I have just been accepted onto the Governing Body at Rettendon Primary School. My work on the Distributed School project at Ultralab has led me to take an extra special interest in small, rural schools.

I attended a Governor training session tonight and found it all rather interesting and enlightening. I was delighted to meet the other Governors, all of whom took pity on me being bombarded with PANDA reports, Ofsted documents on my first visit - that is until I pointed out that I had taught in a primary school for several years already! "ah", they said!

A few things I've learnt this evening are:

Ofsted have proposed a new inspection framework (Nov 2004) which is expected to come into effect from September 2005. Some of the radical changes include the following:

• Shorter, sharper inspections, lasting two days, based largely on consultation with senior managers in the school. Also, school self-assessment of the quality of teaching is the basis for the inspection, rather than through observation.
• Shorter notice of inspections to reduce stress and the amount of pre-inspection preparation associated with a forthcoming inspection.
• Ofsted have now revamped their reporting procedure. Rather than produce a draft report in the weeks following the inspection, a draft report will be available by the end of the inspection week. The full report will be available within 6 weeks.
• Inspection teams will be smaller and will be led by HMI (Her Majesty's Inspectors.) They will also take responsibility for producing all reports.
• More frequent inspections! Every three years rather than every six. Schools with concern, more frequent.
• Ofsted will now produce a 6 page report rather than the 30 page document that is produced now and has been in the past. How is this achieved? Well, Ofsted will no longer comment on individual curriculum subjects.
• Schools have 40 days in which to produce their Action Plan as a result of the inspection report.
• Greater emphasis is placed on schools' self-evaluation of their performance, attainment and standards.

This was all quite significant, as you might imagine.

Not only does this appear to be a major cost cutting exercise but also a very positive step to handing the management of monitoring the performance of schools back to the school. It also indicates a much closer relationship between the inspectors and those who run the school with their feet on the ground on a day-to-day basis.

I have felt for a long time that more trust should be placed in those who are responsible for the running of the school, and that the Inspection Service should maintain a supportive role to the school, making recommendations as appropriate.

How exciting, the future is certainly brighter!

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inspection_framework_2005.pdf	31.16 KB