or individual’s whim worthy of whole school change?

You see, what starts out as the public, rightly, not settling for low aspirations or quality education, ends with the potential vilification of perfectly good schools and professionals, for the sake of matters of limited consequence. As this continues, so strengthens the belief that the professionals within the school are completely owned by the public, and every demand, no matter how contradictory to the last, must be enforced, or else, we are accused of apathy. The truth that schools are accountable for achievement and children’s well-being has morphed into the fallacy that we are accountable for everyone’s idea of everything else that is important as well.

As the Head, I feel this the most. I am the one expected to jump the highest whilst dancing to the largest number of tunes. Personal comments are expected to wash over me. People are allowed to judge me holistically without respecting my right to be a person and I must take it because I am a public servant. My ownership is up for grabs and every piece of me is on sale. A public servant I may be, but I feel as though my soul has become as accountable as my performance.

Something’s got to give. And I’m not sure I want it to be me.

Everything you wanted to know about a rogue inspector…but were too afraid to ask.

theprimaryhead4 Comments

There came a time when darkness reigned. Few who came into its contact remained unscathed, and some even perished. Resistance seemed futile and the battle, as was presumed by so many, had been won. Thus, so it became so, that ‘twas the darkness that reigned supreme. Those that lived in its fear gave this darkness a name: The Rogue.

The Collected Histories of Ofsted 3078 AD
Chapter 12: The Rogue Dynasty and its eventual downfall

Pity the poor Head of an improving school, who, after receiving their 12:14pm phone call on a Wednesday afternoon gathers the staff to inform them that over the next two days they are being inspected by Ofsted, but don’t worry, they say, the lead inspector sounded quite nice on the phone.

Pity the poor Head, who, after welcoming the inspection team into the building, engages with small talk about the early morning traffic, all the time wondering if now would be a good time to bring up ‘British Values’ just to get that bit over with, as they all wait for the lead inspector to arrive.

Pity the poor Head who is quickly realising that the person now facing them, tippexing out all the green on the freshly printed RAISEonline data pack, considers rational thought and reason to be things they have neither the time nor inclination to indulge in.

Pity the poor Head as they prop up the conference bar and bore anyone who is still listening about the injustice of it all, and that if they’d only been visited by the inspector who’d judged the school down the road, they wouldn’t now be in this mess.


Tribal Tales (vol 2) – “In which we invite the reader to feast upon a feeble head.”
Trad tale: anon

We’ve all heard the stories. We’ve all read the reports. We’ve all shaken our heads with faint disbelief. But we’ve all secretly thought the same thing: it wouldn’t happen to a school like mine.  As time passes between inspections we convince ourselves that these are just spook stories, designed to pass the hours of a sleepless night. Every now and then we overhear a conversation about an inspector gone rogue in another school in a different authority. Shouldn’t happen, we say (…no smoke without fire though, we think) but, no, that sort of inspection couldn’t happen to a school like mine.

Could it?

Tread carefully dear reader, for this is not for the faint of SEF or weak of RAISEonline. This is a most cautionary tale for those of you naïve enough to think you’ve got what it takes to spot a Rogue and send it back under its bridge to lick its wounds as your school stands tall and undefeated. For it’s your school, my friends, that the Rogue likes to feast on more than any other.

Are you ready?

Then I’ll begin…Everything you wanted to know about a Rogue Inspector but were too afraid to ask.


Shark infested waters!

Be of no doubt that the rogue inspector has a very clear mind of what they intend to find in your school before the inspection even begins – they are cold blooded, single minded creatures of habit. They understand their prey, however, and do their best to lull Heads into a false sense of security in order to get closer: the initial phone-call will be pleasant and, in the morning, the offers of coffee will be gratefully received with warm smiles all round. Only during the first initial conversation with the Head do they begin to act naturally. Like a shark smelling fresh chum in the water, the rogue inspector will frenzy around a little blue titbit they’ve found in your RaiseOnline. They’ll be itching to close in for the kill but they won’t swallow you whole of course, oh no, that would be too easy; after all, they have two whole days to play. Instead they will take the tiniest bite to see how you taste, then they’ll throw out a lifeline – something along the lines of ‘well I’m sure that’s not the whole story and we have plenty of time to find out more’ in an attempt to make it seem like you have a fighting chance. And as they turn away and start to sniff out some poor unsuspecting teacher who will bravely try and swim in the same water as this calculated killer, you can’t help thinking that you’re about to be turned into shark-bait.


‘It’s not all about the data…’

There are two general rules of thumb when dealing with a rogue inspector and their use of data within an inspection. Firstly, despite them saying otherwise, it really will all be about the data. Secondly, the more a rogue inspector uses data, the less competent they seem to be at interpreting it. A rogue inspector wants a clean narrative. They will therefore select data that provides this. Conflicting data will be ignored, side-lined and given no credence during a discussion. The broader your own data analysis, the narrower their data field becomes. They will justify this by claiming that you are too stupid to see the obvious and that you are using a range of data to mask your failings. No matter what, they will stick to their preconceived and biased narrative. An experienced rogue inspector also knows better than to actually understand the data they are looking at or to use data consistently. Their claims that, it is not all about the data is untrue; what they mean is it is not about all data. The rogue will follow the ‘Blue’; that is all they need, that is all they will use and your resistance is futile.


You’re damned if you do…

Even the most rogueiest of rogue inspectors understands that there has to be a degree of discussion during an inspection and there are various games and tricks that the rogue plays in order to get through these more tedious elements of an inspection. A particular game that the rogue enjoys playing is the ‘critical fool’, first established when SEFs were no longer statutory. The aim of the game is to get the Head to discuss an area of weakness that they have identified and are tackling. The rogue inspector listens to the weakness and writes it down in great detail on an EF. No attention must be paid to what the school is doing to address this weakness as this isn’t as much fun and doesn’t add any value to the final score. Then, during the rest of the inspection the rogue inspector will refer to said weakness as much as possible. As this continues the rogue inspector will begin to believe that they themselves have spotted the weakness. In subsequent discussions, therefore, the rogue inspector will comment on the weakness and suggest that the leadership team must be ineffective for not seeing it or tackling it; when the Head inevitably says that they do know about the weakness, the rogue inspector will feign a stunned expression and say something along the lines of ‘So you admit it?’ When the other senior leaders pipe up to say that they know about it too and that they’d be happy to show the inspector what they’re doing about it, the rogue will shake their head in despair and tut ‘Even your leaders know about this weakness.’ When you all scream ‘WE KNOW AND HERE IS WHAT WE’RE DOING ABOUT IT!’ the rogue will cease to engage and simply write on their EF ‘Leaders admit to weakness and apparently do nothing about it.’ As you stand there in disbelief the other inspectors will add 5 points to the rogue inspector’s score and the game begins again.


Progress over any old time will do

Progress over time. Like what exactly constitutes requires improvement, ‘progress over time’ is a broad church and one that provides the rogue inspector with enormous scope for fun and games. It can become pretty confusing trying to keep up with the rogue inspector’s particular choice of time frames as they will vary. Just try to remember: whatever period of time will best fit the judgement the rogue inspector most wants to make, that will be the one that they use. If achievement has improved over two years, try looking at it over three, or four, or ten: as long as it allows you to find a declining pattern, you’re onto a winner. Progress in books looks pretty good since September but what about since yesterday. Yesterday? You heard the man, look at yesterday’s work compared to today’s, no progress! How dreadful. It gets even more hilarious during lessons. You can be watching the most amazing lesson but if there is any lag you can bet your bottom dollar that this will be the precise period of time selected for progress to be judged. But wait, the new handbook says – let me stop you there…this is a rogue inspector we’re talking about.


Positively moronic

Now that the rogue inspector has gotten down to brass tacks and lets you know, in no uncertain terms, that if this school was a horse it should have been turned into glue a long time ago (but not officially of course, otherwise you’d be able to get support from outside to help fight your case and the rogue doesn’t want that, they want you all to themselves), you begin to think about how to get the reigns of the inspection back in your hands. Fight back, you tell yourself; be positive! You dutifully bring out all your evidence to show your improvements, your successes, your reasons why the school is doing well. The rogue inspector puts on their rubber gloves and tentatively handles a few bits and pieces whilst trying not to inhale. Finally they push it all to one side and brand you an over-optimistic idiot. Rather than being used as evidence to show capacity to improve, the rogue inspector deems it evidence that the school’s employment of you is akin to asking a feeble brained village idiot to become secretary of state for education, or, asking Michael Gove to become secretary of state for education. Your attempts at highlighting successes to a person who does not wish to see success has only worsened the overall outcome for you and your school. Whoops.

Bingo Time: eyes down (actually, eyes closed will do)

The Ofsted inspection handbook makes clear that the criteria for each judgement should not be used as a tick-list. The rogue inspector does not know this of course, because they tend to only have photocopied the four ‘inadequate’ pages of the handbook, for that is all they need. They will spend the inspection demoting as many good judgements as they can that were made by the additional inspectors.  This illogical way of carrying on was handed to the rogue inspector on a plate when it was decided that there would be no ‘requires improvement’ criteria contained within the handbook. The majority of inspectors are able to use discretion, additional evidence, proportionality and professionalism to conclude that if something seen is not ‘good’ then there may be other evidence to draw conclusions from, so, you know, they are able to make well informed and sensible judgements that reflect the reality of the school.  The rogue inspector has no time for such subtleties, plus their train is booked for 4pm and adhering to the handbook would take ages. Far simpler to keep your eyes down and try to apply as many inadequate statements as possible with the hope that if they spread it about as liberally as they can, they can least get an RI out of it when comparing their scorecards with their fellow inspectors.

Code breakers

It is not, when you actually think about it, a huge surprise to find that the rogue inspector does not adhere to a basic moral or professional code when conducting an inspection. This could include not following handbook procedures properly, being rude and obnoxious to as many people as possible, failing to engage professionally with senior leaders or, in the worst cases, the rogue inspector will happily welch on agreements made at the start of the inspection. It is not uncommon for a rogue inspector to be found observing members of staff that, for a variety of reasons, you negotiated at the start to not be observed. The rogue will happily comply, at the start, but these members of staff are seen as golden opportunities for a rogue inspector and are not to be missed; particularly if the consequences of such violations will last long after the rogue inspector has written their draft report.


Fact or Fiction?

When the draft report is written it is worth remembering that the rogue inspector is actually nothing more than a frustrated writer on a par with a two-bit peddler of a penny-dreadful. Don’t be fooled into assuming that you have been sent the wrong school’s report, check the inspection number at the top and you will see that, sadly, this is a report of your school. Take the time to get past the clunky phrasing and the badly formed sentences and you will find that it is the lack of technical accuracy that is worst of the literary crimes on display here. Statistical analysis isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but your newest parent governor could take one look at the misinterpretations of national data and declare the report a joke. Sadly, this report is for your eyes only – better cancel that mini-break, you’ve got a factual accuracy check to get on with all by yourself.


That’s not all folks

The saddest element of a rogue inspector’s existence is that their influence does not end when they leave your school; unfortunately, their legacy will live on. There are many victims of rogue inspectors: Heads, teachers, governors, children, schools, communities and even Ofsted itself. Ofsted is a sound idea with a clear and solid purpose: raise standards, improve lives. The rogue inspector serves no purpose except to satisfy whatever warped ideology they are individually peddling. They hinder the progress of the very schools they inspect and the organisation they represent. How sad that they exist. Let us hope that their time will soon come to an end and posts like this are considered to be a historical document or a grotesque work of fiction rather than a depressing and dangerous truth.

Come back satisfactory, all is forgiven!

theprimaryhead7 Comments

EpicFail01The taking away of ‘satisfactory’ was meant to raise expectations. It was a canny move to signify that things had to get better. Teachers and schools could no longer rest on their laurels. From now on, if they weren’t good, then they weren’t good enough. You can see why, I mean would you be pleased if the answer to any of these questions was ‘it was satisfactory’?

  • How was the dinner I made you?
  • What did people say about the poem I read out at Gran’s funeral?
  • Was that just the best sex ever?

No, in all those cases, and in any other you probably care to mention, ‘satisfactory’ doesn’t quite hit the spot. So why, it was argued, should it be used to describe standards in education? More importantly, why would we be satisfied that children were getting a satisfactory education in our schools?

It was quite clear that something radical needed to happen to make us all buck up our ideas. We could have just raised the bar, turned the satisfactory dial up to 11, made it ‘one more’ harder to attain. We could have changed the interpretation of the word itself so that it was not seen as a ‘settling for’ judgement, but as an adequate description of getting the job done: no less, but certainly no more. But we went for something different: extinction.

Out of the ashes of satisfactory came a new judgement: Requires Improvement. This was a huge tonal shift in terms of what was, and what was not, now acceptable. After all, imagine receiving the response ‘I think if we’re honest, it required improvement’ to any of these questions:

  • How was the dinner I made you?
  • What did people say about the poem I read out at Gran’s funeral?
  • Was that just the best sex ever?

Suddenly, being satisfactory doesn’t seem quite so bad.

But hey, it’s all about the kids, and many of us agreed with the sentiment that satisfactory wasn’t good enough, so we rolled with it. A particularly shrewd move on the part of Ofsted was to not provide any descriptions for what being RI would look like. Instead, if it wasn’t good, it therefore required improvement. There were still guidelines for what inadequate provision looked like, to make sure that we knew the difference between ‘not good’ and ‘Christ alive man what are you doing?’

At the time I thought this was genius. Not because I thought more schools would now be judged to be requiring improvement (and therefore failing because being good was now the only acceptable status for a school) but because it would allow judgements to be tailored to the school. All schools are different and have their nuances; by not providing a one-size-fits-all-tick-list for things that are not yet quite right, I felt, would mean that an RI school would now have a carefully sculpted support plan that would fit their context.

We’ve lived without satisfactory since 2012 and, as a new government could be on the horizon, and as Ofsted itself is thinking about evolving, I’ve been evaluating the impact of life in the RI age. Whereas I still agree with the principle of satisfactory not being good enough and RI being individual to a school’s context I don’t think it has completely worked.

Firstly, politicians have not stayed out of it. Time after time schools have been told that there are more and more reasons why they are not good. The expectation that schools are responsible for solving all of society’s ills and challenges has allowed the apparently non-existent criteria for RI to grow exponentially.

Somebody decides that all infants should be able to read a list of words (some of them literally nonsense) in a test, if they can’t the school is not good. Someone thinks that schools should be teaching PE to a standard that will allow Team GB to win every gold medal at the next Olympics, if a school does not provide a medal winner they are not a good school. For some reason it is deemed important for schools to teach an un-agreed set of British Values, if they don’t (despite the fact that no one knows what these values actually are) they are not a good school. If the most vulnerable, damaged, and poorest children in our society do not make accelerated academic progress (it doesn’t matter about their emotional stability and well-being and how you are impacting upon that) the school is not good. If a school is not assessing pupils accurately (in a world where each school is now assessing pupils differently so who can say) then they are not a good school.

These are all areas that are highlighted in recent Ofsted reports. They are all reasons that can contribute to why a school is judged good or RI. But they weren’t in the rule book when we started the race. The world changes, I know. We have to adapt in order to meet the needs our children have in this rapidly changing world, I get it. But it’s not good enough to hang a school out to dry because at some point something either went wrong in one part of the country, or, something became a news story, and a politician decided that it was a school’s job to sort it all out. It is not fair that the lack of criteria within an RI judgement has become the stick by which to beat us with.

Secondly, the invention of RI and its misappropriation has damaged the psyche of education. It has allowed schools and teachers to become demonised too readily by politicians, the media and the public. Satisfactory may have been a dirty word behind closed doors but it had a level of acceptability to it as far as the public was concerned. In short, satisfactory schools were left alone to improve. Requires Improvement and its subsequent lack of clarity means that anyone can now get involved and lay claim to knowing why a particular school is failing. In reality this means that schools are sitting targets and anyone at any time can have a pop at them on whatever issue they’ve read in the papers that morning. Even the Prime Minister has encouraged parents to be ‘sharp elbowed’ and demand the best, not for all children, but for their children alone. This has undermined schools time and time again. The level of expectation for education is at an all-time high and yet respect for educators seems to be in the gutter. I can’t help but thinking it is partly because of this change in language coupled with a heightened sense that expectations – whatever they are – must be, should be, higher.

Finally, I have been reflecting on the use of RI in the classroom. I was talking to a Head on Friday night about making judgements in lessons. She pointed out that although no teacher was ever thrilled about being told their lesson was satisfactory, being satisfactory had never made a teacher cry. RI on the other hand…well let’s just say you better make sure tissues are in this year’s budget. Why is that? The Head I was talking to said that satisfactory was an important judgement to have in your arsenal as a supportive Head because it allowed you to take into account context. Even the best teachers go through rough patches for a myriad of different reasons, and quite often they’re personal. Yes non-teacher readers, teachers have lives and just like yours, lives are complicated, messy and sometimes painful. If a typically good teacher delivered a mediocre lesson you used to be able to use your discretion and say that it was satisfactory. Not great but no worries. If you were concerned you could go back in and observe again or you could casually drop in and see if things were ok – it was up to you – and nobody asked, as there were no great expectations to react to a satisfactory lesson observation. Now you judge it RI and what happens? Everyone wants to know what support plan you’re putting in place. Oh my God you’ve got an RI teacher what are you doing about it? Teachers know this. Teachers know that being judged RI has consequences. Without satisfactory it’s harder to enable the necessary subtleties needed to lead a school successfully, which, at times, means sensitively. I know we triangulate a range of evidence and that one RI lesson isn’t everything, but again, the emotional impact that being judged RI has on a teacher, I have to wonder, sometimes, is it worth it? As my colleague reflected on Friday, she was satisfactory for twelve years and never received the level of high risk scrutiny she would have done had the satisfactory been RI. Now she’s outstanding. Maybe she’d have been outstanding quicker? Maybe. Or maybe the pressure of RI would have finished her off along with half her teachers.

I still don’t have a problem with the concept of requiring improvement in itself. I just wonder if by removing the middle ground completely we were actually being set up to fail right from the start. It will be interesting to see how Ofsted develops and what our next government does to improve education and public perceptions of schools and teachers. I doubt satisfactory will ever resurface but there are times when I wish it had never gone away.