Breakthrough moment in education: Ofsted are changing the word 'satisfactory' to 'requires improvement'. This remarkable step forward (or is it a step up?) must have come from months of discussion, formulating theory, research and analysis. Finally, we've got some real intellectual clout at the top of the education tree. Imagine the committee meetings, the sub-committee briefings, the urgent break-out sessions in neighbouring seminar rooms...Hurried whisperings in corridors -
'Hey, Chazza, what do you think of 'Could do better'?'
'Not bad, not bad - hey, how about that?! 'Not bad'? What do you think?'
'I prefer my 'Could do better.'
'Hmmmm. OK let's get in there and get down to some hard thinking on this....'
Ofsted was always the wrong answer to the wrong questions, but now it's moving forward. Or it's going forward. Or: going forward, Ofsted is conducting a rebranding exercise. Or something.
So Michael Wilshaw, hotfoot from creating a school that has hoodwinked journalists into thinking that he 'turned round a failing school' - when in reality, money was poured in to create a selective school where there wasn't one before...is now 'turning round' Ofsted.
No chance of turning it round so fast, that it makes a hole through the floor and spins through it?
All that money on inspection rather than advice. Bullying rather than co-operation. And just think, Ofsted have no requirement to look at the provision of books, the reading of whole books, the level of home reading, the pattern of reading of whole books across a school. And yet, we know that high levels of all that is one key to success.
