Introduction

Being told that the inspectors are coming is pretty scary, but I would say that some people respond in ways that are counterproductive, including to their own health. These are the things I’ve either come across first-hand or experienced when I was an Ofsted inspector myself, or when I was being inspected.

Over-promising and under-delivering

One school’s Computing department’s documentation mentioned their brand new classroom of the future on virtually every page. Naturally, when I arrived at the school I asked to see it. The head of department took me to an empty room.

“In our classroom of the future”, he said with a straight face, “the emphasis is very much on the future.”

I didn’t allow myself to be influenced by what I thought could have been an attempt to pull the wool over the inspectors’ eyes. The school had, after all, put aside a substantial amount of money to equip this nascent state-of-the-art marvel. But it wasn’t a clever way of starting off the relationship!

Preparing the special Ofsted lesson

I heard of a teacher who had been up until 3am preparing the perfect lesson, only to be told that the inspectors wouldn’t be visiting his classroom at all. I felt sorry for him, but (and I speak from experience here, though in a different context), it would be far better in my opinion to be reasonably well-prepared and extremely well-rested than the other way round.

Not knowing stuff

The correct answer to an inspector’s question: “How do you account for the fact that the girls do much better in your Computer Science course than the boys do?” is not “Do they?”

As I made clear in the article I Don't Agree With Cognitive Load Theory (CLT). Here's Why, I can never remember numbers. That being the case, my answer to a question like “How do girls achieve compared with boys?” was always to say, “I’ll show you on a spreadsheet”. I think that, within reason, if you don’t know something off the top of your head, but know where to find it, that’s OK.

I do think, though, it’s worth looking at your stats to see if anything stands out, because if it does the inspector, if he or she is any good, will ask you about it, and you need to have a good answer.

An event which always amuses me is something that occurred when I was an ICT advisor in a London borough. We, the ICT advisory service, received notice that we were going to be inspected — and by none other than the chief ICT inspector at the time, Gabriel Goldstein. Gabriel was incisive, strict, frighteningly sharp — and loved by everyone in the UK’s scene. My boss (let’s call him Phil) organised the day of the inspection, and lined up loads of samples and statistics from schools across the borough. But there was one school that really hadn’t responded to any of our cajoling, training, funding or anything. They had achieved almost nothing in the realm of ICT. Let’s call this school Gasworks Lane Primary.

On the day of the inspection, Phil said “OK, we’re all set. For God’s sake don’t mention Gasworks Lane, and let’s hope he doesn’t notice that their paperwork is missing.”

Gabriel turned up, offered him tea, we chatted to him and put him in a nice comfortable room with all the samples of children’s work from across the borough, and tables of stats. He sat down, didn’t look at any of it, and said, to Phil “So tell me about Gasworks Lane.”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone turn so white so quickly!

Being defensive

I was on a school inspection once where the headteacher objected to the provisional finding that the results at ‘A’ Level seemed a bit lower than might be expected. Instead of looking at the data with the inspectors and exploring what could be going on, or at least disagreeing in an agreeable manner, he became very aggressive, called the inspectors’ professionalism into question, and argued that they were completely wrong because results in ‘A’ Level Psychology, which was being taken by three students (out of a cohort of 200), had increased by 1.2% over last year’s results. It made the atmosphere quite unpleasant, and an opportunity to look at the broader picture was missed.

Imposing pointless paperwork

I’ve come across and heard of situations where staff are expected to fill in loads of forms explaining what they’re doing and why, all cross-referenced to an inch of their lives. In my opinion, if the quality of what you’re doing, and the rationale for it, are not evident from observation and dialogue, no amount of written justification is going to make up for that.

Concluding remarks

I haven’t been an inspector, or an inspectee (is there such a word?) for a long time, so perhaps these comments no longer apply. However, they do seem to me to be common sense at the very least.