OFSTED: The pros and the cons
First of all, I’ll just start by saying that I am sorry that my uploads have been all over the place of late. With placement it’s been difficult for me to manage everything and get it all done for a deadline! After placement you can expect and article every fortnight, give or take a few days.
One of the reasons why my uploads are all over the place is because my placement school had OFSTED in. Obviously I’m not going to name anyone’s names, but simply put it has been a rather stressful time of late. The visit got me thinking about both the positive and negative aspects that OFSTED brings to the teaching table. I’ve also seen a lot of different articles about this of late, so I wanted to provide some insight myself.
One of the more positive aspects is, whether we want to admit it or not, school inspections do serve a useful purpose. They help ensure that everyone is up to standard and doing their jobs correctly, and also help pinpoint any key areas for development. Everyone requires some feedback t some pint, as it’s all part of developing and improving.
This leads on to my next point: the inspections themselves helps pinpoint any areas of weakness a school may have. These areas may well have been neglected by human error or may just be things that need to become a primary focus. However, whatever the reason the feedback will always have some grounding and will always be made explicit in a report, which helps provide areas for the school to develop upon.
This being said though, whichever way you view OFSTED, it cannot be denied that for the most part, they have a fairly negative reputation. OFSTED are, for a lack of a better word, feared by teachers and educational institutions, and it could be argued that no one should have to “fear” feedback if it is informative and effective. This can be seen as severe negative against OFSTED and is definitely something that, if changed, would help OFSTED severely.
If there is one negative of OFSTED that I can justify from personal experience is that the stress that OFSTED causes is definitely intense, and some may argue that the cost is too great. As soon a s a school receives the call that OFSTED are coming in then everyone in the school begins to stress out, and this stress does not die down for at least a few days. This can be seen as a severe negative against OFSTED.
In conclusion, OFSTED has both positive and negative aspects to it. I have tried to retain a neutral perspective throughout this article and hopefully this came across! Regardless of how you view OFSTED personally, it cannot be denied there are both positives and negatives behind them. Thank you for reading the article, and keep watching the page for my next article!
