Managing Inspection Visits: Reducing Stress and Workload
ABOUT THIS COURSE
This course is about helping school colleagues to understand that they can influence and shape any inspection armed with the right knowledge and tools to answer all challenges presented to them with evidence. Inspections can often be at the behest of a subjective opinion as opposed to an objective one. This course should enable headteachers and school senior colleagues to better understand their ability to convey confidence, resilience, and knowledge about their school to the team who have a limited timeframe in which to reach that judgement. A judgement which could have profound impact on all staff within a school and the community it serves.BENEFITS OF ATTENDING
- Greater understanding of the requirements of an inspection
- Becoming less ‘afraid’ of an inspection
- Ability to turn inspections into a force for positivity
- Reduced stress and workload
- Understanding the constraints and limits on an inspectors’ ability to determine evidence presented to them
PROGRAMME
Context - A New Era and a New World? or is it? Have Lessons Been Learned?
10.00am- Why inspect at all? Why do schools often ‘fear’ the visit?
- What has changed with a new HMCI? What is an inspection trying to achieve?
- How does the government influence an ‘independent’ inspectorate
How Inspection Teams Work
10.45am- What is the training like and what are inspectors taught? What is the expertise inspectors have?
- When is my next inspection? How does scheduling an inspection work? Section 8 or Section 5?
- Understanding inspectors are human too.
Break
11.30amHow to Prepare
11.50am- “The Phone Call” – what to expect and how to lead it, with the lead inspector
- Protecting yourself - Feed them the information they need BEFORE they even call.
- “It’s not rocket science” – what are inspectors actually looking for?
- Activity: how would you plan to ‘feed the lions’ what they want to know?
Lunch
1.00pmInvolving the ‘Right People’
2.00pm- Prepping governors, Prepping staff - Identifying key stakeholders to support any upcoming inspection
- Prepping yourself – how can you be ‘on top’ of it all
- Local authorities, Diocese and/or Trusts – do they know you and your challenges
- Prepping pupils – DON’T(?)
Break
2.45pmNext Steps
2.50pm- Are you ready to take charge?
- What am I going to get my team(s) to do without increasing their workload but effectively reducing it?
- How do I ‘influence’ an inspection outcome?
- What if it all goes wrong? Where do I go? Who do I speak to? Why did it go wrong?
Depart
3.45pm
Leadership - Code: T0182
Managing Inspection Visits: Reducing Stress and Workload
Colin Scott started his career in 1992 as a secondary classroom teacher in the north east of England and over a series of promotions in a different schools reached headship in 2016. Before becoming a teacher, he served as an engineer in the Royal Navy and during his first twenty years of teaching he also worked part time as a Special Constable with Northumbria Police, understanding communities and families better from outside of a school environment. He trained initially as a Section 10 Team inspector in the early 2000’s but retrained into Section 5 (and Section 8) inspections in 2012. Colin led inspections as a lead inspector over 6 years ending his connection in 2020 during the covid lockdowns. He has a good understanding of how inspection teams work, the training inspectors undergo, and has trained colleagues across north east schools to understand that inspections do not need to be stressful and that leaders are able to manage the inspections collegiately with teams when they descend on school. Colin became the first UK State Secondary Headteacher to publicly come out as a gay man to his community in 2022 making national and international headlines following the ‘revelation’.