Ofsted – more support for staff

The Education Committee spoke out after Reading head teacher Ruth Perry took her own life out of fear that a school inspection report would rate her primary school as inadequate.

‘Everyone who works in education was deeply saddened by news of the death of Ruth Perry and our thoughts are with her family and friends at this difficult time,’ said Mr Hynes.

Guernsey’s schools started having Ofsted inspections last year. So far Vale Primary, St Sampson’s High, Les Voies and St Martin’s Primary have been inspected, with mixed results.

Mr Hynes said that Guernsey and Alderney had their own frameworks with Ofsted and were not part of England’s relationship with the inspectorate.

‘Unlike England, our framework does not provide an overall school grading for each school which can potentially contribute to the high-stakes nature of inspections,’ he said.

‘We listened carefully to feedback from the profession and union colleagues while the Guernsey framework was developed, and have provided a significant amount of training and support for head teachers and senior school staff in advance of inspections.’

He said that independent scrutiny and accountability was important, and external inspections played an important role in making improvements.

‘However, it cannot be ignored that external inspections can lead to increased stress for school leaders,’ he said.

‘One of the main reasons for this is the waiting. School leaders know that under the inspection framework Ofsted will inspect up to two or three schools per term, but we don’t know which ones in advance or when.

‘Ofsted will contact the school two days in advance to inform them of the inspection.

'This period of nervous anticipation “awaiting the call” is challenging for school leaders and they’ve told us that.

'We are looking at what we can do to further support them with this.’

He said that once inspections started, most school leaders felt it was a valuable experience.

The other element causing stress was the media coverage following publication of reports, Mr Hynes said.

He added that inspections were given a lot of prominence in local media, in particular when questions were asked in the weeks after a negative report.

‘In Guernsey it leads to significantly increased stress for staff who are all trying to doing their best for the young people they serve,’ Mr Hynes said.

‘This is not to shy away from the transparency and responsibility we have to the whole community, but sometimes this intense focus can divert attention from concentrating upon rectifying the identified areas for improvement, which is the purpose of external school inspections.’