‘Ofsted detrimental to teachers’ health’

A GROUP of teachers joined NEU deputy general secretary Niamh Sweeney to deliver a petition to the Department for Education (DfE) calling for Ofsted to be replaced.

On 23 March they took the petition, which has 50,000 signatures, to the DfE’s offices in Westminster.

Launched by the NEU as part of our Replace Ofsted – let teachers teach campaign, the petition calls for a new accountability system that is supportive, effective and fair.

Niamh said: “We want accountability to be able to build school improvement, to be able to support leaders and provide the best education for children and young people. But what this current system does is label schools and communities and then it makes it really difficult for schools to improve out of that.”

London secondary teacher and Haringey NEU district secretary Ed Harlow said: “I see first hand the difficulties that schools face in the run-up to Ofsted. Some schools haven’t been inspected in ten years, so that stress never leaves, it is constant and it’s really detrimental to teachers’ mental health, particularly leadership members.”

The NEU has now brought together a panel of experts, including heads and teachers, for Beyond Ofsted – an inquiry into the

Heads warn of crumbling schools danger

THERE will be a serious incident at a school any day because so many are in such a terrible state of disrepair.

That was the dire prediction by the Shadow Schools Minister Stephen Morgan, who spoke at this year’s NEU Leadership convention.

Morgan told members at the London event on 9 March that he is “kept awake at night” by the number of crumbling schools.

“Something drastic is going to happen. There is going to be serious incident, and it’ll be a wake-up call for this Government,” he said. “One in six children is at risk, and the condition of the schools estate has not been reviewed since 2019.”

Secondary head teacher and former NEU president Robin Bevan said he could spend £1 million in a week repairing the infrastructure of his school. Tarmac needed to be relaid on the playgrounds, downpipes and guttering not touched since it was installed in the 1930s needed to be replaced, and classrooms had not been decorated for 40 years, he said.

“I would like to propose a policy for Labour’s manifesto, which is that every school is guaranteed to be refurbished every 25 years and rebuilt every 75.

“The Government announced last autumn that it would rebuild 500 schools in the next ten years. At that rate, every school building in this country has to last every 488 years. Something has got to change.” n See feature on page 29 future of school inspection. It will look at alternative approaches and report by the end of the year.

Just 3% of heads think SATs reflect standard of education

THE results of a new survey by campaign group More Than A Score (MTAS) show that few believe in the value of SATs scores.

Just 17 per cent of parents believe good SATs results are the best demonstration of whether their child has received a high standard of primary education, with only three per cent of heads and senior teachers sharing this view.

Leaders instead selected love of learning (63 per cent), independent thinking (56 per cent) and a good grasp of a range of subjects as the best indicators of high education standards.

n Visit morethanascore.org.uk n MTAS has released a series of videos on Instagram in which teachers speak out about the stress and anxiety that SATs place on children and their families. morethanascore_