Personal opinion – Painful!

Whilst I was working abroad as a Learning Support Assistant, our school received the dreaded phone call that we were to undergo an inspection within the next two weeks. I was familiar with inspections after seeing them take place when I was a student but I wasn’t nearly aware of the impact that the “It’s inspection time” phone call had on teachers, support staff, and most of all the school management team.

I think we received over 50 emails from management in the two weeks prior to the inspection.

“Make sure every display board is fully complete and displays the best work from the class.”

“Make sure your resources are fully stocked and that each table has the correct amount of stationary per child.”

 “Teachers, please make sure that you are using your LSA effectively during inspection time and not for classroom administrative tasks.”

 “Teachers, please make sure you are not found sitting at you desk on your computers during class lessons and are moving around, interacting with all the children during activities.” (Ironically, due to the constant pings from my teacher’s email inbox, she was on her computer reading the barking orders during lessons more than she was at her computer normally.)

We all felt the pressure from management for the inspection to go perfectly. However, the response from teachers was very negative to say the least.

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 ‘After years of training, why do I need to be reminded to move around my classroom? I’m in a classroom more often than the management team are so I think I know how to do my job!!’

 ‘Do you think that I would let my classroom resources and stationary decrease enough that it would start to impact on the learning experiences that my students are getting?’ An few examples of the conversations you would overhear in the staffroom over lunch!

You could see the divide widening between teachers and the management team. A divide that you feared would be recognised by the inspectorate team as soon as they set foot in reception.

What effect did the management’s emails have on the relationships between members of staff? A negative one! What effect did they have on teachers’ self-esteem? A negative one! Did this have a knock on effect on stress levels of staff prior and during the inspection? Definitely! Was this a pleasant environment to be working in during those two weeks? Absolutely not!!

My underlying thought is as follows; if it was an extremely unpleasant environment to be working in during that time, filled with stress, tension and overall chaos, what effect did this process have on the learning experiences of our students during this time? I can only imagine it was a negative one. AND surely the learning experience of the child is what is being inspected.

I leave you with this last thought. I remember being asked by my deputy-head to take down one of the student’s work from a display board because it “looked unfinished”. I knew that the piece of work was complete. In fact, it was the only piece of work that child had completed in 2 months. This child had been having difficulties at home and this had affected his work in school. My class teacher had finally found a book that he was engrossed in and he had asked if he could write his own blurb for the book to try encourage his peers to read it. He had a great sense of pride and feeling of achievement when we put it on display. I don’t want to even imagine how he felt when he walked into the classroom the next day to see it had been stripped from the wall.

Is it worth stripping a child of their pride and achievement in order to get a glowing review from an inspectorate?

Absolutely not.

Incidentally, our school received ‘outstanding’ in every sector of the inspectorate. All members of staff were given a certificate in their cubby holes, congratulating us on our achievement.

It didn’t feel like an achievement nor did it feel like something to be celebrated. It was a horrible two weeks and I don’t feel that the division between ‘us’ and ‘them’ (staff and management) ever healed.