Ofsted inspection process is barbaric and tells schools nothing they don’t already know - Yorkshire Post Letters

I am writing regarding the news that some headteachers are threatening to refuse Ofsted inspectors entry to their schools in response to the sad case of Ruth Perry, a Reading head, who took her own life in January, after her school had been inspected.

Her school had been downgraded by Ofsted from “Outstanding” to “Inadequate”, and her family blame her death on the pressure of the inspection.

I was a primary school headteacher for the last fourteen years of a thirty year career in teaching. My school was one of the first to be inspected in Calderdale in 1995.

To say the process was stressful is a massive understatement. We actually received a very favourable report, but it told us nothing we didn’t already know about our school.

As a result of the inspection process I subsequently became ill with a stress related condition which eventually led to me having to take early retirement.

I was extremely fortunate to survive major surgery during which I had a cardiac arrest on the operating table. That operation, and a subsequent one five years later, has left me disabled, and has severely affected my way of life.

I was extremely saddened to hear about Ruth Perry, and I would hope the Ofsted inspectors who went to her school are feeling some remorse for what happened to her as a result of their inspection.

The Ofsted process continues to be regarded with dread by headteachers and teachers alike and if I was still a school leader I would gladly take a stand and join the barricades to keep Ofsted out of my school. It is a barbaric process.