The bad news, at least for children and for staff and governors keen to see their school develop in a properly audited way, emerged last summer: they may have to wait even longer for their inspection than originally envisaged.

In the meantime, they can take some comfort from the fact that OFSTED is issuing specific guidance to contracting inspectors on primary and special schools.

It seems extraordinary that more than a year after the new round of four-yearly inspections began in secondary schools, OFSTED now finds it necessary to remind inspection teams about the need for basic courtesies when coming and going from classrooms, about giving feedback in a sensitive, professional manner, ensuring communication is “user-friendly” and expectations agreed.

It is even more bizarre that it should also need to draw to inspectors’ attention the fact that primary teachers have little or no non-contact time and tend to teach most or all national curriculum subjects; that primary headteachers may have large teaching commitments; that subjects are often taught through themes or topics; that primary classrooms may include pupils from more than one year group and that parents get involved as helpers.

OFSTED wants inspectors to bear such things in mind when planning inspections. It is very much to be hoped that they will; indeed, it is tempting to hope, as Ted Wragg might, that inspectors needing to be so reminded will then have a happy return journey to the planet Zarg or whatever other remote corner of the Universe they have been inhabiting. Certainly, OFSTED should not be tempted to beam up any more aliens to make up for the shortfall of teams willing to take on primary inspections; better to slow the pace than to risk bringing the process further into disrepute.

The ever-optimistic primary manager, however, will rejoice that OFSTED has now spelt out the differences of primary and secondary inspection; that it has listened to complaints and is trying to reduce unfair pressures on staff by responding to the way primary schools are organised and laying down what amounts to a code of behaviour for inspectors.

In doing so OFSTED has set a fair example. It has shown that it too is capable of improvement based on feedback; that it can take it constructively as well as dish it out. It will go further soon when it starts to consult on a new framework for inspection.

Those concerned about a forthcoming inspection will note from Maureen O’Connor‘s report (page 9) that even before this new advice was issued, most heads she spoke to were happy with the outcome of their inspections and that many had even found it useful.

Even the unfamiliar parents’ meetings and questionnaires have proved morale-boosters. Parents often only have occasion to express negative feelings over particular issues and are rarely invited to sum up their appreciation of the school as a whole in the way OFSTED invites.

Teachers will always feel threatened by judgments of their work - a salutary lesson in itself to those who daily make judgments of their pupils’. As Carol Green (page 12) says so eloquently, it is asking a lot to expect to see inspection as no more than an instrument of their own professional development.

But what does it say about the management of a school if staff are so unused to receiving constructive feedback that they are petrified by the prospect?

Schools that are judged to be failing are rare. A school that experiences this completely out of the blue without forewarning has a legitimate complaint of professional neglect against its local authority inspection or advisory service.

Similarly, teachers’ lack of self-assurance is a reflection on those whose job it is in a school to assist them in their professional development, evaluate their work and provide them with the help and encouragement they need to sustain their professional confidence - not once every four years or more but every day.

Editor, School Management Update.