What would you have done?

 I wonder what you would have done if this had happened to you?

I had a phone call from a friend on Saturday and we had the usual preamble of .......'how are you, how's the family, have you any holiday plans, etc' And then she started to talk about her daughter's teaching job. I nearly stopped her because I know someone, who is teaching at the same school. They've just had the dreaded OFSTED.. and it didn't go well.

I listened quietly while she told me how well her daughter had done. I knew she wasn't speaking the truth because no one in the school had an excellent report.

I should have made some excuse, like someone at the door or something, to end the phone call, but I didn't.

She back tracked a few times, and I felt very awkward, as the lies grew, to cover what she had said originally.

I did manage to say Goodbye, but I felt so  bad and now I don't think our friendship will weather this and I'm sad.

What is it that we can't accept that sometimes, we just don't make the grade. I worked through three OFSTEDS, two had good reports and one not so good, in fact the school report was pretty awful.. all three were stressful to the extent that I bought new clothes so I wouldn't have to worry what to wear. But I survived and carried on teaching for years after that. 

What would you have done?

Chrisxx

For people who don't live in UK, Ofsteds are whole school inspections, usually over three days.