Over the course of the last few months we have been fielding a number of questions from understandably anxious subject leaders who have been asked to provide documents, presumably to satisfy OFSTED. One school asked ‘What needs to go into a scheme of work’, another wanted help allocating substantive concepts to specific year groups, whilst a third wanted to show progression in substantive concepts. Whilst these might on the surface appear as reasonable requests, and you don’t want to seem as if you’re not doing your job properly, we do need to ask if any of the above actually do anything to improve pupils’ understanding, let alone enjoyment of history. When there is so much to do and so little time for classroom teaching subject leaders to do it in, we do need to ask if it is a good use of precious time. After all, being a good leader is much more about doing the RIGHT things, rather than doing things right.
I have always felt this, but I have fought shy of stating things too strongly when it comes to OFSTED deep dives, as you never know what the individual inspector might want. Things are now changing, with
