In the Schools Week profile on Ofsted’s head honcho, Sir Michael Wilshaw apparently puts the teaching professions’ lack of confidence in Ofsted down to “his relentless drive for challenge”. He is reported as saying,
Me coming out and being quite critical sometimes of leaders not doing what they should be doing, giving my view about how schools should be run, immediately puts people’s backs up. … and what has become clear to me is, once one person says ‘Ofsted’s broke’ … other people jump on that bandwagon… I know we’ve got this reputation of being this tough organisation that costs people their sanity and their jobs, but our job is – through inspection – to say what needs to be said and improve standards.
This confuses me. I’m not sure if it’s possible he really believes this or whether it’s just part of the gunslinging mythos he’s constructed around himself. Although, I’ve never met the man, the fact that he’s appointed such a nuanced thinker as Sean Harford as National Director of Education speaks well of him. Despite his apparent ability to only ever open his mouth in public in order to change feet, he has at least had the wisdom to surround himself with people well capable of changing Ofsted for the better. For this he must be applauded, but seeing as the inspectorate was in such a woe-begotten shambles when he took over in 2012 it’s odd that he’s so defensive.
Maybe the defensiveness comes from a sense of uncertainty? Sir Michael strikes as something of a hedgehog. One of the most striking moments of his interview is his response to being ask who inspired him as a headteacher:
It sounds very arrogant to say I didn’t need much help, but I knew all the pitfalls. And I could replicate all the stuff that I had done in Newham in Hackney, with similar sorts of children.
Maybe turning round a school is insufficient preparation for turning around Ofsted?
But no one – or at least no one sensible – is upset about Sir Michael’s ‘drive for challenge’; teachers are, on the whole, heartily relieved by the structural changes in inspection and the herculean efforts to bring rogue inspectors into line. He genuinely seems to have grasped that accountability works best, that standards only improve, when we are not trying to please inspectors and do ‘what Ofsted want’. He may well put nose out of joint when he rails at headteachers on how they should be doing their jobs, but this is by no means why there is still so little confidence in the organisation he fronts.
The problem isn’t so much that nothing Ofsted do or say improves standards, it’s that improving standards isn’t really Ofsted’s job. The job of an inspectorate is to ensure that standards don’t slip. This is an important distinction, but a crucial one if Michael is to ever understand why teachers struggle so much with what Ofsted do. Few would seriously disagree that schools ought to be held to account for the way the spend public money in their efforts to educate young people. It’s absolutely right that there is an independent inspectorate – in some form or other – which has the teeth to prevent schools from committing the grossest errors and force them, where they are clearly failing to redirect their efforts. But why does Wilshaw think it’s his function to punish headteachers for not doing what he would do were he still running a school?
If it’s “clear” to Wilshaw that any criticism of Ofsted is merely populist troublemaking and naysaying then the party maybe over. If Ofsted is to be truly fit for purpose it too must be held to account. Where there is no mechanism for holding an individual or organisation to account they tend to focus on ‘looking good’ rather than ‘being good’. Sadly the only real mechanism we have for pointing out our dissatisfactions with Ofsted is public opinion. Fortunately, public opinion – mainly as expressed through social media – has had a marked and positive effect on Ofsted in recent years, but if Sr Michael has now made up his mind that any future criticism is just bandwagon jumping then both he and we are doomed.
I completely agree. Be ‘spits blood’ when criticised but head teachers have to accept their criticism with good grace and an open mind. Michael Wilshaw wants to be the nation’s head teacher and that is how he sees his role at ofsted which is why he can’t see that there is more than one way of doing things and you don’t necessarily need to send home textbooks with students or set homework or ban mobile phones. He is also desperately trying to find a role for ofsted whilst the government move to an ever more data driven agenda to decide which schools are successful, coasting or failing. Ofsted’s only hope is in the ‘soft’ qualitative evaluations such as British values and SMSC which you need to be able to evaluate by actually visiting a school but this may not be enough to save Ofsted in the coming years.
I’ve certainly found it impossible to hold Ofsted to account. The complaints system is in-house, farcical, not transparent, and not fit-for-purpose.
And that included a meeting with Sean Harford.
An alternative reading of Wilshaw’s position, and of Ostfed as an organisation defined by strong top-down leadership;
What distinguishes performance from acting is the engagement of the person in the action. I’m reading Alan Alda’s autobiography ”Never have your dog stuffed” at the moment and he describes his experience;
‘(as a performer) when it came to emotion all I could do was to pump it up. If I started out with one emotion I stayed there. Changes didn’t come about by themselves. I was protected against change. In a way I was imitating life not living it. I was stuffing the dog. If I could learn to unstuff it maybe I could become a better actor. I didn’t know it then but maybe I’d become a better person too.’ (Chapter 9 p.121)
Given a long period of practice Wilshaw demonstrates mastery in his performance leading to an automatic response from him as his town sheriff mindset glides into action. He says he knew all the pitfalls and didn’t need any advice. Why? Because he was an expert in that performance, and demonstrated his technical mastery. It is a good example of the interpenetration of know-what, know-how and know-why. He can’t escape into another realm of know-what because he doesn’t know it or know why it causes a problem.
The authentic Wilshaw may be different. He has shown kindness and tolerance of difference, social awareness and respect for individuals in the past and this could be Wilshaw the actor, the person engaged with the performance, coming to the front of the stage. But what we more often see is the six-gun habit winning out when it comes to standing in front of the audience. It’s more available.
Why did (does) he bother to defend himself? Because his beliefs underpin his argument and the evidence from his life as an educator indicates that he believes that children (people) have rights as well as responsibilities. Along the way he seems to have forgotten that words have meanings, and he expresses what we might well agree with in terms that we find unacceptable at times. As teachers we all set challenges for ourselves and the students we teach and aren’t scared of doing so – we have a belief that there’s always a bit more to learn even when a student thinks they know it all and we will let them know in a kind, respectful way. The age and position of the learner is immaterial.
How can we support a person in making changes when they seem to be controlled by a well-established thinking habit?
By consistently ignoring what we don’t want and and paying attention to what we do want, by not getting drawn into getting the big hat and spurs world but by focusing on the authentic kindness of teachers, with Sir Michael Wilshaw, one of us, included. And offering a challenge when we can see he has more to learn or makes an error.
Geoffrey James
#kindbehaviour
#behaviourinquiry
I do not trust Ofsted as far as I can throw them. And contrary to Wilshaw’s assertion, I’m not jumping on a bandwagon. From personal experience I believe Ofsted is broken, I cannot trust them, and despite putting the question to Michael Cladingbowl at RearchED 2014, I am not reassured that Ofsted can rebuild my trust.
My continued distrust of Ofsted comes from their attitude to FE. When every man and his dog could see that graded observations were ineffective, Ofsted eventually decided to drop them – except in FE, where they continued. Ofsted parroted the evidence for dropping them, yet couldn’t seem to grasp that the evidence should equally apply to FE where we teach the same syllabus, to the same standards, in the same subjects, with largely the same cohort of students. Mercifully that is now changing, but more worrying is the lack of oversight Ofsted has over FE, and the lack of interest Ofsted has in changing that situation.
Ofsted inspects FE providers. Yet when confronted with a situation which (were it a secondary school) would result in a provider being judged inadequate, or trigger an immediate, no-notice re-inspection, Ofsted shrug their shoulders and say “not our responsibility”. Speaking to the lead inspector during an inspection, putting your job at risk to whistleblow, appealing the outcome of an inspection, speaking to Ofsted inspectors at conferences, nothing seems to engage Ofsted. Woe betide you if, as teacher, you fall foul of some arcane preference the inspector in your class has, for you will suffer. But nevermind if your SLT is submitting false results and endangering the welfare of staff and students, they’ll still get outstanding, since when it comes to judging Leadership Ofsted base their opinion on the results in the classroom, not what SLT are actually doing in terms of leadership.
Every teacher I have told my story to is horrified. Every professional colleague who hears my experiences is appalled. Even Ofsted inspectors in private are disturbed. But Ofsted as a body will not engage. And until I can be reassured that Ofsted intend to be a body which holds educational providers to account, ensuring they safeguard their students, and provide a safe environment for everybody, then I will never be able to trust them, or their judgements.