School has 200+ on roll, 2 inspectors for 2 days.

Day 1.

Deep dive in phonics/early reading/maths/history on day 1 but then asked for discussions from geography and art/DT leads to support our topic based learning on day 2.

It was very intense. They were very probing and asked why we taught what and how we did. How we supported new staff. How leaders supported staff. How did leaders know what was going on where. They also dropped safeguarding, well being and whistleblowing questions into discussions.

They talked to LOTS of children. Looked at books too. Luckily we had kept books from last year as 4 weeks into the new term little work in current books. They were not interested in marking at all.

Because the Inspection was run so efficiently with a very detailed timetable we could effectively see where they were going and what they were looking at throughout the day.

During day 2 they dipped into foundation subjects much more and wanted to see evidence of reading being used to support SEND children in lessons. In some lessons they were in and out within 5 – 10 minutes once they had seen what they needed to.

Both inspectors were very ‘human’ and understood the day to day running and constraints/problems of a primary school. Both had previously been headteachers. We got a sense that they were ‘finding their feet’ to a point with the new framework.

It was stressful but luckily we had all of the basics there. We all went home very happy last night.

The identity of the school and the writer has to remain anonymous – but I’m very grateful to them!