Ofsted has become a vehicle for Tory Education dogma. They are too narrow and are failing our children. They are channelling schools into having to teach to the test, created a strait-jacket of teaching methods, downgraded all our creative subjects (Art, Music, Drama), reduced the curriculum to a skeleton, taken all the social skills out, reduced child-centred education, made teaching an overly bureaucratic nightmare and driven our best teachers out.
The international PISA tests are used as an excuse. The PISA tests are a disaster. They are narrow and pointless. Japan and Korea may cram their kids to the point of suicide in order to get to the top but they are not educating them. Education is so much more than knowledge. Proper education inspires students, enables them to think, encourages lateral thinking and problem solving, induces social skills, self-esteem and caring attitudes. Education should be child centred, nurturing and expansive.
You do not educate for the 21st century by returning to the 1950s.
You do not have schools run like businesses.
You do not pit school against school in competitive folly.
You do not create factories of learning with teachers performing like machines.
You do not drive the best, most inspired teachers out of the profession.
You do not work your staff into the ground, terrify and castigate them.
You do not treat students like consumer products, statistics in a table or gradees.
You don’t get a pig to put on weight by weighing it every minute.
You don’t do any of that if you want o create a good education system.
You replace Ofsted, who have failed, with an inspection system that is less draconian and ore supportive. You produce a broader, more varied and skill based education system.
Gove has created a nightmare – the fruits will damage our children for years to come.
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