inspections

It is the one thing that every state headteacher fears. A single bad Ofsted grade has the power to condemn a school to failure. The recent death of the primary headteacher Ruth Perry, who took her own life while awaiting a report that…

The head of Ofsted has admitted that “a culture of fear” exists around England’s school inspections but said she had no reason to doubt the system of school gradings that has been blamed for the death of a headteacher.Amanda Spielman, the…

A post shared on Twitter purports Kansas H.B. 2238 authorizes “genital inspections of children” in order for them to play sports. BREAKING: Kansas Republicans have successfully overridden the Governor veto to now authorize genital…

School inspections in England and Wales should be abolished and headteachers should refuse to work as inspectors until “toxic” pressures on mental health have been resolved, a teachers’ union says.Delegates at the National Education Union’s…

When Ofsted inspectors visited Ruth Perry’s primary school in Reading last year, they told her it would be downgraded to the lowest ranking because of gaps they found in the school’s safeguarding…

Senior teacher Rob Dyson* says his last Ofsted inspection remains a “trauma”. Drinking tea in the staff room of the academy in the north of England after the inspector left, having delivered the verdict that the school had plummeted from…

Stress caused by Ofsted inspections was cited in coroners’ reports on the deaths of 10 teachers over the past 25 years, the Observer can reveal.The research, by charity the Hazards Campaign and the University of Leeds, will intensify what…

When my daughter had finished her final day at nursery in Reading last summer we strolled home through the park, my wife and I blinking through quiet tears. We were sad because we knew it was the end of our children’s most innocent infancy…

Ofsted is younger than me. And yet, for those of us who have been in education for a couple of decades, the inspection regime is part of the furniture. Its presence permeates school classrooms, offices, staffrooms and corridors. The idea of…

Amanda Spielman, the chief inspector of schools in England, said she was “deeply sorry” over the death of Berkshire headteacher Ruth Perry, and backed “legitimate” debate over how Ofsted inspects schools in the future.But Spielman, in her…