OFSTED sounds like a disease

OFSTED sounds like a disease. It is a stress-related disorder teachers suffer from. We have just got over it. The overall result was OK but the cost in stress and lost sleep was not worth it. I had a lucky escape. One of their days was Wednesday and I don't teach at all on Wednesday. On the Tuesday one of my colleagues was very stressed out because her year 9s had been playing up and OFSTED came in. My year 9s played up but OFSTED didn't come in. I don't like feeling relieved when someone else is so unhappy. Schadenfreude.

However it is over now. There was a very subdued atmosphere on Friday for the morning of the INSET day because we were discussing the new performance management requirements and the input from County was entirely negative - you must do this, you will be penalised if you don't do that, etc etc. And they didn't mention professional development or fostering initiative or new ideas. It was all results driven and linked to pay. Payment by results in fact.

So there it is. One crisis over and another begins. I am quite philosophical about it sometimes and in despair at other times. And people look to me to "do something" about performance management. I am not the NUT rep at the school and the rep did ask some pertinent questions at the meeting.

Part of me wants to withdraw from union activity and go and dig the garden. And another part of me knows that would be giving up on life altogether. And fatal.

And then this morning the Teaching Council (who wouldn't normally say boo to a goose) said what we have all been saying since SATS were first brought in - our children are the most tested in Europe and all this is alienating them still further.