School Inspections: What do they really mean? Andrew Thomas B.Ed (Hons) M.Phil NPQH Principal Al Ain English Speaking School
never thought I would return to my beloved countryfied county of Devon, to witness things by children that would make your hair curl if I wrote them here….. In fact, you wouldn’t believe it!
I have been at the chalk face of being inspected for over 20 years now, and have come to learn that school inspections always cause so much division, contention and debate, but I want to share with you how they work, & what they measure.
Moving forward to 2010, we had made major changes to the school with policy, procedures and most importantly of all, recruitment of good staff. Principals in the UK and here in the UAE, are asked to prepare a SEF (School Evaluation Form), prior to the inspection, and this is given to the inspectors well in advance of the ‘main event’. The term ‘Form’ is an understatement, as it is usually over 120 pages long! Now, here is the deal: Principals have to present their school on this paper work in the best light as they can, pointing to hard evidence, whilst inspectors will use it primarily to make a judgement before the inspection is conducted and will go hunting during the inspection, to ensure the evidence supports the statements made. At the end of the ‘Form,’ the Principal has to grade themselves against the criteria of the framework: get it wrong against what the inspectors judge during the inspection and the Principal and management are judged as weak, or poor. Does a Principal really want to say that their school is weak, just to get a mention in the report that the management is strong, for getting this judgement correct?
Ten years ago, I was an Assistant Principal, in one of the largest schools in Europe, let alone the UK, that gained Ofsted’s prestigious ‘Outstanding’ inspection grade. Eleven years prior to this time, I had joined this same school as a junior teacher that was in the bottom 5% of all schools in the UK. I remember being offered the position and pausing; but it was my professor from university, Gareth Stratton, who gave me some very kind words about how schools like this needed youngsters like myself, to make changes. Those words are as fresh to me today as they were then, and ones I remind myself of how I can now drive success and change in my own school when recruiting newly qualified teachers: looking to build capacity for the future. The school was in ‘Special Measures,’ the worst grade possible; in fact it was worse than this, as we were served ‘Notice to Improve’. This meant that the inspectorate had given the school a small amount of time to change things for the better, or the government would close the school, but were the inspectors correct in their judgement? Oh yes! I had trained in some very challenging schools in inner-city Liverpool (which I loved), but The Source
The SEF had been written, and we had judged ourselves as ‘Good’. This was the second of four results possible, ‘Outstanding’ being the 10
