I really liked this summary about the 'Who Watches the Watchmen' report via the 'Goodbye Mister Hunter' blog - very readable:
Some thoughts on the Ofsted style
http://goodbyemisterhunter.wordpress.co ... ted-style/
The Ofsted Style: Watching the Watchmen makes allusions to an ‘Ofsted preferred teaching style’, but seems wary about explaining what such a ‘preferred’ style may be. This is a shame, because it is an issue of significance across the education establishment. The Ofsted preferred teaching style is, put simply, a child-centred approach with lots of active learning, group work, and pupil independence.
It was so interesting for me to discover how other teachers have challenged the apparently 'progressive' preferences of many Ofsted inspectors in the national domain having already challenged Ofsted about their use of video footage of schools considered 'outstanding' but which do not show outstanding practice.
Remember that six specialists in the phonics and literacy field collectively challenged Ofsted about the presence of these videos and the very poor early years and infant practice that we see on them. I wrote a blog about this which I'm currently circulating on Twitter in response to this call from an MP for teachers to be trained in a 'statutory' way to address left-handers in school.
I am suggesting that many teachers need training to raise the levels of their own handwriting - before they can even begin to tackle teaching handwriting and supporting right or left-handers with handwriting!
See my blog posting here drawing attention to BOTH the issue of Ofsted promoting progressive 'pink and fluffy' teaching and the inadequacy of addressing handwriting in our schools:
http://debbiehepplewhite.com/?p=48
I suggest that the Department for Education’s official ‘criteria for assuring high-quality phonic work’ neglects to pay specific attention to handwriting – and Ofsted clearly hasn’t understood the principle of avoiding ‘circuitous routes’!
References are made in the DfE’s official ‘core criteria’ to the use of a ‘multi-sensory approach so that children learn variously from simultaneous visual, auditory and kinaesthetic activities which are designed to secure essential phonic knowledge and skills’ but invariably this is interpreted as all sorts of play-based activities which do exactly what is warned about in the core criteria at point 5 which states:
5. Multi-sensory activities should be interesting and engaging but firmly focused on intensifying the learning associated with its phonic goal. They should avoid taking children down a circuitous route only tenuously linked to the goal. This means avoiding over-elaborate activities that are difficult to manage and take too long to complete, thus distracting the children from concentrating on the learning goal.
A number of phonics specialists, me included, have taken Ofsted to task for uploading video clips with precisely the kind of ‘circuitous route’ which is ‘distracting the children from concentrating on the learning goal’. Ofsted – Is this a bit of an ‘own goal’? We see children trying to do a bit of phonics spelling on mini whiteboards whilst sitting on the playground and at the same time trying to play the parachute game. It’s all rather bizarre.
Ofsted, methinks you may be trying to soften your image perhaps?
Ofsted has paid insufficient attention to the DfE ‘core criteria’ and certainly hasn’t helped teacher-trainers and programme-authors in their endeavour to clarify what ‘multi-sensory’ looks like for the most effective and appropriate phonics teaching!
Coincidentally, it was Michael Cladingbowl, the HMI at the centre of this debate about possible changes in Ofsted with whom we '6' corresponded over the last year - to no avail - and yet he claims Ofsted is 'listening'.
Really?
Listening, and then what...?
