After weeks and weeks of waiting, I was finally able to let a very large cat out of the bag in the middle of last week. After a phone conversation with an HMI on Tuesday the report arrived almost immediately and, given its brevity, checking for factual accuracy was really a formality. Permission to promulgate swiftly followed so that I could, at long last relax my poker face and stop being deliberately enigmatic. Those six school weeks in no-man’s land following the inspection had felt very odd and I am just very glad that it’s over now so that we can all get on with tying in the inevitable loose threads that emerged during the final feedback meeting with the inspection team.
It does feel different when you see the outcome on the screen in front of you though, especially that front page. I couldn’t be prouder of my colleagues – my senior team for holding their own during high stakes discussions, the Heads of Academic Departments for their professionalism and leadership, the teachers for impressing in every classroom and all of the staff for working together so well to present a united front of excellence throughout the two days. The same is true of our students – boys and girls were selected at random either for focused interrogation, for their work to be scrutinized or for the eponymous ‘general finding-out-what-it’s-really-like’ conversations. All five members of the OfSTED Team were blown over by our inspirational students, with (as should be the case) the vanguard being our Sixth Form boys and girls; the inspectors were really, really impressed with our students in Years 12 and 13.
And then, of course, there were those other less tangible qualities which are embedded within our day-to-day existence here at Bishop’s which we all take completely for granted. The quality of relationships between individuals, the engagement with matters that are beyond and above the curriculum, the extra-curricular programmes and the constant emphasis on personal development. I don’t think that any of the inspection team had seen anything remotely like our Cathedral Service before in a school; the fact that such an event took place in a state school was not anticipated, but then this is just one of the features that makes our school so unique.
So – It’s lovely to have the vote of confidence and the flood of messages that followed via email and social media was even better. It’s fantastic to see the staff with a collective spring in their step around the site, and it’s rewarding to see the pride radiating from our youngsters too. But triumph and disaster should be treated just the same as Kipling said, so while the euphoria of an inspection outcome can be intoxicating for a short period what matters much more is focusing on making our school better still. That work has already begun.
SDS
