Sunderland Echo reporter Neil Fatkin - a former teacher - gives his reaction to the findings of the Beyond Ofsted inquiry
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00:00 My name's Neil Fatkin. For the last five or so years I've been working as a reporter with various National World Publications.
00:06 At the moment it's the Sunder Necco.
00:08 Before that I worked for 17 years as a teacher in secondary schools, as a geography teacher, also running heads of department and head of humanities.
00:19 I've been asked to give some reaction to this report which has come out which is branded off as toxic.
00:24 My own experience, I think toxic is maybe going too far but I would certainly describe it as suffocating.
00:31 In my time at schools I probably went through 10 off-steads and in that time went through a whole raft of judgement.
00:40 We worked in good schools, also had a school go on year we got requires improvement which resulted in quite a few follow-up inspections to see if we're making the progress that we should be.
00:50 Obviously I had lots of off-stead inspections in my lessons.
00:55 It's something which I have certainly got a lot of personal experience of and I would say suffocating rather than toxic is the word.
01:04 One of the things you've got to bear in mind is unlike an assessment process in other industries where you're working with rational adults or it may be machinery or IT or some form of technology.
01:16 Obviously when you're dealing with children there are so many things which are outside of your control before that child arrives in school that day which can have a massive impact on how your lesson goes or indeed how your day goes in school.
01:29 That's one of the reasons why I think when the inspectors come in it does feel unfair that they make a snapshot judgement whether it's on you as an individual or the school in such a short space of time.
01:43 Inspections now are generally only a day and involve quite a small inspection team and they are coming in and making an assessment and a judgement and categorising you with one of four categories having only been in the school for possibly one day.
01:58 You as a teacher they may have only over one or two days seen a 15 minute snapshot of your lesson.
02:04 It's also important to bear in mind when I mention suffocating that teaching is such a career where you have such a massive emotional investment.
02:15 People who go into teaching do tend to be a certain type of person and you want to go in because you want to make a difference for these kids.
02:21 Because you're dealing with children and their futures and what they can go on to achieve you do have a massive emotional investment and it very much is like a roller coaster.
02:30 I've done most of them when Ofsted come in. So yes I've had big highs where I've had lessons which have been judged as outstanding.
02:38 Most of my lessons were judged as good but as I say I did have one or two disappointments where an inspector may have given it requires improvement.
02:45 You really do take that to heart because of the emotional investment you've got in the children and also the feeling of have you let your colleagues down, have you let your school down.
02:55 As I say I did that many times. Normally I've got good lessons or a few occasions outstanding lessons but when it did it did have a massive impact on your mental well-being and how you felt for quite a period of time after.
03:08 The other thing with Ofsted judgments as well whether it's a school or whether it's an individual lesson is it's supposed to avoid this because you've got to set criteria on which schools are judged and on which lessons are judged.
03:22 But inevitably whilst the criteria is consistent the people who are interpreting it possibly aren't because anything which involves human interpretation has got some degree of subjectivity in terms of how that is interpreted.
03:37 One example I do remember which left me feeling very confused I remember one inspection we had. I had done a lesson with my 9-Set 5 which was lower set.
03:48 The inspector had given me an outstanding and when you get those sort of lessons you think okay well that's one to put in the bag because obviously it worked well.
03:56 I remember getting inspected a couple of years later it wasn't obviously the same set of children but it was the same set so in theory a similar ability group and I got a given it requires improvement.
04:08 So did the lesson just go particularly badly on that day or was it someone different interpreting the criteria but they're the variables you're dealing with.
04:18 Like I say when children come into a lesson you can have everything planned, you can believe it's going to be the best possible lesson but it couldn't have happened one of those children on that morning coming to school which renders what you're doing in your lesson almost irrelevant because there's a much bigger wider picture for all these children which you are teaching.
04:37 The level of pressure you experience when you had an Ofsted inspection was enormous mainly because you felt you were making a snapshot judgment so you got a massive emotional investment in such a short period of time.
04:52 That was me as a classroom teacher and as a head of department so you can imagine that's amplified tenfold for those people running the school particularly the head teacher.
05:02 Obviously we had the case recently with Ruth Perry whereby she's believed to have taken her own life following the school which she was running being downgraded from outstanding to inadequate.
05:14 I don't know extreme cases which have gone that far but I do know head teachers who have lost their jobs as a result of schools being deemed as requiring improvement or indeed inadequate.
05:26 Which obviously you can imagine the kind of pressure which you feel when you've got an inspection team come in and make a snapshot judgment which could result in head teacher ultimately losing their job which I have seen happen.
05:39 There's also at the moment we've got a big shortage of teachers, you've got a lot of people leaving the profession, the government are struggling to meet recruitment targets and a lot of that is down to workload and also down to work-life balance but also pressure.
05:56 The profession did start affecting my health, I wish that wasn't so do you don't know Ofsted. The 17 years of constant inspections and the suffocating pressure you're under did certainly contribute to it.
06:09 That obviously needs to be factored in as well, if you've got a system whereby it's forcing people to leave and create a system where you're struggling to recruit people then questions do need to be asked.
06:21 I also think it can create a culture whereby schools operate for the benefit of Ofsted rather than for the benefit of children.
06:31 Obviously when it comes to Ofsted ultimately outcomes are vital, are your kids hitting their targets whether it's JCSEs or whether it's indeed primary schools, are they hitting national targets which statistics say they should be at but of course statistics don't take into account the variations you've got in the background for each individual child.
06:50 So yeah I mean that can also be an issue in terms of leading schools become exam factories and Ofsted really needs to have a system and they'll probably say they do but whereby they are judging how schools develop the whole child and not just based around the outcome in terms of just purely their academic attainment.
07:13 I mean I remember one year, as I say at the school I was in at this time, we'd normally done okay with our results but one year we had a particularly bad year, it was the same set of teachers, teaching the same curriculum and the same lessons, again it goes back to the variables you have with children.
07:28 In this particular year we didn't do quite so well and when Ofsted came in, I mean the lessons you observed they judged as good, they judged the work which is in the children's beat books to be as good but we got a requiescent prune because basically attainment on this particular year hadn't been in line with what their targets were.
07:49 And yeah obviously the discussion there was I think no matter, this is just my opinion, it's also the opinion of the staff at the time, was that no matter what we had done, that was always going to be the judgment.
08:01 And I get it to some degree because how can you say a school is good or outstanding if the ultimate outcome isn't? But you sort of do wonder then what was the point in putting us all through that if no matter what they were going to see, ultimately we were going to get that judgment anyway.
08:19 So yeah I just wish it was a way that Ofsted could maybe perhaps judge the holistic development of the child and they'll probably say they do but from my experience in that particular case, no matter what we did that year, that was always going to be the outcome.
08:33 Despite the reservations I've expressed there and obviously the whole raft of emotions I experienced during Ofsted, I do still feel there does need to be an independent body which does assess school performance and schools and teachers do ultimately have to be accountable.
08:52 I mean as much as any, you know for parents, Ofsted reports are one of the main ways in which parents can assess and see how schools are doing and how teaching staff and school years can be held to account.
09:05 That having been said, I do think it does need to be done in a different way now. What that different way is really is a million dollar question and it's something which very senior people in government and Ofsted and in schools I don't think as yet have come up with a suitable solution so it's very difficult for me to do so as well.
09:30 But my own view is that there needs to be a fairer way of doing it like I explained before. I think coming in and making a snapshot judgment on a teacher or on a school in such a short period of time just feels unfair and what Ofsted will see is that, particularly for a teacher in that lesson, they're not judging that teacher, they're judging that 15 minutes which they see.
09:57 But ultimately they go out and give it a label and that is how you feel you've been judged during that time.
10:04 Same with schools, coming in and judging a school which may have been operating for three or four years since the last inspection and coming in for a day or possibly two and making an assessment of it and giving it a label just seems very unfair and also it doesn't factor in what can happen that individual day or that individual lesson.
10:30 I just feel a fairer way of doing it would be in more of a collaborative partnership approach over a longer period of time.
10:39 One possible way could be to allocate a cluster of schools in a particular area, an inspection team who could work with schools over a period of time and not just turn up once every two or three years, come in for a day and make a snapshot judgment.
10:56 Obviously I know that has implications in terms of staffing it, but you know that these people could be involved in staff meetings and planning and that sort of thing and also, so to some degree, whilst they're not part of the school, you do get to know these people and they get to know you over a longer period of time.
11:15 And also more self-evaluation by the school which can be verified by this team. So it's just not a case of once every two, three, four years you have an inspection team turn up and visit the school for one day and make this judgment and put a label on you which then goes out to the wider public and can have very damaging effects on the school but also on the individuals involved.
11:39 So I do feel there needs to be accountability, I do feel it needs to be independently verified and assessed but I just think the way that it could be done could be in a fairer way. It doesn't have to be a friendly way, it's making sure that the judgments are accurate but also are done in a fair reflection.
11:58 And if you are judged over a period of time, then it cuts out the chance of a variable happening on that one day where things maybe don't go quite as well as you hope. As I mentioned before, looking at judging the whole school in terms of the whole experience of the children and not just on the raw outcomes of what they got because ultimately, while statistics might say one thing, there's so many different variables you have to factor in when a child gets their ultimate outcomes,
12:27 whether it's at primary school or indeed in secondary school and even college at year level.
12:34 I mean, going back when I first started teaching, inspections were a week long and whilst that put more pressure on teachers and more pressure on staff, you did feel that inspectors did go away with a fairer reflection of you as an individual because they may come into five or six lessons rather than just a 15 minute snapshot of one and also a fairer reflection of the school.
12:57 Again, it was bigger teams as well. Now, that's going to cost more money. It's going to need bigger investments. So whether that's possible, I doubt. But I just think it needs to be done in a fairer way so that people don't feel such a snapshot of pressure for such a finite period of time.
13:18 And that are judgments are made by the inspection teams working over a period of time with the schools rather than just coming in and making that one judgment and branding you a particular label.
13:30 That being said, teaching will always be a pressure whether or not there's an upset there or not. And I'll be honest, the biggest pressure and accountability I experienced was from myself.
13:41 Unfortunately, most years I taught my kids, the results were generally good and they either got or exceeded their targets. But if there are any individual kids who didn't or have had a year group which didn't perhaps perform as well as I'd hoped, then the only person I would look at was myself.
13:57 And there was nobody who would beat themselves up more than me in that situation because I didn't need somebody to tell me if it hadn't gone as well as I'd hoped. But by the same token, most years the kids did either get their targets or exceed them.
14:14 And by the same accountability, you did get that satisfaction of doing so which is why I describe teaching as a roller coaster because there were big highs but also you did get big lows as well.
14:26 And the sad thing is that it did occur around officers as well when you felt under, going back to the start, suffocating pressure. And yes, I would say suffocating is the word rather than toxic.
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