1. I'm not alone. In the UK, only 2/3 of the teachers in state schools have a degree in my subject (physics). Golden Hellos of £25k are on offer and last year's uptake was 67% of target. I was not the only teacher to emigrate that year from my department of 7.
2. Canada has no equivalent of Ofsted. Education is done provincially, and my province has no provincial inspection system. There's a lot wrong with Canadian education, with about the same percentage of bad teachers as the UK, but at least nobody is wasting their time chasing Government paperwork and inspections, which is probably why Canada is well ahead of the UK in the PISA results.
3.The last time I was involved in preparations for an Ofsted Inspection was 2013, plus advising a colleague on ISI inspections 2 months ago.
Biggus - completely agree about IIP. In principle, there's nothing wrong with either IIP, Ofsted, or ISO 900x (which I have also worked in preparing for). However, in practice:
a) It is perfectly possible for crap organisations with terrible management to get accredited by getting the paperwork done, then ignoring all of it until the next inspection/re-accreditation. I speak from experience.
b) As a bureaucracy, the accreditation agency/Inspection authority has a vested interest in the process, but absolutely no responsibility for the outcome*, and no competition. The long term result is process over product every time.
c) The quality of the average Ofsted inspector is awful. Independent Schools in the UK are inspected by ISI. Their inspectors are serving senior teachers who take a week out to go inspect another school. I have had 5 as colleagues, and they were uniformly excellent. So, the UK has an easy fix for Ofsted; sack the lot of them and copy ISI. It won't happen though, because ISI is independent of Government, and the politicians hate that.
For the military, I don't see what was wrong with the system when I left it in 1993. Bloody excellent, I use stuff I learned in the RAF instructor system every day.
*In the RAF, if I as a Standards Officer failed another instructor, I had to design and teach the retraining course, and was held responsible for the instructor's re-pass. Ofsted just slag-off-and-leave.
Last edited by Fox3WheresMyBanana; 23rd Jan 2015 at 11:30.