I used to work in an outstanding school, it was a mixed comprehensive in outer London and in my first ever Ofsted inspection it was graded as outstanding in all areas. We had worked really hard in the year prior to that in order to achieve that rating, and I'm really proud to say that I was a part of it as I was observed on the second day and received a 1 grade for my lesson.
However, I have since left that school (and teaching in secondary) my experiences there, and in my current role have led me to believe that we need to change this focus on becoming outstanding, at least in terms of Ofsted's definition of it.
To become outstanding, there are 4 key areas in which a school must excel:
- Overall effectiveness (including teaching, learning and assessment, safeguarding, Social, moral, spiritual and cultural development (SMSC) and physical well-being)
- Leadership and management (including the school's vision, expectations and behaviour, curriculum and extra-curricular activities)
- Teaching, learning and assessment (including appropriate assessment for planning, equality of opportunity, subject knowledge and promotion of British values)
- Personal development, behaviour and welfare (including attitudes to learning, careers guidance, attendance, health knowledge and understanding, behaviour and the safety of pupils)
You can read all these in full in the Ofsted Inspection handbook (found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/725837/School_inspection_handbook_section_5-170718-v2.pdf ), but I have summarised the key points so you get an idea of what is looked at.
The problem I have, and, reading many other articles (like this one from Secret Teacher), I am not alone in thinking this
is that schools in the UK are so focused on 'raising standards', pupil progress and trying to navigate the ever complicated change in National Curriculum levels and GCSE/ A-Level changes that we are forgetting what we actually want or our children.
I'm not a parent, but working in schools (and being at the age where lots of my friends are on their second child) has meant I have had lots of conversation with parents about what they want for their children. There are only a few key themes which are common in most of these conversations:
- Happiness
- Health
- Success
Of course, equality of opportunity, careers guidance, feeling safe and SMSC development will contribute to all of this however in my experience that is not what most teachers (and most schools) focus on. Instead, the majority of a teachers time is spent checking that students are on track, achieving or exceeding their age related, key stage or personal targets. I am not saying that this isn't important, but what I do believe is that we are focusing far too much on these things and not enough on the rest.
When I was Head of Year 11 I had my annual review meeting with my then line manager. The majority of our conversation was not spent on the activities I'd planned for Year 11, the changes I'd made with tutor groups and additional careers guidance and support I had developed for them. Nor was it discussing the excellent way in which my team had dealt with incidents of cyber bullying, fights and other aspects of anti-social behaviour which, unfortunately, peppered my week. Instead the conversation centred around my GCSE class and their current grades. This represented less than 8% of my teaching week (less if you include the hours I was at work but not actively teaching) and only a small portion of the responsibility I had as a teacher (KS3,4 and 5 groups as well as extra-curricular clubs and activities) and a Head of Year (210 students, a team of 13 and numerous assemblies, attendance detentions, meetings and other pastoral issues to deal with). This conversation highlighted to me the ridiculous obsession with grades that had become normal in teaching and the lack of perspective we gave to our own priorities.
I could come up with many more stories of the narrow focus on grades ( for example the question of why a pupil 'only' got an E in his GCSE when he had arrived for the practical component high, and the insinuation that I should have done more to boost his grade) but instead I will offer a solution.
Why don't we focus on those things which are important to us, collectively, as parents, carers, grandparents, human beings. We all want the next generation to be
- Happy (the epidemic of mental health problems in young people today highlights the importance of this)
- Healthy (More and more of our children are obese- a third of 10-11 year-olds and over a fifth of 4-5 year-olds are currently overweight or obese)
- Successful (in whatever form that may be- we need individuals who can contribute to society, create, manage and support in order to build our economy and our society to become more successful)
So why can't this start in schools? why can't outstanding schools be those who create Happy, Healthy and Successful people (in that order). If you're not happy, you can't be healthy, and if you aren't happy and healthy, it makes it a hell of a lot more difficult to become successful in the long term. I propose a change in the way Ofsted inspects schools- lets focus on child happiness and health and success in whatever area they choose over their grades in a narrow range of subjects designed to make it easier for use to compare our academic standing with other nations (that is a whole other post in itself).
This, in itself would then lead to better outcomes and a better population as a whole. With one of my Year 7 classes I spent a term focusing purely on their attitude to learning in lessons. I gave them a score each week, recorded those who were consistently working hard and recognised 'legends' each week who had done something particularly well that day. Nothing else about my teaching practice changed- I used no special resource cards or teaching style. In that term that class exceeded the expectations I had of them, and were better performers than another, higher ability group. All of them looked forward to the lessons and had developed a positive view of the subject.
If we can focus our efforts on making people better learners, better communicators and better humans we will create better students and better results as a by-product, rather than stressed out, socially unsure young people with higher than ever levels of depression and anxiety.
All we need to do is change our measurement of 'Outstanding'.
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