There are inspectors ...
There are inspectors ...
There are inspectors ...
My latest column for the East Anglian Daily Times, in which I argue that there are inspectors ... and there are school inspectors ....
On reflection, I like inspectors. There – that’s a sentence you weren’t anticipating.
I’m talking about inspectors in general, note, rather than school inspectors (I’ll get to them later).
I think in modern life inspectors are necessary and reassuring. For example, I feel safer when I fly off on holiday knowing that an engineer has recently inspected the mechanical parts of the plane.
I feel reassured when I travel by train that a ticket inspector challenges passengers who haven’t paid. On one late night journey from Stowmarket to Liverpool Street station recently I watched a calm but persistent inspector challenge a group of youngsters who were pretending to be asleep.
He didn’t – as might have been easier - turn a blind eye. Instead, he shook them into consciousness, proved that they didn’t have tickets, and got the police to meet them at the next station.
This inspector made those of us who pay for tickets feel that those who don’t get their comeuppance. He reinforced a sense of morality that society needs.
Restaurant inspectors similarly reassure us that standards of hygiene are up to scratch. Hotel inspectors help us to select a place that will suit our needs.
So, yes, all I all, I think we need inspectors. Because, in the main, these people have genuine skills and expertise.
And then there are school inspectors.
Like many in the teaching profession I have far less confidence in the people who inspect our schools. And, given the high-stakes nature of what they do, I think I ought to have – because a bad inspection can lead a school into a downward spiral of public failure.
It may be worth reminding ourselves who school inspectors are. Whereas the people who inspect aircraft for faults are skilled engineers, there’s nothing to say that an Ofsted inspector was ever a skilful teacher.
For example, a school in Suffolk was recently inspected by a lead inspector who last taught real children some 35 years ago.
These people then have the audacity to tell us how it should be done, despite the fact that they aren’t routinely planning, teaching, marking, and all the other stuff that teachers have to do.
The head of Ofsted, Michael Willshaw, says that inspectors no longer expect a particular type of lesson. Teachers should just do their usual stuff, he proposes.
But the word on the street is rather different.
Inspectors appear to be fixated on the concept of ‘progress’. In a twenty-minute lesson observation they want to identify progress. Dutifully, in most schools, teachers dish up something that exemplifies progress. Students will do a task for a short burst and then the teacher will interrupt, ask the what they can say or do or understand now that they couldn’t say or do or understand twenty minutes ago.
Real learning, of course, is nothing like this. When I am cooking I don’t check every twenty minutes that I can demonstrate the progress I have made. When my sons were learning to drive they didn't automatically improve every twenty minutes, or indeed every day: sometimes their progress, like the car, stalled.
In the process they were seeing that learning itself is messy, unpredictable and tough.
We need the next generation to understand that real learning isn’t about being spoonfed by teachers. Nor does it come in pre-packed twenty-minute chunks.
We need Ofsted inspectors to realise this too.
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Sixth Form joke:
My mate Sid has been a victim of ID theft. He's now called ‘S’
Geoff Barton
Wednesday 20 November 2013
Wednesday, 20 November 2013