Why do Ofsted inspectors observe individual lessons and how do they
evaluate teaching in schools?
A summary by Mike Cladingbowl,
National Director, Schools.
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Do OFSTED grade individual lessons?
Find out the answers here.
There are many misconceptions about
why, and how, inspectors observe and gather evidence about teaching, and how
that contributes to the overall judgement on the quality of teaching in a
school.
Much of this arises from a lack of understanding of how the
approach to inspection, and inspecting teaching, has changed over the years.
Before 2009, evidence forms required inspectors to provide an overall grade for
the quality of each lesson or part-lesson observed
Typically, inspectors would visit a
series of lessons or parts of lessons, gathering evidence on different and
observable elements – teaching, standards and so on – and the lesson grades
awarded would be collated and used to arrive at overall judgements about the
school.
Since 2009, inspectors have been instructed not to grade the
overall quality of a lesson they visit. As you can see from the most recent
version of the form , the box for a graded ‘judgement on the overall
quality of the lesson’ has been removed.
In the current form, there is a box to
grade quality of teaching and it is here that much of the confusion lies.
Inspectors may use this box to record judgements gathered from a wide variety
of sources – not just lesson observations – for example, when looking at
pupils’ work or when looking at marking.
So why do we observe lessons at all?
It’s just one piece of a jigsaw of
evidence about the work of the school that includes: the school’s own
observations and self-evaluation, joint visits to classrooms with the
headteacher or other staff, evidence about how teaching has improved, the
quality of work seen in books, teachers’ marking, discussions with pupils and
staff and, of course, test results and so on. In my view, inspectors must
always spend time in classrooms when they inspect. It’s where the main business
of the school happens. But the way we use the evidence we gather in classrooms
has changed.
Why is this change important?
Inspectors do not judge the overall
lesson. But it is still possible for an inspector to record a graded evaluation
on an evidence form under one or more of the four main judgement headings,
including teaching, where there is sufficiently compelling evidence gathered by
observing routines, looking in books, listening to students and so on. It might
be possible, for example, to see evidence of the impact of a recent decision
taken by the leadership, which has improved behaviour.
But this is categorically not the same
as judging a teacher, or even the teaching, and especially not a lesson
overall, by evaluating the performance of the teacher in a lesson or a part of
a lesson. Making a judgement about the quality of teaching, based on a wide
variety of evidence gathered in the classroom and elsewhere, is not the same as
judging how well a teacher performed. I know this may sound like splitting
hairs – but it is an important difference.
Inspectors should not grade an aspect
such as teaching, unless circumstances are exceptional, without considering the
broad range of evidence that they can gather during a visit to a lesson – for
example, the behaviour of the students and how well they are managed, subject
knowledge, the standard of work completed in books, the quality of marking and
so on – and use this to come to a view about what teaching is like for those
students and its impact on their learning over time.
I was speaking to a colleague today,
one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors. He reminded me it is all about outcomes and
that it does work both ways. In a classroom he was in recently, a teacher
produced, literally, an all-singing, all-dancing lesson. There was music,
comedy, costumes, games, ‘thinking hats’, and all with clear objectives on the
whiteboard. He recorded a teaching quality grade of inadequate. Not because of the
‘performance’ on the day but because students’ graffiti-strewn books hadn’t
been marked for six months and work was shoddy or incomplete. In contrast, he
graded teaching as outstanding in a classroom where students sat reading in
silence because of the exceptional quality of students’ work and the teacher’s
marking in exercise books. He told both teachers what his conclusions were.
Moreover, inspectors will visit
lessons for a variety of reasons. This can include looking at whether good
literacy is promoted, to check on particular students’ standards, following a
group of students to check on their attitudes to learning in different
contexts, or how effectively additional staff support students with special
educational needs. They can also gather evidence about teaching outside of
lessons – and frequently do – by speaking to students, looking at planning,
undertaking work scrutiny and talking to senior leaders.
And however the evidence about
teaching across the school is gathered and evaluated, inspectors must not
simply aggregate the grades awarded when evaluating teaching. It says this very
clearly in the published handbook for inspectors. They must take a view based
on what they have seen in the school during the inspection alongside, for
example, the school’s own view of teaching across the school and other
performance data.
So in short:
·
Inspectors should not give
an overall grade for the lesson and nor should teachers expect one.
·
If asked, inspectors will
provide feedback to individuals on what they have observed, including the
evidence they have gathered about teaching.
·
They can share the grade
for the evidence gathered about teaching, or other aspects, with an individual
teacher. In most instances, it should include evidence about what is routine
rather than one-off.
·
Inspectors must ensure
that this feedback does not seem to constitute a view about whether the teacher
is a ‘good’ teacher or otherwise, or if they ‘taught a good lesson’ or
otherwise. The feedback they give is confidential.
·
Teachers need to
understand this too, as they often clamour to know what ‘grade’ they got. I
understand why they want to know, and it can be difficult to differentiate
between a grade for teaching and a grade for the teacher. I accept that we may
need to do more here.
·
Evidence gathered directly
or indirectly about individual teachers by inspectors should never be used by
the school for performance management purposes.
·
Inspection is about
evaluating the quality of education provided by the school, by considering a
range of evidence, and not about evaluating, individually or collectively, the
performance of teachers through short lesson observations.
Too often, it seems to me, inspectors’
visits to lessons are confused with the ones carried out by headteachers whose
purpose may be to identify professional development needs or performance
management. This is particularly the case with newly qualified teachers, where
inspectors and course tutors or mentors are not gathering evidence for the same
purpose. Inspectors need to know what the quality of teaching is like across a
whole school, and how teachers are supported.
On average, inspectors may spend only
25 minutes or so in each lesson. It would be nonsensical to suggest that an
Ofsted inspector could give a definitive validation of a teacher’s professional
competency in such a short time. We are not in the business of handing out
badges that say ‘You are an outstanding teacher’ or the opposite. We leave that
to others, who will use their own and other evidence to come to a conclusion.
We would not expect any other professional, for example a surgeon, to be judged
by peers on a single 25 minute observation of their work.
We have set much of this out in in our
inspection handbook and guidance to schools and inspectors alike. But, if
needed, we will revisit this in the next few weeks to make it clearer still for
inspectors, teachers and heads.
Finally, if instructing inspectors to
feed back on the range of evidence used to arrive at a judgement without giving
a numerical teaching ‘grade’ would help, or even removing the grade for
teaching on the evidence form altogether, then I am prepared to consider it. We
might, for instance, just ask inspectors to note all their evidence gathered
about teaching, and then bring it all together at the end of the inspection in
a plenary before discussing the single overall judgement on teaching with the
school.
Mike Cladingbowl, Ofsted’s National
Director, Schools.
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