Ofsted: the longest week ever!

[BarleySugar]

It all hinges on the 'reasonable', that is the wording of most areas of the contract, and who decides if it is reasonable? We have a teacher who has been off work (very poorly) since the autumn, and the other members of her department are still being expected to plan all the cover lessons, mark all the work produced, do reports etc. SMT have said they have tried to get a suitably qualified cover teacher but can't so they have to rely on the cover supervisors following the instructions. Problem is that year 10s and 11s are doing the GCSEs, so the other staff are trying their best to keep it going for them, but is it reasonable?

[OverWyreGrower]

Ah, "contracted hours".... on a lot of job contracts (not just in schools) there is no such thing! I work in a University, and the lower grades (e.g. clerical or admin type staff) there are set hours for the week; however in higher grades (e.g. senior lecturers, Deans, professional management) there are no set or contracted hours. You just do the job, and it takes as long as it takes!!

Mr OWG's job has no contracted hours. He just has to get stuff done, which can often involve 60 or 70 hour weeks, with no overtime payment, shift allowance payments, or compensatory time off in lieu etc either.

Large companies often get staff to sign away their European Working Time Directive as well, so they can get you to work when they need you.

They'll never give teachers "contracted hours" as such, because they know that there is not enough time in a day to get everything done.

[Waffler]

Hmm! I remember something about performance related pay from a few years back; not sure it ever got put in place though.
'Contracted hours' makes me laugh - literally. I recently read (then read out to everyone I met) that apparently teachers hours are X amount a year; when you break that down into an hourly rate for each school day, it allowed about an hour, to an hour and a quarter shared between the beginning of the day before the children come in, and the end of the day once they've gone, 'plus a nominal number of hours in order to do the job properly' (not quite how it was worded, but you get the gyst.) When you take into consideration setting up a classroom for the day and tidying away at the end of the day, this leaves a miniscule amount of time to plan, mark, make resources etc.
I sometimes wonder what would happen if we 'worked to rule', but the fact is that without clear guidelines on what is expected of us it just wouldn't work. And I don't think I've ever been in a school where I've had the contract anywhere near the beginning of my employment with the school.

[Stacey Steve]

Sounds as if the criteria for the inspection is wrong then. I always thought that any job that requires checking should be definable, could be metered and was acheiveable.

Looks as if your union should refuse to play along untill you can do define what needs to be done each week, how long you really need to do this and if it isn't acheiveable within the contracted hours as seems to be the case above, then it don't get done.

Is there any effect upon pay from getting good grades from Ofsted? I have heard that teachers pay if pushed up by some sort of grading but unsure how as it were.

As I say, I'm not attacking teachers here, far from it (other to say you must be mad) just a parent trying to inderstand and making my comments.

[bluemoon]

Thanks, Waffler! There are days, like yesterday, when I almost miss teaching, then I read something like this and not only remember why I got out, but am so grateful that I did. Congratulations on surviving the dreaded inspectors.

[TPeers]

You get prior notice of an Ofsted inspection?

I thought the idea was to see how a school was normally run, not where it had been "sanitised" to look good for the inspectors.

Surely a if a school is to be marked as good, then it should be good all the time.

To say that you worked 2 weeks in one week to bring things up to standard is a fraud.

I'll look a bit more closely at my daughter's school in future, I want a good education for her all the time.

Sorry, I do have a lot of respect for teachers generally but this has really shocked me.

I'm not a teacher but I have friends that are - one of whom is married to an ofsted inspector!

Children are in school for around 6 hours a day, of which about 4hrs is 'learning time' the rest being the various breaks between lessons, assembles, lunch etc...

Those 4 hours of lessons take at least twice that amount of time in terms of preparation, paperwork and follow-up. In an 'ofsted week' where everything has to be typed rather than hand written and teachers are under additional stress to make the school look good these tasks can take twice as long as normal so turning a job which requires around 60hrs a week into one which needs over 100hrs!

Now consider the pay they recieve for this.................

Terry

[Waffler]

Certainly I'd agree that it wasn't really 'sanitising' that took place; more titivating.
I agree Stacey Steve that a school should be 'good' all the time if it is to get that grading, but to perhaps put your mind at rest, annoyingly for us teachers, the weighting is on the paperwork produced by management beforehand, far more than what they see when they're actually in. I also agree that they should just turn up rather than give fore-warning; far less stress on children and staff alike.
From our point of view, there was an awful lot of tidying (which in fairness, when you're teaching 'good' lessons all the time does not get much of a look in as it doesn't directly affect the children's learning) and changing displays which begin to get a bit tatty after a while anyway.
Also, whilst every teacher produces their weekly plans, when Ofsted call, they want to see detailed plans with learning intentions clearly outlined, so this is paperwork in addition to our usual workload.
Unfortunately, whilst you may not want to hear it, to expect teachers to perform as they do for Ofsted, ALL the time is completely impractical; that is NOT to say we don't do a good job the rest of the time, more so as Winnie said, that we want everything to be perfect for the inspection because we know what it means. Inspectors aren't stupid; they know it's a performance to a certain extent, but unless they change the rules to spot checks it will remain the same. And as I said earlier, in most cases the grading is almost set before they actually reach the school; the idea is for them to check that what management have put on the paperwork is actually the case.

Well done Barley Sugar on your good Ofsted result.

[BarleySugar]

We didn't have time for any sanitising, as Winnie says, it's a case of getting everything together. I know the curriculum manager was asked for statistics that he wouldn't normally have to hand, so he had to have time to produce them from the data he had. Of course the test there was did he have the raw data? Yes.
I suppose the only thing different for the lessons was having typed up lesson plans for every lesson you were teaching, but what they saw was what would have been taught anyway. I plan every lesson, but I don't type up every one, it would be a waste of time better spent elsewhere.. I keep progress records of every class I teach. I wouldn't have time to sent all of them up in a couple of days, let alone input data and be able to explain how I used them to inform my teaching.
You can't get outstanding for a result with just 2 days notice, we had record GCSE results last year, and had been improving everything since the last inspection 4 years ago, since we were rated 'Good'. In the past it was 6 weeks notice, but that still wouldn't enable bad practice to be hidden that effectively, and they do ask parents and students for their opinions too.

[winnie]

Hi, at my school (primary) we got the Ofsted call on Monday and they were there Thursday morning. You need a couple of days to get the paper work out as they want timetables and loads of information before they come and then they literally flew through the school and wanted everything on hand the second they asked for it. They ask you to get work ready with books labelled and to be honest, other than checking my room was tidy and my weekly planning was clear, there wasn't much time to do anything else. We got a 'good' so we were very pleased.

I don't think it's a question of 'sanitising'. I can't speak for every teacher, but lots of my colleagues (and myself) are such perfectionists, we want the absolute best for the children & our school and want it to be seen to be as good as we believe it really is.

The job never ends and no matter how much you do there is always a little something else that you could do. Many of my colleagues go into work at weekends & I will be in school tomorrow, preparing for Tuesday morning. We are dedicated (probably mad) but love the job we do.

xxx

[heebiejeebie]

It used to be about 6 weeks' notice, now it is a couple of days. You can't do much "sanitising" in two days!

[Stacey Steve]

You get prior notice of an Ofsted inspection?

I thought the idea was to see how a school was normally run, not where it had been "sanitised" to look good for the inspectors.

Surely a if a school is to be marked as good, then it should be good all the time.

To say that you worked 2 weeks in one week to bring things up to standard is a fraud.

I'll look a bit more closely at my daughter's school in future, I want a good education for her all the time.

Sorry, I do have a lot of respect for teachers generally but this has really shocked me.

[heebiejeebie]

Well done you lot! Last time I was in a school being inspected they didn't come to observe me (full-time, with TLR etc) but "got" my part-time one-day-a-week doing-it-for-a-favour colleague five times. Weird. She was not chuffed.

Waffler - good luck with the next interview. It sounds like the first one wouldn't really have suited your skills anyway so you haven't lost out (although a knockback is never pleasant).

[BarleySugar]

Sorry you didn't get the job, but congrats on the Ofsted. We had ours the week after Easter. Found out the Tues morning (Obviously with Good Friday and Easter Mon couldn't let us know earlier) that they were coming on the Thurs. We had been expecting it since Sept, but...I suppose on the plus side we didn't have much time to panic.
They decided to watch my year 13 ICT lesson! The group were halfway through a project managment unit, so I wasn't really 'delivering', just being on hand for tech help. Anyway, I re-iterated all the points they needed to evidence in their write up, then sent them to get on with it. He (ICT expert, so he knew what to look for ) only stayed 20 minutes . Only hoped for a satisfactory, but got a good, which amazed me, because I didn't feel that I'd really taught anything.
Still the kids were great, except one forgot it was week 2, and turned up at 9.15 instead of 9! He was really apolgetic afterwards, and promised to keep me in my old age if I got the sack! Kim really talked me up as a teacher, and Hannah, although she had been away for 4 weeks, could still explain what she was doing. Mind you Alex commented afterward about my wobbly voice, and the fact that my hand trembled when I picked up some paper! I'll really miss them all when they finish in 3 weeks time. The school got outstanding in almost all areas, so the head was really pleased. We made it onto the front page of the local paper this week.

[janeyo]

I cetainly don't miss teaching from the ofsted visiting side of things!

Well done for surviving a gruelling week. Good luck for the new interviews and getting the one you want!

janeyo

[yoanbob]

good luck with the next interview, fingers crossed