Local authority advice – still fit for purpose?

Local authority advisers used to work with schools to mitigate the worst excesses of government imposition, allowing the establishments to creatively develop an environment conducive to expanding learning appropriate to the children in their schools. Today many headteachers feel that local authority personnel are complicit in defining schools in the image of a one size fits all education service.  

In order to cover themselves, local authority officers use every visit to perform a mini-inspection of children’s knowledge or factual recall of a particular subject or performance data, grill senior teams on any area from attendance, safeguarding, finance, that children with SEND needs will achieve national expected standard for all pupils etc. to“ensure you’re doing enough to please Ofsted”. Sadly their job is, apparently, to unquestioningly do what they believe Ofsted want.

There appears to be only one expected way of organising the curriculum, learning, teaching that is acceptable. Any other way is perceived as a weakness and a threat – “Ofsted won’t like this”. Every visit is given a potential Ofsted grading: potential to be good, requires improvement, etc. Governors are constantly reminded they must hold headteachers and senior leaders to account. 

Learning requires the engagement of the learner, be it a pupil or the teacher. British schools were once held in high regard throughout the world for their imaginative styles and this was mirrored in the divergent and creative thinking of their pupils. An education system dominated by external and centralised control saps the ability of those within schools to think for themselves.