An inspection or external review is coming and you want the school ready without panic
An external review is approaching, and the task is to prepare honestly without tipping the school into performance or panic.
A date is either known or expected. The school has real strengths and real work in progress, and the task is to make both visible without staff spending weeks on preparation that helps nobody. Handled badly, the run-up costs the school more than the visit does.
Presenting symptoms
- Staff are asking what they should be doing differently in the run-up.
- Preparation work is being generated that will have no use after the visit.
- Leaders cannot give the school’s account of itself in a few sentences without the document in front of them.
Possible causes
- The school’s account of where it is and why may never have been written in a form anyone can say aloud.
- Anxiety may be filling the space that direction has not.
- Leaders may not have decided what will deliberately not be done in the run-up.
- The school may genuinely not know how strong some parts of its provision are.
Staff are anxious and asking what they should change.
Your most useful next step: Be visibly in classrooms and corridors this week, and answer the question directly: nothing changes, because what happens normally is what should be seen.
Lead behaviours
Leaders give different accounts of where the school is and why.
Your most useful next step: Agree the school’s account in five sentences, covering where it was, what changed, what is still in progress and why, and have every senior and middle leader able to give it unprompted.
Lead behaviours
Preparation is generating work that will be used once and discarded.
Your most useful next step: Publish a short list of what is genuinely required, state plainly what will not be produced, and stop anything already under way that is not on the list.
Lead behaviours
You are not confident the school knows how strong its provision actually is.
Your most useful next step: Choose the two areas you are least sure about and look at them properly now, while there is still time to act on what you find.
Lead behaviours
Core behaviours
A review is largely an account of the school given under pressure. A school that has already agreed its own account gives a consistent one, while a school that has not gives as many versions as it has leaders.
Nearly all the damage done in a run-up is done by preparation nobody asked for. Deciding what will not be produced protects more capacity than any document produces.
The worst outcome is not a difficult judgement but a surprising one. Whatever the school is avoiding looking at now is the most likely thing for a reviewer to find.
Calm is transmitted by presence rather than by reassurance. A leader who is visibly in classrooms during the run-up settles more anxiety than a briefing does.
Where a weakness was identified and acted on, the question a reviewer asks is whether the action worked. Checking is what converts an improvement plan into evidence.
Secondary behaviours
Use this wherever staff are being asked to do something differently in the run-up. If the reason cannot be given, it is probably preparation for its own sake.
Use this where anxiety is the dominant feature. Staff take their reading of how serious this is from the leader’s manner far more than from what the leader says.
Use this where preparation is multiplying. A short agreed list of what is genuinely required is the quickest way to stop work nobody needed.
A useful first action
Write the school’s account of itself in five sentences and read it to the senior team. If they would each have written something different, that is the first job.
Suggested approach
- Agree the school’s own account of where it is, what changed and what is still in progress, in a form leaders can give without notes.
- Decide what will not be prepared, and say so plainly, so that staff stop generating work nobody will use.
- Look honestly at the two or three areas you are least certain about, while there is still time to act.
- Check whether earlier improvement actions actually worked, rather than treating the plan itself as the evidence.
- Be visible and unhurried in the weeks beforehand, because staff read the leader’s manner more closely than the message.