The ‘do they/don’t they’ buggers’ muddle of whether or not Ofsted inspectors are supposed to grade lessons hasn’t really been put to rest. Schools’ National Director, Mike Cladingbowl’s attempts at clarification have only really served to underline some of the inconsistencies. The crux of the situation as it stands is that while inspectors are not supposed to judge the overall lesson “it is still possible for an inspector to record a graded evaluation on an evidence form under one or more of the four main judgement headings, including teaching”. This clumsy compromise is encapsulated in the Evaluation Form used by inspectors to record judgements:
And here’s a worked example tweeted by Sapuran Gill:
While it’s true that there’s nowhere to record an overall grade for the lesson observed, there are spaces for inspectors to record a grade on Achievement of pupils, Quality of teaching, Behaviour and safety of pupils and Leadership and management. Who in their right mind will not understand a grade awarded against Quality of teaching as a grade of their teaching? The distinction is so subtle it almost begs to be misunderstood.
Mike Cladingbowl is well aware of the problem. He says, “But this is categorically not the same as judging a teacher, or even the teaching, and especially not a lesson overall, by evaluating the performance of the teacher in a lesson or a part of a lesson.” OK, if you say so. But it certainly looks pretty damn similar. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck, right? Wrong: “Making a judgement about the quality of teaching, based on a wide variety of evidence gathered in the classroom and elsewhere, is not the same as judging how well a teacher performed.” It may not be exactly the same, but it really isn’t different enough.
The fact that inspectors have needed quite so much clarification and guidance over the past few weeks speaks of a wide-scale and systemic lack of nuance. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about all the clarification, I think it’s great that Ofsted are taking this so seriously. But as any teacher knows, just giving kids the same explanation over and over doesn’t usually change their understanding. And it definitely doesn’t change their behaviour. What’s needed is a change that clears the fog once and for all. That change might be as simple as redesigning the Evaluation Form.
What if we did away with the bit where it says “Use for grades”? What if inspectors were only allowed to use evidence from lesson observations to make a cumulative grade for quality of teaching across a whole school? What if they used this evidence to record only what they observed and then teased out a judgement through discussion, questioning of assumptions and careful thought? Lead inspector, Mary Myatt refers to this idea as a ‘panopticon’ – an attempt to make holistic judgements rather than lots of little ones which we’re told are not to be aggregated. If they’re not to aggregated, what’s the point of them?
Tantalisingly, Cladingbowl concludes his clarification with this rather exciting possibility:
…if instructing inspectors to feed back on the range of evidence used to arrive at a judgement without giving a numerical teaching ‘grade’ would help, or even removing the grade for teaching on the evidence form altogether, then I am prepared to consider it. We might, for instance, just ask inspectors to note all their evidence gathered about teaching, and then bring it all together at the end of the inspection in a plenary before discussing the single overall judgement on teaching with the school.
This is exactly what we need! It would clearly signal the end to confusion and would set an excellent example to schools that judging the effectiveness of teachers and lessons isn’t possible in a 20-25 minute snapshot.
So there we are: the battle lines are drawn for the next skirmish in the war against lesson gradings. Our next objective is a redesign of the Evaluation Form.
Related posts
Are we any clearer? Ofsted explain what they do and don’t do
How can we make classroom observation more effective?
Still grading lessons? A triumph of experience over hope
I think this is all good stuff. I want judgements gone. I am concerned that we are tinkering with the edges rather than the fundamentals of OFSTED though. If there are no grades in EFs, no grades of individual lessons, and SLTs stop grading individual lessons (which is something if a leap), what is likely to change? The references to curriculum or how to grade parts of schools still reflects an utter commitment to progressivism – something I am coming to the conclusion that OFSTED are incapable of reversing (it being born in a progressive era).
Hence, while as I said I think this is all good stuff, I fear that we may be fiddling while Rome burns. The grades in EFs, the graded observations, the dodgy phrases in inspection reports: all symptoms of something much larger (confirmed by the removal of progressive phrases – which appear to have helped inspectors grade schools – but no change in gradings). The things that are taking a lot of colleagues time to change – well I fear they’re changing very little in reality.
I am not trying to disparage your work, or the work of others at all. I just don’t think OFSTED should be allowed to get away with changing a few surface features while still inspecting schools on a fundamentally progressive basis.
You have to start somewhere. I’m reminded of the method for eating an elephant: one spoonful at a time. The fact that Ofsted have allowed me any kind of access is nothing short of miraculous. What’s the point of having influence if you don’t use it?
I agree that there’s so much more to reform, but the EF seems like a manageable chunk to bite off.
Yes, I agree. In the meantime we accept OFSTEDs legitimacy by not challenging it, and just by challenging aspects. As I said on twitter, haven’t completely worked this through in my head.
I AM challenging Ofsted’s legitimacy. Do you think I’ve been bought off? I’m well aware MC is using me to get what he wants, but that’s a reasonable trade.
I don’t think you have been bought off. I do think we are in danger of accepting legitimacy in exchange for some tinkering. I don’t even disagree with the tinkering.
Tinkering with the use, or not, or grades on the EF is irrelevant. The grade for overall effectiveness, and therefore achievement and teaching, is decided long before the Inspection a team walk through the door and has been based in the most recent Raiseonline.
The real issue is the number of schools who have tumbled down the OFSTED grading ladder based on the performance of a handful of Pupil Premium students in the previous year’s Year 11.
Common sense tells us that schools cannot overcome 16years of deprivation, and the chaotic home life some of these students endure,with 2 year’s Pupil Premium funding. However this is what OFSTED expects.
David – take a look at the recent inspections of High schools in East Cheshire and then tell us what your thoughts are?
Have you got some handy links to these documents?
Tilly Bud your comments are absolutely spot on and definitely our most recent experience. The OFSTED team might as well have stayed in their Holiday Inn and written up their report from there. We were judged on the performance of about 12-15 pupils who I demonstrated (using transition matrices), had actually performed slightly above expectations but the LI wasn’t interested.
[…] as David Didau has outlined very clearly in this post: https://www.learningspy.co.uk/featured/ofsteds-evaluation-form-next-skirmish/, there is a fair amount of residual confusion. And until we get rid of all the thematic evidence […]
Look at Poynton High School and Wilmslow High School’s OFSTED reports.
OK, I’ve had a look. What’s your point?
School are being judged on the performance of PP students in ROL – lesson observations irrelevant.
You are wasting your time lobbying OFSTED on changes to EFs. It doesn’t matter how good the teaching is the judgement is made on outcomes.
That does appear to be an issue in these schools. Someone would need to do further research to see how widespread the problem was. It’s certainly not the case in all schools – have a look at Clevedon School for an example of a grading which seems to run entirely counter to attainment.
But, if I’m asked back I’ll raise this with MC.
Cleavedon School’s OFSTED was 2011- very different schedule. No Pupil Premium never mind PP expectations.
Would you be interested in writing a guest post on this? If not, can you put together series of bullets about what you think the problem is and I’ll write something up.
Thanks, David
I think Micom Metcalfe makes similar points. Personal experience of a school that would have done better in OFSTED if non PP kids had done worse (hence closing gap).
I don’t agree that schools can’t but I’m sympathetic to the idea that the judgement has largely been made (even if not explcitly, it’s implicit because of the evaluation schedule). I think it is probably right that it is judged on data, though I have clear problems with the implicit criteria for this judgement (such as the example above).
It is certainly true that almost no school gets different achievement and teaching and learning judgments, so regardless of grading lesson observations or not, achievement and progress drive both judgements.
I am behind you 100% David. The most effective way to move forward is to redesign the Evidence Form used by inspectors when carrying out lesson observation. This needs to be followed up with unmistakable directions about how to use the revised document.
It seems ironic that the EF is currently being used as an evidence form AND an evaluation form. Mike has thrown out a lifeline for reforming inspection practice and, at face value, he and perhaps others at Ofsted have finally realised there is a difference between evidence and evaluation.
Misunderstandings about the distinctions between the two have plagued the validity and reliability of inspection findings for far too long. If Ofsted really wants to become the best inspection system it can be, and strive to be the best in the world, it needs to clear up this misunderstanding once and for all. Triangulation of evidence, when used properly, can increase the trustworthiness of inspection findings. Attempts to triangulate evaluations, in the form of judgements, only serve to do the opposite and thereby jeopardise the credibility of inspection findings.
It is a bold move by Mike to suggest that Ofsted may consider “ask[ing] inspectors to note all their evidence gathered about teaching, and then bring it all together at the end of the inspection in a plenary before discussing the single overall judgement on teaching with the school.” This brings with it profound changes to way Ofsted approaches the triangulation of evidence gathered during inspection.
The gauntlet has been thrown down, both Ofsted and others must respond accordingly.
The whole debate underlines the problems of education. Mary Myatt made the point that observations are really about the fact that schools start to game exams in various ways to achieve results and as a consequence learners do not get a rounded learning experience. Even if they get good results.
In other words there is no relationships between good teaching and assessment. Once you accept that premise the whole education system begins to unravel.
The problem lies fundamentally in a system that used to be concerned with education and where teachers were part of the process of making objective educational decisions, to one that is now concerned with political outcomes where teachers are part of the process of achieving those political outcomes. Or even worse not achieving them just claiming to have done so. Objective educational decisions have been buried under the weight of league table and long term data.
The process of inspection therefore becomes a game whereby politicians try to ensure that teachers have indeed delivered those political outcomes. And educationalists are concerned with showing that they have; whether they have or otherwise. Teaching and Learning has become an ancilliary objective of education.
That is why the Willingham / Hirsch proposition is so interesting to policy makers. One offers the view that objective knowledge is implicit to learning and the other identifies that knowledge as being that which is known by politicians.What could be better than a system that has testable knowledge, which conveniently is the knowledge of the ruling elite.
The way forward is to try and improve assessment to match the kind of skills that society says it requires whether it be that of the ruling elite. commerce, critical or whatever. Therein lies the other problem no one can agree the fundamental purpose of education.
From the ages of 4 – 21 we have a calamitous formal education system that is fractured, distributed and disconnected with different objectives, ways of working and cultures.
I think more recently these problems have been acknowledged and the process of addressing them has begun. Unfortunately all it has done, and will do (in the short term), is highlight that as a profession we really do don’t know what we are doing to any great extent.
The key is to keep working it through until we address the problems. My guess is that politicians are interested in politics and not education. That is where the real problem lies.
OFSTED is a passing irrelevance it will only survive if it can become part of the process of fattening the pig and not just weighing it, to borrow a David Didau metaphor.It shows few signs of really knowing how to do that. It’s claims to have improved teaching and learning are dubious.
So dubious in fact that it is at war with it’s own inspectors, as to what constitutes good teaching and learning.
David
My experience of a recent inspection (Nov 2013) supports the views of some of the posters above. The achievement grade had already been decided by the time the team walked in through the door. The lead inspector said he had to base his grade on 2012 RAISE as the 2013 had not yet been published. When we produced our own 2013 analysis, he said that as a boys school it was not enough to exceed boys’ national attainment and match national boys’s expected levels of progress – instead we should be benchmarked against all pupils, which made our achievement grade a 3. I was then asked for a summary of all lesson gradings awarded, broken down by year group, going back 3 years.
First thing on day 2, we were told that since achievement was 3, based on “progress over time”, it meant that teaching required improvement. As teaching and achievement required improvement, so did behaviour (using the concept of behaviour for learning). Finally, since all these grades were a 3, he had “no choice” but to award 3 for leadership. When 2 members of the team were inclined in the team meeting to suggest behaviour ought to be a 2, the lead said “colleagues- we must remember what our orders are”(!)
The lead then said what a good job I had done as head in turning the school around and that he would put that in the report. When I tried to argue his judgements, he said he might remove the positive comments about me.
You can read the report and, like my governors and parents, be baffled at the inconsistency between the comments and the numbers. The only way to make sense is to see the system as effectively a single grade report card which depends on the progress of a small number of students in 2 subjects.
So I guess I’m not convinced that winning a skirmish is the start of winning the war, but I applaud you for trying and thanks for the great posts.
[…] David Didau, has written several posts on this subject which you can read here, here, here, here, and […]
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