Earwig and Ofsted

How to make sure that your staff are always ‘Ofsted ready’.

If you are teacher in a maintained school in England or Wales you carry with you the knowledge that, at some point, you are going to have your work performance examined, measured and reported on, by a stranger  -  and the conclusion widely publicised. That's pressure, but it doesn't need to be.

The Earwig Impact on Ofsted Inspections

We could bore you with dozens of testimonials from Headteachers who have just gone through an Ofsted and are keen to tell us how helpful Earwig was.Instead, here are just three.  

If you’d like to get the gen directly from the head at a school near you, just request a Demo and we’ll set up a conversation for you, as part of that.
Beacon Hill School - Essex

Yes, we were outstanding again!

We used Earwig to show the pupil evidence to match the curriculum areas that they looked at as part of the deep dive.

They were impressed with the pupil work evidence, particularly where we had uploaded videos for some of our more complex children.

If we had been given a target, we would have asked to look at personalising our use of Earwig even further, but if you are Outstanding you don't get a target!

Sue Hewitt
Headteacher
What the DFE thinks of Earwig

What does Ofsted think of earwig?

It’s ironic that, while the DfE is adding to the admin load for SEND teachers, Ofsted, with the new Inspection Framework, has added this extra question for school Headteachers – ‘What are you doing to reduce teacher workload and stress?’

Ofsted are specifically forbidden from commenting on school software but we do know directly from the Heads at many recently inspected Earwig schools, that they are always  impressed. If you want more detail on that, check out the Earwig blog. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating and we are proud to boast that, in the eight years that Earwig has been used in special schools, only one school has ever been downgraded (and that was 'special circumstances') while  several have been elevated.
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This is spite of the fact that most Earwig clients are Outstanding and, in the two years 2019-21, only 17% of Outstanding schools inspected retained their top ranking.

A Few Extracts From The Current Inspection Framework and How Earwig Can Help

Curriculum

Leaders take on or construct a curriculum that is ambitious and designed to give all learners, particularly the most disadvantaged and those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) or high needs, the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life - within EARWIG, you have the freedom to select frameworks that can support the assessment of all aspects of your school curriculum and that can be tailored to meet the individual needs of disadvantaged, SEND, and high needs pupils.
The provider’s curriculum is coherently planned and sequenced towards cumulatively sufficient knowledge and skills for future learning and employment - custom framework can be built into EARWIG to ensure that your coherently sequenced curricula are all available in one place to safeguard the delivery of knowledge and skills for future learning and employment.
The provider has the same academic, technical or vocational ambitions for almost all learners. Where this is not practical – for example, for some learners with high levels of SEND - its curriculum is designed to be ambitious and to meet their needs—editable individualised EHCP frameworks allow staff to set and monitor ambitious developmental, academic, technical, or vocational targets for all learners.
Learners study the full curriculum. Providers ensure this by teaching a full range of subjects for as long as possible, ‘specialising’ only when necessary - Within EARWIG, you can utilise a wide range of frameworks to ensure a broad and balance curriculum for as long as possible.

Implementation

Teachers have good knowledge of the subject(s) and courses they teach. Leaders provide effective support, including for those teaching outside their main areas of expertise - Developmental timelines allow subject leaders to monitor and moderate subject provision across the whole educational setting and support identification of powerful exempla work in-depth subject analysis.
Teachers present subject matter clearly, promoting appropriate discussion about the subject matter they are teaching. They check learners’ understanding systematically, identify misconceptions accurately and provide clear, direct feedback. In doing so, they respond and adapt their teaching as necessary, without unnecessarily elaborate or differentiated approaches - Evidence records displayed in pupil-focused developmental timelines allow frontline practitioners to evaluate learners' performance over time and reflect upon their own pedagogical skills.
Over the course of study, teaching is designed to help learners to remember in the long term the content they have been taught and to integrate new knowledge into larger concepts - Bespoke grading schemes allow educational settings to choose their own level of the granularity in order to track the small steps of progress made by learner in a manner that is meaningful to them.

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