Thatcher sold everything off for a song to her chums. Just like Brexit! We were told of sunny uplands, huge investment and government oversight with teeth!!
Our gas, electricity, housing, water, post office, railways and school academies are all now making billions for foreign investors at our expense. Prices rise. Services are crap. The promised oversight and regulation is a paper tiger!
Never trust a Tory!! All they want are your money and votes. They lie!
Of
Ofwat? Off What?
Ofcom? Off con?
Ofgem? Off gems?
Ofqual? Off quality?
Off on holiday?
Off with the fairies?
Off colour?
Just fuck off!
Opher – 22.8.2022
Privatisation eh? Carefully regulated and controlled.
So the water companies cream off huge profits, preside over a sea of leaks, flood our rivers and beaches with raw sewage, take massive bonuses and give huge dividends to their rich shareholders.
The energy companies do exactly the same. Ofgem sits there allowing the energy tariffs to go through the roof.
Ofcom allows the Tories to take over the BBC as well as all the newspapers and allows them to threaten Channel 4.
Ofqual presides over a dumbing down of education into a sausage factory churning out mindless job fodder.
The poor are wrung dry. The profits head off abroad into the pockets of very rich people.
They call this scrutiny and regulation. Who the fuck are they regulating?
As a former Headteacher of an outstanding secondary school I am extremely dismayed by the way Ofsted is being used to drive through Government Dogma.
The Government make the decisions on how schools will be judged. The result is a contracting of the curriculum, loss of creative subjects, originality and a tick-box culture. It seems that the only criteria to be judged are the academic results. It has become teaching by numbers to a limited agenda. Each lesson has to follow a moribund format. There is the move to greater pass and failure. Who needs failure? What do we do with all our psychologically damaged failures? Surely we want all students to achieve – to reach their potential.
Good grief – education is so much more that that limited agenda. We are not just producing fodder for the economy. We were in the business of turning on brains, opening minds, creating awe and wonder, unleashing imagination, unleashing lateral thinking, teamwork and creativity. It is not about statistics.
Amanda Speilman has just been appointed. She is good with statistics. She has never taught in a school. She ran academies. She is a very clever businesswoman.
I can already sense the agenda. Does the woman have a compassionate heart? Does she care about qualities and skills? Creativity? Lateral thinking? Or is she in the business of pushing a narrow statistical analysis?
Looks to me like their putting a wolf in charge of the lambs.
Ofsted has been used as an arm to promote government dogma on education. It is far too limited, narrow in scope and prescriptive. It has become draconian and oppressive. Rather than encouraging excellence and outstanding teaching it has stifled it. It has created an unimaginative, stultifying, uncreative, restricted curriculum that is overly bureaucratic, too onerous on teachers and tries to fit everybody into the same mould.
Here’s what I think an Ofsted Inspection should be:
Schools are not factories turning out fodder for industry; they are education centres turning out well-adjusted citizens full of self-esteem and worth, interests, values and an enquiring mind.
Education should be fun, expanding, creative and varied. All subjects are of equal worth and the unquantifiable aspects are more important than the measurable.
Safeguarding has become out of all proportion. It is not about making children safer – it is about covering backs. It is impinging on good healthy education.
PSHE, Restorative Practice, Pastoral Care, Student Voice and SEAL are the most important aspects of education.
If caring is not at the centre of the school’s achievements it is failing.
Divisive strategies to raise (misguidedly) exam results through streaming or banding create arrogance and failure equally. Even if they did raise standards, which they don’t, the social fall-out is not worth it.
Ofsted inspections have to take all this into account and help schools progress rather than merely damning them.
Now that 40% of Ofsted staff have been sacked for incompetence perhaps it is time to have a rethink about its role, purpose and operation? It needs to become less dogmatic, political and cold and more useful, helpful and guiding.
Education is an art, not a science. It is not black and white and prescriptive. It is fluid and variable.
You cannot put teachers in strait-jackets and expect them to perform.
Inspections are essential.
Inspections were crucial in raising standards in schools.
Ofsted is not fit for purpose! It needs replacing!
Ofsted has been used to promote government dogma!
Ofsted have passed their sell-by date and are not fit for purpose!!
Today 1200 inspectors were sacked because they were below standard. They were not good enough!!
That is terrible!!
40% of all inspectors were not good enough.
What does that mean?
I’ll tell you. Ofsted wade into schools and turn them over. A poor Ofsted report can close a school. The reputation goes down the sewer. The Headteacher and Senior Team can be sacked, students leave and so numbers and funding drop, teachers are made redundant. It spirals down into the abyss. It can be forced to become an academy. The governors are replaced. The school is stigmatised. The school can even be closed.
A school can go from flourishing to dismal on the basis of one poor report.
Now we find that 40% of the inspectors are incompetent. That means that nearly half of the schools in this country have been wrongly judged.
That means that people have lost their jobs, been put through hoops and driven mad, and students’ education has been badly affected, on false judgements.
That is appalling but it is only in line with what we have observed over time.
The truth is that Ofsted inspections are a lottery!! The government is playing politics with teachers’ lives and children’s’ futures.
Ofsted has failed. We need something a lot better.
Instead of the fear-stricken, judgemental gestapo coming into schools like storm-troopers, pushing government dogma, we need an inspection system that is there to work with schools in a less invasive manner to promote improvement. The people to do this are the Local Authorities.
The public can have no faith in Ofsted Inspections and their judgements are too limited and politically motivated.
DO AWAY WITH FAILING OFSTED!!!! Replace it with something better!!!
We need to value the whole child – not just knowledge-bound exam results.
 
Under the Tories it is teaching by numbers.
All that matters is the results, the league tables and the statistics.
Every lesson is slotted into the same mould.
Every teacher is battered into the routine of an automaton.
Heaven help you if you have a personality or flair.
One size fits all.
The children are drilled to become regurgitating zombies.
We must climb the league tables, remember the facts, pass the exams.
Every school has a big bonfire on which they pile the useless things to be burnt. Things like Fun, creativity, care, individuality, music, art, and culture.
This is the Tory concept of pass and fail. The bright ones are worthy; the rest are worthless.
Children are dumped on the rubbish heap.
This is the age of education on the cheap. We do not need qualified teachers. They are too expensive. The plebs can manage with anyone standing in front of a class.
This is education for free. Set up a ‘Free’ School – let the Creationists, Religious Right and Big Business pay to indoctrinate your kids. It won’t cost the State a penny.
We’ll get the big Academy groups in to cream off a profit off your kid.
And if your kid should complain that the stress is too much, the lessons are too boring, the curriculum is too narrow; we’ll get some soldiers in to keep discipline!
And if the teachers complain we’ll put them through a disciplinary and threaten them with capability.
And if the Management complain we’ll bring in Ofsted and have them kicked out.
This is the age of bullying, winners and losers.
Unless you are in the Public School system and can pay to send your child to a Private School – you can have teachers with flair, schools without bureaucracy, no ofsted breathing down your neck and lots of personal attention, interesting lessons, creativity and culture. Because you deserve it!
If a school does not have a thriving PSHE programme with circle time, caring programmes, Student Voice and Pastoral Care at its heart it is a resounding failure.
Forget your learning outcomes, teaching for careers and results; it is caring for students that is the most important thing of all.
If schools do not care and nurture children we end up with a heartless, cut-throat society where the weak go under, the strong claw their way to the top and it is dog-eat-dog.
I believe every child is important.
There’s more to education than force-feeding facts for results!
Read what a highly successful ex Secondary Head has to say. I’m the only one making sense!
Ofsted raised standards in education. It was effective. It has become a curse.
It is now a government tool for terrorising teachers, imposing political dogma, and beating the education system into the ground.
It runs on fear and it is strangling teaching and making education bland.
It is promoting a narrow view of the curriculum and driving creativity and caring subjects out of schools,
Teachers are being put through a mangle. Anything not measurable is being demoted and kicked into touch. Our schools have become factories.
Find out what a highly successful ex secondary Headteacher thinks about it all.
It is Ofsted that should be kicked into touch!
Why are our best teachers flooding out of the profession?
Why are the great teachers being suffocated in bureaucratic strait-jackets?
Why is the flair and individuality being driven out of the classroom?
I’ll tell you why – politicians have got their grubby fingers in the pie! Our teachers are being put through the mill. They are being forced to follow three part lessons, learning outcomes and meet targets until they cannot think let alone teach.
The restrictions, constrictions, enforcements, rules, regulations and constant threat of Ofsted is driving them under or out!
Stress levels are at an all-time high.
We want flair, Fun, creativity and enthusiasm. The Tories have given us claustrophobia, bureaucracy and a nightmare of fear.
Read the only person making sense! I’m an ex-secondary Headteacher who was deemed outstanding through 4 successive Ofsteds yet did it my way!
There seems to be a lot of loose thinking tied up in this debate. The public schools are seen as providing a better standard of education compared to the state sector.
How can this be?
In order to raise the standards in state schools we have:
Yet despite all this the state system seemingly languishes.
The public sector has none of this. They are not subject to Ofsted scrutiny, a constant stream of initiatives or the killer diagnostic marking.
The public sector has shorter days and shorter terms.
We need to get our state system functioning perfectly so I would suggest one of the following:
Either we fund state schools to the same level as public schools so that they can provide the same small class sizes, excellent staffing and facilities;
Or we abolish public schools so that all those bright middle-class kids come into the state sector and raise the standards there and their parents use all their punch to gain that extra funding;
Or we bring in the same working condition for state schools as public schools – shorter days, shorter terms, no Ofsted inspections, no stream of initiatives etc. After all if it apparently works for the public sector why shouldn’t everyone’s kids get the benefit of it?