A headteacher’s view of being inspected under EIF2019
An Outline Of Our Inspection Experience Under the New Framework
Context: Last Inspection was 2 1/2 years ago (11 days from starting post and during SATs week.) This Inspection began 11 days into the new school year under the new framework.
Initial administration phone call came at 10:45 am. The person you will speak to informs you that the inspect will commence, the dates, the lead inspector’s name and confirming basic information about the school.
90 Minute Phone Call
This is the official start to your inspection. What you say in this phone call to the Lead Inspector (LI) will be checked, double checked and triple checked. During the inspection, they will speak to children, to other leaders, class teachers teaching assistants, dinner time assistants, governors, children and parents. They will do this through anonymous surveys and face to face to check to see if this information is true. They will observe you and your school every moment. If you say you have a particularly strong ethos, they will look for it in every aspect of the school. If they find possible evidence that this is not true, they will question and re question you and others on this and look at more evidence.
Initially, the inspector will want to know about the make up of your school and any significant attributes of your school. The question was open ended. This is the information I gave.
- Number of children on roll
- Number of children in Nursery
- Number of children in the Communication Resource
- Number of children eligible for Pupil Premium
- Number of children identified as SEND
- Number of children EAL
- Number of boys and girls
- The school’s IDACI score and the % of children in the top 20% of deprived in the LA
- Confirmed that there were no members of staff on capability and we had one NQT.
Following this, questions asked during this phone call followed the framework categories. Our questions were initially in very open statements and then she asked more direct questions to clarify anything I said that she didn’t fully understand.
Our main questions were:
Tell me about your school’s curriculum. I explained:
- Our curriculum from top to bottom starting with were the school was when I began and when the last inspection (one and the same) and then each aspect of the subjects.
- The set up and our use of teaching most foundation subjects in blocks in order to add knowledge retention. (We had to have a few different conversations for the LI to help her understand this set up. Once she was at school, she understood.)
- Quality and impact of subject leadership
- How the SEN are catered for within the curriculum
- How the Communication Resource fit into this curriculum.
Tell me about Behaviours and attitudes. I talked about:
- Our journey in improvement, identification 2 1/2 years ago of the issues that were there, the steps we took, how that is interwoven in our ethos and broader curriculum and the impact it has had.
- How we track behaviours for children causing us concern to find patterns and triggers and how we seek support from outside agencies.
- The behaviours and attitudes of the staff and the impact that has had on the behaviours of the children.
- Attendance (The one and only time I verbally gave any data (and analysis) and I have been told by the inspectors, the only data they can ask for during inspection.) This included listing EVERYTHING we do.
Tell me about Personal Development. I explained:
- our whole school approach of using yearly themes that become part and parcel of that year’s curriculum, assemblies, activities and modelling.
- Our ethos significantly in this section as our ethos has personal development at its heart.
Tell me about Safeguarding in your school. I explained:
- Our processes and the impact that has had on keeping children safe.
- The journey the school has taken in developing successful relationships with outside agencies
Tell me what progress has been made against your last Ofsted inspection priorities. (She did identify that I had already covered many of them when I discussed other aspects.) I took this time to highlight anything that I hadn’t said before. I talked about:
- our extensive CPD offer for staff and TAs.
- Our performance management for teachers which significantly includes Development of Pedagogy (individualised)
- Our journey of improvement of teaching quality via the drive of subject leaders, mentoring, coaching, modelling and sharing best practice.
At this point, she said that she had no more questions as I had been through in answering her initial questions.
To note: I didn’t realise until after the call ended that one area that the LI did not ask me about was about staff well-being and workload. I believe this is on purpose. These questions are asked of staff in individual meetings, group meetings and in anonymous surveys. It is not until day two, after they have gathered their evidence that this is discussed with the headteacher.
Finally, the logistics are discussed and Deep Dive subjects were chosen. The inspector had already chosen Early Reading and Maths, as expected. We then discussed and I chose two other subjects for the deep dives. The only criteria is that every class needed to be seen at least once during the deep dives. Therefore, those subjects must be taught over a selection of classes.
I requested that we stop the call so that I go inform staff and we agreed to speak again a few hours later to finish up logistics. She was to send me a draft timetable and I was to send her the SEF and SDP.
A draft timetable is sent to you and there is some flexibility in when and where the inspectors will be as long as all that is on the timetable is there. I was able to contact CoG and also confirm times for SIA to meet with the inspectors.
The second call was purely logistics and housekeeping type things.
Day 1
Deep Dives form the majority of this day. There are five components of a Deep Dive:
- Learning Walks of Deep Dive Subjects. (Approx. 1 hour)
- Conversations with approximately four children across the lessons seen with their books. (Approx. 1/2 hour)
- Work scrutiny of 12 books per class observed from a range of children. (Approx 1/2 hour)
- Conversations with the teachers seen in the observations as a group. (Approx 1/2 hr)
- Meeting with the Subject Leader (Approx. 1/2 hour) In this meeting, they are wanting to discuss how the curriculum is set up, why is it set up that way, how has it been implemented, what impact has it had on the subject and what is next on the journey of subject development. They did not ask for data, though the leaders pointed out significant aspects of improvement.
In addition, for Early Reading, they will want to hear children at the lower end that are likely or have not reached phonics threshold in Y1, Y2 and Y3.
Our subject leaders joined me in the learning walks for all of the Deep Dives with inspectors except in maths as my leader was one being observed. On two occasions, the subject leaders were also able to complete work scrutiny with the inspectors when they asked permission.
They are wanting to understand how your curriculum is set up, why it is set up in this way, is their a clear sequence of the curriculum, how does it lead to embedding in long term memory, how does the curriculum cater to SEND what are the next steps. They are also looking to see if this is in practice and meets the needs of your school.
Over the two days there are separate meetings/observations/conversations with appropriate leaders/children for:
Safeguarding,
SEND with SENCo,
Attendance, Behaviour and Exclusions (including any off rolling identified and explaining exclusions)
Personal Development
EYFS
Governors
Visiting/ Conversations with any attached alternative provision.
LA or MAT representatives
Breakfast and/or after school clubs (observation and questions of staff running Provision)
Dinner time supervisors
Break and lunchtimes
A group of children from across the school, including those that had had sanctions from the behaviour policy.
Meet parents on the playground before school
Anonymous surveys for children, parents and staff
Our own observations of the process:
- Data (besides attendance) was not asked for at any time. But, she did refer to the website as having our unpublished data for 2019 and said that external data was increasing or significantly increasing when she referred to our GLD or phonics.
- She had gleaned LOTS from our website. She said that our ethos was obvious from the website and that this continued to follow through to our initial phone call and then into the inspection process. She complemented our website for the information and referred to that information on several occasions.(I personally hadn’t found it impressive but the LI liked it.)
- They are ALWAYS listening to what you are saying and put quotes into their notes. On several occasions, the inspectors referred to their notes and compared what was said by different stakeholders on the same topic. If there was any inconsistency, even minor, they would investigate it further. It is very important that everyone is speaking the same language within the school.
- EYFS had no scheduled visits. Inspectors tended to pop in during their deep dive time to look specifically for evidence of the specific subject. We had to really drive and get the inspectors to go back in for another visit as we felt they had not seen enough of EYFS.
- There was not comment made about marking except in reference to that being a form of assessment by the teacher and that peer assessment was well developed.
- They did comment on expectations of handwriting and spelling across all subjects.
- The inspectors have a very busy and tight schedule. I kept them to their timings, ensuring I (or one of my other leaders) took them to where they needed to be and guided them to things we wanted them to see along the way. This also allowed us to have snippets of conversations about various aspects that we wanted them to know or reinforce what we had already said.
Top Tips:
1- Create an Inspection file that has your most up to date SEF, School Development Plan, last inspection report and an outline of what you want to say about your school under each inspection area. Put the phone on speaker phone and have someone else from your SLT with you to take notes.
2- Don’t be afraid to ask to ask for a break in the 90 minute phone call if you need it.
3- You need to take control while simultaneously letting go. You and your leaders need to make sure that you say or show everything you want the inspectors to see and know. We have a strong team. It is a strong team because we have done this together and know our story; where we were, what we have done, why we have done what we have done, what the impact has been and then where the inspectors can see this impact. Sell your ethos and drive the inspection.
4- Give all your leaders a copy of the timetable and let them lead their teams. You don’t have time. Because, you need to be on top of the schedule supporting the inspection team to being where they need to be (and getting back from where they have been) gives you an opportunity to have snippets of conversation, highlighting what you want them to see and know.
5- Explain your thinking; the identification of needs, the sequence of how you do things in your school, the rationale for what is implemented, the implementation process, the impact and what you will do next.
Important facts:
1-They were not looking for or favouring any particular programme or way in any aspect of the school. They were looking to see that curriculum was at least as good as the national curriculum, there was a consistency across the school some and teaching & processes supported the needs of the children.
2- There was little discussion of data unless we brought it up in our conversations. In feedback and team meeting session when external data was referred to it was in term of an increasing trend or highest in x number of years. This was true of all areas except for attendance. This is the only area that we discussed the numbers and our analysis and comparison.
3- After the 90 minute phone call, they don’t speak to you in-depth until the end of the first day.
Inspections are hard, they always will be. This has been our experience. I felt this has been the best of the three different frameworks my schools have been inspected under. I can appreciate this may not be the same for all schools.