....and we thought it was going to be a quiet week!

[RobFrain]

Until Ofsted ring up and tell us they are coming in on Wednesday and Thursday!

Now I'm panicing - Will they want to speak to us? This will be my first Ofsted within the school and now I'm trying to find out if they come to speak to us what will they want to see! Any help very much appreciated from those who have had this as well! Hopefully it will just be the teachers being looked at!

[FN-GM]

Will they want to speak to us

I very much doubt so. I could bet allot that they wont say a word to you.

You just will have the teachers running around like headless chickens...

[AngryTechnician]

I had heard somewhere (possibly on Edugeek) that Ofsted's recent inspection regime included a focus on e-safety, and that they might talk to technical staff (the NM in particular) about this. Perhaps someone who has been through one recently can confirm or deny?

[rush_tech]

I've been here for 2 ofsted inspection, never spoke to me

[Pyroman]

Just had it before christmas, nobody wanted to talk to me.

[teejay]

We are not deemed worthy enough to speak to Ofsted inspectors, so relax, chill out, let the teachers have the stress ;-)

[strawberry]

only thing you should need to do is reiterate your helpdesk policies, how they contact you, why they contact you, what details they need to give that sort of thing.
OFSTED couldn't care less about my work until a projector blew up during a lesson , all of a sudden they were very interested in my work. Teacher did the right thing, took a minute to email the helpdesk, gave relevant detail so i attended with spare projector in hand and setup while the teacher delivered plan b. Got us good marks in the end.

[joe90bass]

The NM at a school near here was interviewed in their recent Estyn (Welsh version of OFSTED) inspection

[pete]

The only thing you'll have to do is rescue lost and bewildered inspectors from the more byzantine areas of the school. If you want to score eSafety points (and they don't have a clearly showing ID/Namebadge) you could do the "I'm talking to you to work out who you are and if you don't satisfy me, I'll be frog-marching you off the premises sonny-jim" Can-I-help-you? routine.

[pavlovs_dog]

I have been through 3 OFSTED inspections; two with one school where they have spoke to me on both occassions and once with another school where they left me completely alone.
Both times I went in the meeting with the ICT Co-ordinator, although they did ask quite a few questions that I had to answer.
Nothing to it, both inspectors were really down to earth.
Good Luck.

[bossman]

I too was interviewed back in 2003 by ofsted and they asked some general questions on the network infrastructure, ratio of computers to pupils, internet safety plus some other details which I cannot remember (cant be that important) but nothing to do with licensing.

We were the first IT team in our county to actually get a mention in the ofsted report which gave us an excellent in the running and managing of the network.

@webman and myself were very proud that day.

One in the eye for the teachers but did we get a mention in the briefing the next day? (You can guess)

We didn't mind though

[DrCheese]

Been through three ofsted inspections here and they've never spoken to any of us, aside from supporting them once when they had issues with the laptop they had bought in.

[jdoyle]

We are not deemed worthy enough to speak to Ofsted inspectors, so relax, chill out, let the teachers have the stress ;-)

yep. Were on a pay scale that doesn't hit their radar. Ditto for the Investor in People assessor who came to spend a day or two with us.

[Sylv3r]

Very unlikely that they will set time aside to talk to you, but if your passing in the corridor they may stop and talk. Treat this as an interview and tell them what they want to hear )

[Sylv3r]

yep. Were on a pay scale that doesn't hit their radar. Ditto for the Investor in People assessor who came to spend a day or two with us.

As a school you can direct the IIP assessors to talk to individual people, I have spoken to our IIP assessor on two occasions, initial IIP qualification and the renewal.