Ofsted Calling Part One

This guest blog was first published on Modern Governor http://www.moderngovernor.com/blog on 2nd March 2010

I had been Chair of Governors for exactly 100 days and still finding my feet when Ofsted called!

I was in my Head Teacher’s office having our regular Chair of Governors and Head Teacher meeting on Thursday 14th January 2010. It was our first meeting of the New Year – we had just finished discussing safeguarding and we started discussing a possible pending Ofsted inspection.

I said I felt I needed to know more about the new Ofsted framework to understand my role in the inspection. We spent less than five minutes discussing Ofsted when the phone rang.

The Head turned to me and said “Wouldn’t this be funny if that was Ofsted calling”. Her face went pale and she quickly wrote Ofsted on her pad and lifted it up for me to see. She wasn’t joking!

Ofsted were giving us notice to inspect us on Monday 18th and Tuesday 19th of January which was less than 4 days away!

Panic was my first thought and excitement was second. I knew our Self Evaluation Form (SEF) and School Improvement Partner (SIP) had been marked as outstanding.

However, I’ve heard so many horror stories about previously outstanding or good schools being marked down or special measures being put in under the new framework. It made me scared.

In our own confederation, one previously good school was put into special measures and another had been graded as satisfactory so I knew these stories weren’t just urban myths.

As Chair I dedicated my weekend to memorising the new SEF, SIP reports, Head Teacher reports, School Development Plan, Full Governing Body minutes, committee minutes, Safeguarding monitoring, governor visit reports, governor training records and RAISE online data.

I know governors are not expected to memorise all this information. However, I felt would be a good use of my time and make me much better prepared if I didn’t need to refer to folders and papers all the time during my Chair of Governor’s interview.

It was time well spent; not only did I learn more about the schoo,l but looking at these papers combined gave me a new perspective. Often these papers are read in isolation and things are lost.

It also took my mind off the inspection and stopped me driving my family mad. I also decided to take two days off work and be based onsite at the school for the whole inspection.

I know everyone can’t do this but I figured it is only two days every three years so I didn’t mind taking the days as annual leave from work.

So, Ofsted sent us a Pre-Inspection Briefing on the Friday and it initially scared us. The problem is you can read too many things into these briefings which just aren’t there.

We began analysing our attainment figures and we reviewed our community cohesion…..

Part 2 coming soon – The Inspection and Judgement Day.

If you are due an Ofsted inspection soon I’d be happy to answer any questions or give advice.

Sean Whetstone Chair of Governors
Polesden Lacey Infant School

http://www.twitter.com/schoolgoverning