Lynn News editor says ‘We don’t need Ofsted and its one-word labels’

A few years ago my nephew Jimmy attended a village primary school and, along with the rest of his class, was set an end of term assignment.

Year 6 had spent the whole term studying World War Two and to round off the topic, each pupil was tasked with writing an essay about the subject.

I’ll never forget Jim’s effort. His immortal words were as follows: “There was a war. We won.”

Yes, our family can look back and laugh at this now but, at the time, he was quite rightly chastised by his teacher for such a crass and lazy appraisal of one of the most bloody and traumatic events of the 20th Century.

Six words to sum up such a horrific conflict just wasn’t good enough. Just like the one or two words Ofsted bestows on a school to sum up everything it stands for is not good enough either.

Following the tragic death of Reading head teacher Ruth Perry, who took her own life knowing an upcoming Ofsted report would be rating her school as inadequate, the school watchdog has refused to drop its one and two--word rating system.

Yes, Ofsted, which has been inspecting and rating schools since 1993, still thinks all schools are either inadequate, require improvement, good or inadequate.

It is absolutely ridiculous to label schools for four years with any of these four words. Schools consist of teachers, students, governors, parents, lessons, sports, extra curricular activities and much more.

In just one day parts of them can be inadequate, require improvement, be good and even outstanding.

No school excels in every way day in day out and none are inadequate either. What’s more, these labels are not needed.

Teaching is a hard enough job as it is. I’ve spoken at awards ceremonies in front of hundreds of adults, but I find it much more intimidating addressing 30 youngsters - it’s much more evident when you’ve lost their attention.

Judge schools by their results by all means but intervene only when strictly neccessary. And then at look at the reasons behind those results, why attendance is low, why behaviour is poor and how external factors come into the equation.

Let teachers teach and let children learn. Ofsted is not needed.

One final thought. Do you think there was so much traffic around local schools before Ofsted became a thing? Of course not. In those days kids attended the nearest school, often in walking distance, rather than being driven several miles to the nearest one with a top rating.