The National BBC News have broadcasted that The British School Inspectorate is to give one day’s notice before turning up to schools to undertake inspections. This is a positive step forward to attempt to raise the quality of teaching in all British schools.
One long term study that is being concluded by TheSocRes was based on covert ethnographic research (2003-2013) undertaken in several challenging state secondary schools for a period of several years each. This led to some startling discoveries from observation, interviewing and participant observation.
In one instance a school that suffered severe discipline problems made major alterations to (as they had months/years to prepare for the impending inspection) the school for one week, getting rid of the worst children and creating a very artificial environment where there were no evidence of the usual hordes of disruption, poor discipline and pupils charging around the corridors and interrupting others people’s lessons.
When the final inspection report was made available, the ethnographer constantly caught high numbers of staff all reading the same paragraphs which they later stated where utter lies and that the Inspectors were incompetent to uncover the terrible state / work conditions.
The end result being the Inspector report hailed the Head Teacher as role model head who led by example when in fact the staff utterly rebuked and hated everything the school leader did and were well apprised that they could never rely on the Head Teacher when the situation in the classroom would get dangerous or the staff were assaulted.
When the staff were challenged by the ethnographer as to why they did not reveal to the inspectors their true beliefs and concerns; the universal response was they did not want to lose their job.
An unexpected epilogue to the work was that the Ethnographer was able to conduct research into an upcoming school inspection at a very highly rated school in the UK. This led to unexpected findings. The end result of the inspectors report stated that the school was a paragon of educational excellence and gained much high praise.
In the wake of the ‘excellent inspection report’; with recorded statements from the majority of the staff stating their great displeasure and widespread recognition that morale was utterly decimated, quality teaching was suffering and that the school was run in a very disorganised fashion. It does beg the question whether school inspectors were competent in actually uncovering what really does transpire in educational establishments. Are the reports a factual and true representation of what really does go on in said inspected educational establishments?
Perhaps this one day warning is a positive change. Where schools have been allowed time to hide many things in the past – by having just one day’s notice the Inspectors should be able to catch the school dynamics as they truly do function on a daily basis.
Perhaps this ‘one day warning’ new system will force all schools that high standards must be maintained on a daily basis to the greatest quality of education that our children and teenagers deserve.
TheSocRes report is due out in 2014.
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