Testing Teachers

The Effects of Inspections on Primary Teachers

Bob Jeffrey, Peter Woods

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781135710163
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Since the 1992 Education Act inaugurated national arrangements for inspection, schools have operated within an 'inspection climate' which pervades every aspect of school life on a continual basis. The significance of OFSTED inspections cannot be overestimated. They are often the most challenging, searching, uncompromising and stressful events teacher have ever experienced. What effects do they have on teachers and their work, on their self and role, and on school policy and ethos? Drawing on case studies from contrasting primary schools over a three- year period, this book reveals how OFSTED inspections were received within primary schools. It meets the need for detailed, rigorous research into inspections and their effects on teachers.

Notes from the Field (1) Inspection Week at Lowstate

Weekend Calm

The place is Lowstate school. It’s 10.10 on Saturday morning. I’ve been allowed into the school to research the effects of Ofsted inspections on primary teachers. I’m sitting in the infant hall with my back to the windows facing the display boards. It is very quiet and a contrast to the normal buzz and chatter of a school. I can hear a blackbird singing in the garden. The light, albeit filtered through tall pot plants climbing up the large window frames, shows up the highly polished floor. Every display board has a uniform three centimetre border made from black sugar paper—one was removed because it didn’t conform. The contents of the displays are all mounted and uniform computer printed labels explain the contents or challenge the reader to respond mutely. There are few teacher written labels.

The lower school corridor has all its display boards backed with hessian and on them are mounted photographs of pupils and school events together with prints of classic pictures. One display records the achievements of women in history and a large window is covered with a display depicting a Victorian street. The PE and dining hall are devoid of displays except for functional notices relating to PE equipment. One of the two staircases to the upper school have framed glass fronted pictures on the walls, (the last of these put up on the Sunday morning by the Premises Officer). The other staircase, rarely used and known as ‘the back staircase’, has a photographic display of some site building works with artefacts such as bricks and pipes displayed on the window sill. The headteacher and husband mounted these on a previous weekend. The main hall in the upper school is totally covered with a school journey display that spills out onto the corridor. Every piece of wall is covered with over four hundred treble mounted pieces of work and photographs representing this year’s journey to Kent. The window sills are used to display artefacts and folders of children’s work.

The hall is set up for assembly on Monday. There is a newish lectern bought by the head after she first heard about the Ofsted visit and in keeping with the school’s developing emphasis on religious assemblies. (She hoped that the lectern would bring ‘a sense of awe’. Some teachers would have preferred the money spent on books.) There are two matching chairs on either side of the lectern and two tall pot plants further back flanking the lectern and the chairs. A music stand is set to one side waiting for a child to play some music. Large printed numbers have appeared on the walls in recent days to indicate where each class should sit. I thought at first they were hymn numbers. As I slide quietly along the corridors poking my head in the classrooms I’m struck by how the teachers’ desks have magically grown spaces and how items are neatly placed upon them. A large plastic bag is spread over one desk as if to remind the teacher to finally fill it with any extraneous and unwanted material.

As I contemplate the school’s quiet confidence it is punctuated from time to time with sounds from a classroom, the moving of furniture, the playing of some music, the hammering of a staple gun, the sudden whistling of a teacher briskly leaping down the stairs or more unusually the burst of laughter from two or three teachers gathered in a corridor or a particular room. The silence is again disturbed by the low hum of two petrol lawn mowers as they circle the lone willow tree cutting the grass of the main green play area. This is Saturday morning and one wonders if the workers are getting overtime. The Premises Officer is playing his full part in the preparation. The staff have already commented on the surprise of having new locks on the loo doors.

The school is at peace for a while, proud of its self and awaiting the inspection event with a quiet self assurance. It is a calmness which has grown from exacting preparation and a feeling of inevitability that they can’t do any more and they have done their best.

As I leave, early in the afternoon, I hear some teachers making arrangements to meet in the nearest shopping centre for coffee and a late lunch. They seem to have it under control. All is nearly ready for the inspection event.

It’s 10.10 again on Sunday morning. As I enter the upper school building I can hear the drip of water in the toilet cisterns. There is a strong gale force wind and the beautiful Montana clematis is being blown vigorously on a playground trellis. This contrasts with the calmness inside the school. I can hear quiet voices in the smoking room.

One classroom is a mess and contrasts dramatically with the rest of the school. It is a large, unused, newly decorated classroom full of musical instruments. Different sized folders and children’s trays full of work have been dumped on the floor, the piano top, on shelves, unit tops and tables. Some of the trays have soft red folders in them, pupil’s school folders with records and work samples from their entry into school. Some are full to the brim with topic folders, books and models such as kites, windmills, fans, constructed vehicles and coloured spinners. There is great variety in both the abundance and quality of material presented, reflecting possibly the differences in teaching styles and of the teachers as people. The trays are offerings to the inspection team, evidence of three levels of children’s work—above average, average and below average.

The headteacher and the deputy headteacher sit next to one another in the latter’s room writing quietly. Aileen talks to herself in the music room as she still shuffles through the trays. Larry is on his knees cutting up paper and mounting pictures with paper strewn all over the floor. His wife drifts in and out assisting him. Amy cuts up more labels and attempts to make them uniform. Lional writes up some sums on a large piece of paper and his wife mounts fabric pictures and we three listen to the last 10 minutes of a dramatic episode of the Archers. The Premises Officer is seen fixing doors, putting up the last of the cased pictures on the staircase. Aileen sits on her carpet sewing up large cushion covers.

All is nearly ready for the inspection event.

At last Aileen says, ‘I can leave that. I can finish it in the morning before school’ and she packs up to go home for a late lunch. In Evelyn’s room Monday’s date is on the blackboard and the chairs are neatly set out. Her desk is immaculate with four piles of papers placed neatly next to each other. The reading books look as though they have all been placed on the shelves in a neat order. In Linda’s room there is not a book or a piece of paper out of place, the chairs are neatly set at the tables and her desk is very tidy and ordered. In the nursery the Monday morning activities—painting, cooking, modelling—are laid out on the tables, the house is on the carpet and the three descending sized bears sit at a breakfast table in the home corner as in the Goldilocks story. In Tracy’s room all is set and the ticking of the clock reminds me that it’s only now a matter of hours before the actual event. I hear the wind cause the builder’s gates to crash together. The weather is stormy but a calmness permeates the school. Leila, a part time teacher, drops in a tin of biscuits for the staff. She has been thinking about them most of the night.

All is now ready for the inspection.

The Prologue

On Monday at 8.15 the car park is full to overflowing. ‘It looked like a motorway service station.’ All the inspectors drive cars no more than 18 months old. A Mazda Xedes 6, an Audi A4, a Honda Elite Civic, an Escort and a Fiat Tipo, believed to belong to the lay inspector, stand bright and gleaming amongst the teachers’ older cars.

I have restricted myself to the staff room during the day and as I make my way there I don’t meet anyone. The teachers are already in their classrooms. The staff room is deserted, only the occasional sound of the water heater is heard. Ava, the job share nursery teacher is the first to come into the staff room, She has come in to see what the inspectors look like and to wish the staff good luck for she doesn’t officially begin work until later in the week. She comments on new displays she has seen around the school. ‘It’s like a living exhibition. Lots of new resources had been bought recently and kept for Ofsted like the RE books that I only handed out this week’. She is nostalgic for the old, local inspection where you had a chance to explain things, ‘they knew you as friends’. She describes how the Chair of Governors appeared in the school at 8.10 and visited every classroom to wish all the teachers good luck. ‘It was like inspecting the troops before the battle, like Monty did, to show how the general cared about them.’

At 8.38 Amy, Laura and Linda enter with the latter yawning. Angelina enters soon afterwards and says she has butterflies but they’re good to get the adrenaline going. She is followed by Evelyn who declares in a slightly jocular manner that ‘her husband is lost at sea’. He was skippering a sailing boat with secondary school pupils and because of the gales yesterday had to shelter in France until this morning. She described her run on Sunday—6 miles in 58 minutes— and said she had watched the lottery results on Saturday night for the first time. The atmosphere is a more spirited one compared with the calm of Saturday and Sunday.

At 8.44 the rest of the staff appear. There is much talk and occasional jocularity, ‘I couldn’t find any clean clothes this morning’. There are three boxes of sweet things, milk chocolate marshmallows, a packet of dark and white chocolate biscuits and a tin of butterscotch shortbread on the main central table around which people sit. The marshmallows are opened and Angelina and Aileen declare they are ‘eating for Ofsted’. Most of the teachers have put on their smarter clothes.

At 8.47 the inspection team led by the Registered Inspector enter the room. There are three women and one man. They too are smartly dressed with jackets and the man has a bronzed tan. The RgI smiles and states that this is the worst bit for the teachers but it will whizz past and she laughs. She says they will be exhausted by Wednesday and not to worry for it is known as ‘dip day’ —where enthusiasm drains away and tiredness is felt most strongly—and there is general laughter. (In the event the teachers described it ‘not as dip day but kick day’ and a ‘self fulfilling prophecy’ as two of their colleagues are, they believe, unjustly criticized.) The inspectors are introduced together with their special responsibilities and staff with corresponding responsibilities match their introductions by indicating who they are. The stage is set.

The RgI then explains the procedure for grading teachers and the atmosphere changes as people quieten down and serious expressions are maintained. She tells them that by Wednesday the majority of the one and two and six and seven grades will have been awarded. The teachers getting sixes and sevens will be given a verbal warning. If further grades of six and seven are given then a written text will be prepared. It will be confidential to the headteacher and not be available to governors and the person will not be identifiable in the report. In the event that anyone is so graded there will be training opportunities made available to them. She asks if there any questions. There is a silence of about 10 seconds and at this point the inspectors took their leave. (This is not a staff that are backward in coming forward. Their local inspector always expects ‘a spirited interchange’). The head then breaks the quietness with a call for Amy to read her Ofsted poem. There are some cries of agreement and some laughter, as some teachers have already heard it, and Amy stands on a chair to declaim it.

'Til We've Done Our Ofsted

Lowstate you need not fear
Though the dreaded Ofsted’s here,
Just remember the end is near
And we'll have done our Ofsted.
Lists of what we have to do
Piles of paper just for you.
Have we worries? Just a few!
`Til we've done our Ofsted
Planning folders oh so neat
Act like teaching’s such a treat.
No time to sit upon a seat,
`Til we've done our Ofsted
Classroom tidy, great display,
Brilliant lessons everyday.
Of course it’s always just this way
`Til we've done our Ofsted
We may feel like tired old hags
Bags so long my whole face sags.
Just grit our teeth…I’ve hit the fags.
`Til we've done our Ofsted
We just need to keep so cool
Smiling sweetly that’s the rule.
We must never shout at all
`Til we've done our Ofsted
So when the inspectors they come in
Make sure there’s no unruly din,
Give a sincere welcoming grin
`Til we've done our Ofsted
So here it is, it’s Ofsted day,
It’s not going to go away
But won’t it be nice to say
Thank God we've done our Ofsted

During this rendition, focused on by all the teachers round the table, some sitting some standing, except one who busies himself and takes little part, the teachers laugh at the appropriate points and at the end they clap loudly. The poem is ceremoniously pinned to the centre of the notice board and Amy declares, in answer to a question, that it ‘only took her five minutes or so for if there’s feeling it comes easily’. There is loud chatting and amongst this hubbub Laura notices me scribbling quickly and with a glint of humour tempered by the euphoria and tension of the moment she says ‘you’re just a vulture’ and Esther gives me a short diary of her last week. The head then raises her voice above the chatter, and says ‘once more into the breech dear friends’ and all the teachers begin to leave the staff room for their classrooms, some of them trying to break into singing ‘we shall overcome’. With loud laughs and chatter the event has begun.

Chapter 1
Bridging the Gap: The Inspectors' Perspective

We look first at how inspectors viewed their implementation of the inspections. How did inspectors represent and account for their actions? What sense did they make of the inspections they were conducting, and how far does this square with the teachers’ experiences? How do we account for any differences? How did they view the emotional trauma suffered by so many teachers? If opposed to such effects, how did they justify their work?

We interviewed all six lead, Registered Inspectors (RgIs) about six months after the actual inspection. We chose to limit ourselves to RgIs because we sought detailed responses, and the RgI is the most important member of the team. They talked to staff prior to inspections, negotiated with the headteacher, appointed and supervised the other inspectors, and wrote the final report. They had to ensure that the standards of the inspection team were maintained and had to make themselves and their material available for inspection by Ofsted itself. All of them worked, at one time, in local government as head-teachers or/and advisors or/and inspectors. Simon, Paul and Neil had long experience of inspection with LEAs, while Nathan, Pamela and Chris had less than 10 years in inspection or advisory work at the time of writing. Simon and Nathan still worked as LEA i...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Notes from the Field (1) Inspection Week At Lowstate
• Chapter 1: Bridging the Gap: The Inspectors' Perspective
• Chapter 2: A Conflict of Values: The Teachers' Perspective
• Chapter 3: The Colonization of Teachers' Lives, Selves and Work
• Chapter 4: Feeling Deprofessionalized: The Social Construction of Teacher Emotions
• Chapter 5: Coping With Ofsted Inspections
• References