Last week we got the call all schools dread - it's inspection time again. Usually this is the cue for science teachers to go mad ordering all manner of complicated experiments they've never tried before in an attempt to impress the inspectors and be judged 'outstanding'. Inevitably all this achieves is a huge amount of extra work for the technicians and the inspector probably never came to the lesson anyway.
This inspection is slightly different and the panic is coming from a different side.
As a boarding school we are not only judged on the education that we provide, but also on how well we care for the students and this current inspection is an interim one focussing on boarding and welfare. For the teachers there is very little impact, but senior management have been bombarding us with emails about the various welfare and H&S policies and wanting to make sure that we all know the official line on anything an inspector may want to talk about.
The Health and Safety manager had warned that they would be very interested in seeing the science facilities and checking all our H&S paperwork, so we made sure we were all prepared before he brought one of the inspectors round yesterday afternoon. What an anti-climax! The guy asked me where we keep the radioactive sources and that was it.
Don't know why everyone gets so worked up.
