INSTED

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for the well-being
of children

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for respecting teachers
as professionals

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for the love of learning

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for a better future
– for families and for us all –

A website in the making…
lots of information, reports and more!
on our Resources page. More to be added each week.

Our name, INSTED, is an acronym which stands also for our founding vision: Inspiring New STandards in EDucation!

We share the view of many across the education field, with a considerable amount of evidence to back it up, that Ofsted is doing considerably more harm than good, with its high-stakes accountability measures and widely reviled name-and-shame disciplining tactics.

A tragic ‘Brutal OFSTED’ inspection

The educational world has been shaken yet again by a brutal Ofsted inspection at Caversham Primary School in late 2022, which resulted in the suicide of Headteacher Ruth Perry in early 2023, just before publication of the report. In the experience of both teachers and parents, the Ofsted report — reducing an Outstanding rating to Inadequate — did not at all reflect reality at the school. Read more about this in a Guardian article from 25 March 2023 – click on the button below.
This has been so often the experience of schools under the Ofsted inspection regime, and the tragic experience above moved us to develop this website further, in memory of Ruth Perry.
Ofsted is counted as the most brutal school inspection regime in the world; it simply must go!

A November 2023 independent report recommends radical overhaul of OFSTED

The Beyond Ofsted inquiry, chaired by former Schools Minister Lord Knight and funded by the National Education Union, called for a “transformational” alteration to school inspections.
The report, published 21st November, recommends that schools should instead be responsible for their own improvement plans.
Lord Knight’s inquiry said Ofsted was now seen as “toxic” and “not fit for purpose” and was in need of major reform. That reform should include an end to single-word judgements like “outstanding” or “inadequate”, which the inquiry said were too simplistic to describe a whole school.
That was also one of the key recommendations of another report on school improvement released on Monday, by the Institute for Public Policy Research, which called for narrative-style judgements instead.
For the SCHOOLS WEEK article, CLICK HERE.
For the BBC article, CLICK HERE or below

The education world is in desperate need of a more constructive and collaborative inspection framework, which works WITH schools and colleges, helping them where they need help, fostering trust in teachers, respecting teachers’ professionalism, and empowering them and their schools to explore context-appropriate ways for improving their educational offer.

We recognise that to further and realise these aspirations, there are Department for Education policies that also need to change – from excessive testing of children to league tables, narrowly ‘proceduralist’ approaches to safeguarding, and more, which are having a deleterious effect on the mental health and emotional well-being of children as well as on good educational practices.

We all need to work together on these questions – first, in order to create a broad base of awareness of the problems and their root causes; and secondly, to co-ordinate action for effecting genuine change. We hope that INSTED, with others, can help to facilitate these urgently needed changes.

The March 2023 NEU Petition

In March, NEU members delivered our Replace Ofsted petition to the Department for Education. With over 52,000 teachers, school leaders, parents and pupils having signed, it is clear the profession is speaking with one voice when we say Ofsted is not fit for purpose and must be replaced.

NOTE! for a new website

This website was set up in 2020 in response to our witnessing unfair, draconian OFSTED inspections of schools, where teachers have been denigrated, viewed seemingly with contempt, inspectors passing judgements on schools which were contested by most teachers but who were too afraid to speak up for fear either of losing their jobs or for fear of reprisals from OFSTED. This has been the method of OFSTED over three decades, often accused of bullying and gaslighting methods, with no satisfactory means of appeal or redress — unless one has a very deep pocket for pursuing judicial reviews, which most schools don’t have and which OFSTED does have for their defence. Their stated complaints and appeal process has no bite possible, thus not effective. They often come across as a rule unto themselves, not paying attention to outcries of the majority of head teachers and schools saying that the grading system is arbitrary, with no significant relationship to reality, and harmful to education and the children in the effects it has.

This site will be compiling information in support of finding new ways:

demonstrating how Ofsted’s high-stakes accountability measures, in conjunction with many DfE policies, and their infamous carrot-and-stick measures, are not only long out of date, ‘belonging’ as they do to Victorian times, but are doing great harm to England’s schools and colleges;
to explore what kinds of approaches are appropriate in education, and in the world of assessment and evaluation, in order for genuine, empowering improvements to take place.

As a start, see our resources TAB above for articles, reports and research.

Both solicited and unsolicited contributions will be sought and welcomed in this ongoing initiative.
Please write to contact@insted.uk if you have anything you would like to contribute – thank you!

Other groups and websites campaigning for reform of OFSTED

We are not alone in pushing for significant reform if not replacement of OFSTED. There has been a veritable outcry across the educational sector following the Caversham Primary School tragedy (as reported above). A recent initiative very much worth supporting is Positive Ofsted Reform, with its website at https://www.positiveofstedreform.com/. You are encouraged to sign their open letter for reform of Ofsted, and to check out their many links. They also have a page for ‘Sharing your story’.

The National Education Union has been very active in its efforts for a reform/replacement of OFSTED. Apart from its petition in Spring 2023 — see above and the YouTube video — it has a REPLACE OFSTED campaign page. CLICK HERE or on the image below!

www.facebook.com/inspiringnewstandards

We’re also on Facebook! Go to –
www.facebook.com/inspiringnewstandards

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