Ofsted Inspections - What IT resources are required?

[Ditto]

No sorry, we as a MAT have made a policy decision, if you're using our connection you simply will not be using a VPN, certainly not in any sanctioned way, we will do our level best to prevent any VPN usage as far as possible.

 

All use of our connection follows age appropriate filtering but in 2021 if you're not SSL intercepting then you're not effectively filtering IMO.

 

You may think from my comments on this that I am a "blocker" not just in terms of Internet access but in terms of principle, nothing could be further from the truth.

I tend to agree, but it is up to each school to decide. If your policy is to not have guest accounts, then fine, stick to it, but equally if you have appropriate guest access, you are free to access it. On the topic of what Ofsted inspect, it is true the IT angle is generally only covered on broad safe-guarding perspective. I'd like to see it broadened, to cover IT security in it's widest context, but I doubt too many inspectors have the appropriate skills to make a judgement and to train that level of expertise would take some doing. But it's not just IT - a similar view could apply to facilities and all HSE questions, finance and good financial practice. Ultimately the Ofsted inspectors are very focussed, understandably, on educational practice and performance, with a broad oversight on safe-guarding. You'd probably need a game changing approach to school inspections to cover the wider areas from an auditing perspective. I think there would be value in that, but can't see it happening anytime soon. At the end of the day Ofsted stands for "Office for standards of Education", not the broader aspects of running what effectively is a business model.

[elsiegee40]

…finance and good financial practice.

 

For academies, this bit is covered by ESFA inspections and audit. I have more faith in the ESFA reporting than than the audit to be fair. The former seems to cover wider practice better.

[TechMonkey]

IT provision and systems has been and had such a big impact during covid and lockdown - yet even now, Ofsted never seem bothered to ask about it?

 

e.g. How can school systems and safeguarding apps run effectively on equipment that's obsolete?

 

Very strange.

 

Could be worse, I heard of an ISI inspection that when they turned up the inspectors were presented with boxes of paperwork. When asked to get access to their systems they were told that their computer systems were down unfortunately. Systems were down the whole of their visit. Various inspectors wanted to mark them down for this but as it was not on the inspection framework there was no where to penalise them. They got outstanding!

[Ditto]

For academies, this bit is covered by ESFA inspections and audit. I have more faith in the ESFA reporting than than the audit to be fair. The former seems to cover wider practice better.

True, and having been sitting in an office with the business manager when the auditor was present doing her thing, it didn't come across a particularly probing! With various financial scandals that have sparked since academisation (and perhaps before too), it's right the EFSA monitor closely. What I'd like to see is similar probing in IT security and perhaps it might save a few schools the horrors of a ransomware attack. I guess we should leave it there in case you need to put an off topic flag up!

[Oaktech]

We've just had ofsted, literally 2 weeks ago, we got Good BTW, they wanted Wifi details which we provide in their welcome pack, we installed the filtering cert for them. I provided details of our filtering, literally just brand, supplier and details of our classroom management, again just brand and supplier to our SLT for them to include in documentation, that was it. I then just made sure everything worked flawlessly for 2 days for the teaching staff!