Carol Green compares her sleepless nights as an inspector with the angst of being inspected. I wonder if anyone else out there is in my position? Perhaps we ought to form a club, have our own badge? I am one of the few people to have seen an OFSTED primary inspection from both sides. Our school was part of a pilot inspection in February; last term I inspected another primary school.
I thought that I already worked hard, as the teaching head of a small rural school. I have never worked as hard in my life as I did that week. Thank goodness the team in which I worked was composed of professional, experienced people. Without their support I would have gone under. Coming to terms with the need to build professional relationships quickly, to cope with the overwhelming paperwork, even to be in the right place at the right time to see what I was supposed to see were not straightforward.
I would like to describe my hours of work on the busiest day. Up at 7 am, in school by 8 am. I think it was about 7 pm when we left school. After a meal at the hotel I began work again, determined to finish at midnight because I don’t function well with little sleep. I kept to my deadline, but I could not sleep, there was so much to do and so little time in which to do it. I worked on till 2 am, slept till 5 am and then worked until 7 am and just finished in time to start again.
The greatest stress of inspection for me was trying to get the judgments right. I had to put aside personal concerns, such as was I unobtrusive in the classrooms, was I coming across as intimidating or too friendly? I had to put aside worries about how much to write, whether the language was precise enough, and whether I was being too subjective. I had to put aside my worries about the constraints of the framework and its rigid subject divisions. I had to concentrate on getting the judgments right. I was still making the judgments over and over again, long after the inspection was finished.
The inspection of our own school is less recent, but memories of it are still very powerful! We only had five weeks to prepare and for this we were profoundly grateful.
Even five weeks was enough time to make us doubt everything we did. We went for the ‘bare all’ approach. We tried to be ourselves, not to play safe. We did not select a sample of children’s work, we gave them the lot. We were honest and open in our discussions with inspectors.
With hindsight we are pleased we had the courage to be ourselves. Not that I think we would have fooled anyone had we not been, but we felt we had done ourselves justice and that what was seen in those few days was an accurate reflection of what we do.
The children were quite critical of the process. They felt we had led them to expect fuller and more extensive discussions with inspectors than they actually had. They felt they needed to know more about the inspectors as people. They also tellingly said our tension had rubbed off on them!
I wonder what if anything we would have done differently had the inspections been in reverse order or with the benefit of hindsight?
We would certainly have had a stronger support network in place. Everyone needs someone to talk to who appreciates how stressful the process is. Also we would ask the inspectors to talk to the children about what is going to happen, so that the children understand what will be asked of them.
Perhaps we tried too hard to minimise disruptions. Our equipment is, of necessity, stored all over school and usually children collect them themselves without disrupting other classes. We should have allowed this to go on as it normally does, because it appeared to the inspectors that we always had equipment prepared for children rather than letting them select appropriately for themselves.
Inspecting is incredibly hard work and it is stressful, especially trying to get it right for the school. But the stress levels for me did not even approach the stress of being inspected. I was fairly new to the school, I had not invested years of my life there, but others had.There was not a single person in school, dinner ladies, secretary or child who did not experience the stress, who did not need reassurance. Surely it is possible to reduce the waiting time for schools? And surely too it is possible to design a framework for inspection which better reflects the nature of primary education?
Bill Laar (writing in The TES 25.11.94) ended his regular column with a the following remark: “When teachers can see inspection as an instrument to be used for their own professional development and to enhance the education of the children they teach, undesirable stress and anxiety will be eliminated or reduced to manageable proportions.” Get real, Mr Laar.
Carol Green is head of Thwaites primaryschool in Cumbria.
