And Why Parents at the School Gates Know Something's Wrong

You became a teacher to inspire children.

You're spending your evenings jumping through OFSTED's latest hoops instead.

You know it's not working. Parents know it's not working. Children know it's not working.

But you keep doing it anyway.

Why?

Because somewhere along the way, you started serving your license and the regulators more than the children in front of you.

And parents standing at the school gates, locked out, offering help, watching their children disengage, can see it even if you can't.

The School Gates Divide

There's a moment every parent experiences at the school gates.

You offer to help. You mention that when you were in school, parents came in to hear reading, to help with art projects, to support school trips.

You're told: "We have safeguarding policies now."

Translation: "We don't trust you. Stay behind the gates."

You watch your child come out deflated. Again. "I hate writing," they say. Again.

You ask what happened in class.

Your child can't explain why the topic was about saving the prime minister (they don't care about the prime minister) or why they had to follow a template (it didn't fit their idea) or why they got marked down for creativity (the success criteria said three adjectives, they used seven).

You're confused. This isn't how learning works in your world.

In your workplace, when someone isn't engaged, you don't give them stricter templates. You ask what they need. You collaborate. You adapt.

But you're locked outside the school gates. You can't see what's happening. You can't help.

And when you ask questions, you're told you "don't understand modern pedagogy."

But here's the thing: you understand how humans actually work.

And what's happening in that classroom? That's not how humans work.

The "Never Left School" Problem

Many teachers entered university at 18, completed teacher training by 22, and walked straight into a classroom.

They've never left the school system.

They've never worked in an environment where:

• People challenge authority constructively
• Compliance doesn't equal competence
• Innovation matters more than following procedure
• Adults are trusted to make professional judgments
• Mistakes are learning opportunities, not career risks

This isn't a criticism of teachers. It's an observation about systemic limitation.

When you've only ever experienced hierarchical, compliance-based systems, you don't recognise them as problems. You think that's just how organisations work.

Except it's not.

What 20 Years Outside Education Taught Me

I spent 20 years as a physiotherapist before creating StoryQuest™.

Here's what I learned that education seems to have forgotten:

In physiotherapy:

• Patients are experts on their own bodies (teachers: children are experts on their own interests)
• You can't force healing through compliance (teachers: you can't force learning through templates)
• Pain is communication, not defiance (teachers: resistance is communication, not bad behavior)
• One executive function at a time (teachers: stop asking struggling writers to think, spell, write legibly, punctuate, and form sentences simultaneously)

In business:

• When something isn't working, you change it (education: you follow the curriculum regardless)
• When customers disengage, you adapt your offer (education: you punish disengagement)
• When staff are exhausted, you examine systems (education: you tell teachers to be more resilient)
• Innovation comes from autonomy, not compliance (education: creativity gets corrected to fit success criteria)

Parents standing at the school gates know this instinctively.

Because they live in the real world.

Where compliance doesn't equal results. Where engagement matters. Where humans respond to autonomy, not coercion.

The OFSTED Exhaustion Cycle

You're not serving children anymore. You're serving OFSTED.

Let's be honest about what your week looks like:

Monday: Revise medium-term plans to align with latest framework changes

Tuesday: Create differentiated resources for three ability groups (knowing full well the "low ability" children will disengage anyway)

Wednesday: Collect evidence for learning walks (spending more time documenting teaching than actually teaching)

Thursday: Moderate work samples against success criteria (marking what OFSTED wants to see, not what children actually created)

Friday: Update assessment trackers, intervention records, provision maps

Weekend: Plan next week's lessons to tick every box on the latest guidance

When did you last spend an evening thinking: "What do my actual children need tomorrow?"

Not what OFSTED needs to see. What the children in front of you actually need.

If you can't remember.

Perhaps it is because you're exhausted jumping through hoops that change every inspection cycle.

The Courage Crisis

Here's the uncomfortable truth: teachers lack collective courage to stand up to OFSTED.

Not because you're cowards. Because you're scared.

Scared of:

• Being judged inadequate
• Losing your job
• Letting your school down
• Being seen as difficult
• Risking your career for a principle

So you comply. You jump through hoops. You implement strategies you know won't work because the guidance says to.

And children disengage. Parents get frustrated. You get more exhausted.

But you keep doing it.

Because standing up to OFSTED feels impossible when you're standing alone.

What Parents See That You Don't

Parents at the school gates can see what you can't:

Your compliance culture is breaking their children.

They watch their creative, curious 4-year-old enter Reception excited to learn.

By Year 2, that child has learned:

• Creativity gets corrected (your idea doesn't fit the success criteria)
• Questions are disruptive (we're following the lesson plan)
• Engagement doesn't matter (you'll do it anyway, it's the curriculum)
• Adults don't trust you (stay behind the gates, we're the experts)

By Year 6, that child "hates writing."

Not because they can't write. Because writing has become a compliance exercise in following templates about topics they don't care about to meet success criteria that erase their voice.

Parents can see this.

Because they're not in the compliance bubble.

They live in a world where when something doesn't work, you change it.

Tom Hirst Had the Courage

Tom Hirst, Head of English at Dixon's Manningham Primary, did something radical.

He stopped serving OFSTED and started serving children.

When StoryQuest™ showed him 100% engagement - including every boy who "hated writing" - he had a choice:

Option A: Say "that's lovely, but it doesn't fit our scheme of work" and go back to templates and success criteria that engage 65% at best.

Option B: Build it permanently into his curriculum. Trust his professional judgment. Serve the children, not the framework.

He chose Option B.

BBC News featured him nationally:

"Even the kids who don't like writing didn't want to leave. They asked if we could do it again tomorrow. We've never seen this kind of engagement before."

Tom built StoryQuest™ permanently into his curriculum.

Not as a one-off enrichment. Permanently.

Did OFSTED punish him for deviating from compliance? No.

Did his children suffer? No. They thrived.

Did his professional judgment prove correct? Yes. 100% engagement. Zero behavioural incidents.

Tom had the courage to serve children instead of regulators.

Claire Light Had the Courage

Claire Light, Quality of Education Lead at Beckfoot Heaton Primary, faced the same choice.

Reluctant boys in writing had been a "school focus" for years. Nothing worked.

When she saw StoryQuest™ remove grammatical perfection requirements during creation:

"They couldn't wait to get started. The joy in the room was infectious. Taking away boundaries of grammatical perfection freed up creativity."

Claire could have said: "But the writing framework requires accuracy from the start."

She could have complied with the guidance and kept getting 65% engagement.

Instead, she trusted what she was seeing: when you remove coercion, engagement appears.

She had the courage to prioritise children's joy over framework compliance.

What Collective Courage Looks Like

Imagine if teachers collectively said to OFSTED:

"We've tried your frameworks for 20 years. Children are more disengaged than ever. We're exhausted implementing strategies that don't work. We're professionals with degrees and expertise. We're reclaiming our professional judgment to serve children, not regulators."

What could OFSTED do if every teacher did this?

Mark every school inadequate? Impossible.

Fire everyone? They can't replace you all.

But you won't do it collectively. Because you're scared individually.

So you keep jumping through hoops. And children keep disengaging. And parents keep seeing the disconnect.

What Parents Would Offer If You Let Them

Parents at the school gates aren't trying to undermine you.

They're trying to help.

They know things you don't:

• How their child engages outside school (obsessed with dinosaurs, builds complex Lego, creates elaborate imaginary worlds)
• What motivates their child (choice, autonomy, being trusted)
• What shuts their child down (correction during creativity, being told their idea is wrong, compliance for compliance's sake)

They've worked in environments where innovation matters. Where engagement drives results. Where adults are trusted professionals.

They're offering to bring that perspective into your classroom.

And you're telling them to stay behind the gates because of "safeguarding."

Translation: "We don't trust you. We know better."

Except you don't. Because your professional training happened in the same compliance bubble you're now operating in.

Parents have left that bubble. They've seen how the real world works.

Maybe listen to them.

The StoryQuest™ Model: Teachers Reclaiming Autonomy

StoryQuest™ succeeds because it trusts teachers' professional judgment.

We don't provide:

• ✗ Tick-box lesson plans
• ✗ Success criteria you must follow
• ✗ Templates you must use
• ✗ Assessment frameworks you must comply with

We provide:

• ✓ A principle: Complete creative freedom for children
• ✓ A method: Oral storytelling → partner scribing → real publishing
• ✓ Evidence: 465 children, 100% engagement, zero incidents
• ✓ Professional autonomy: Adapt it to your context

We trust you to make it work for your children.

Because you're the professional in the room. Not OFSTED. Not us. You.

And when we trust teachers' professional judgment, look what happens:

Tom Hirst: Built it permanently into curriculum
Claire Light: Adapted it for reluctant boy writers
Thieb Khan: Gave pupils freedom to express without constraints
Katharine McFarland: Used oral storytelling to build confidence first

Teachers who were trusted to adapt methodology to their context achieved 100% engagement.

Teachers who were given autonomy chose to serve children over frameworks.

When you're trusted, you rise to it.

What You're Actually Serving

Be brutally honest with yourself:

Who are you serving?

When you spend hours creating differentiated resources that you know won't engage your "low ability" group, you're serving OFSTED. Not children.

When you implement the latest phonics intervention that research says won't work for your EAL learners, you're serving compliance. Not children.

When you teach persuasive writing about topics children don't care about because it's in the curriculum, you're serving frameworks. Not children.

When you tell parents at the gates they can't help because of "policy," you're serving bureaucracy. Not children.

When you're too exhausted to notice that 35% of your class has disengaged from writing, you're serving survival. Not children.

When did you last make a professional judgment that contradicted guidance and backed yourself anyway?

If the answer is "never," you're not serving children.

You're serving your license.

The Parents Are Right

This will sting. But it's true.

Parents standing at the school gates frustrated that they can't help, watching their children disengage, questioning why modern teaching looks nothing like effective learning in their workplaces?

They're right.

You're operating in a compliance bubble. They're not.

You've normalised coercion. They recognise it as dysfunction.

You think frameworks equal professionalism. They know autonomy equals results.

You're exhausted serving regulators. They're offering to help serve children.

Let them in.

Not physically (safeguarding is real). But philosophically.

Listen when they say: "This isn't how learning works in the real world."

Because they're right. And you've been in the school system so long you've forgotten what the real world looks like.

What Courage Looks Like Practically

You don't have to quit teaching or start a revolution.

You just have to make one professional judgment that serves children over compliance.

Try this:

Next week, when a child says "I don't want to write about the seaside," don't say "but it's in the scheme of work."

Say: "What do you want to write about?"

Then let them write it.

When OFSTED asks where the seaside writing is, say: "I made a professional judgment that engagement mattered more than topic compliance. Look at the writing quality when children choose their own topics."

Show them the evidence.

Tom Hirst did this. OFSTED didn't punish him. BBC News featured him.

Start small. One child. One choice. One moment of professional courage.

Then another. Then another.

Build collective courage one professional judgment at a time.

The Choice

You have two options:

Option A: Keep Serving OFSTED

• Keep jumping through hoops
• Keep exhausting yourself with compliance
• Keep watching children disengage
• Keep telling parents to stay behind the gates
• Keep wondering why you're so tired

Option B: Start Serving Children

• Make professional judgments that contradict guidance
• Trust your expertise over frameworks
• Listen to parents who see what you've normalized
• Prioritize engagement over compliance
• Remember why you became a teacher

Tom Hirst chose Option B. Claire Light chose Option B. Thieb Khan chose Option B.

465 children engaged. 100%. Zero behavioural incidents.

Teachers remembered why they entered the profession.

What will you choose?

To the Parents at the School Gates

You're not wrong.

The system is broken. Teachers are trapped in compliance culture. Your children are disengaging.

But teachers are victims of this system too.

They're exhausted. They're scared. They've been told their professional judgment doesn't matter.

They need your support, not your criticism.

When you see StoryQuest™ working (100% engagement, children excited about writing), share it.

When teachers show courage (trying something new, trusting children's choices), support them.

When schools prioritise children over compliance, celebrate it publicly.

Teachers need to know parents will back them when they serve children over OFSTED.

Be that parent.

To the Teachers Reading This

You know I'm right.

You're exhausted. You're serving regulators. Children are disengaging.

And you feel powerless to change it.

But you're not powerless.

Tom Hirst proved it. Claire Light proved it. 465 children proved it.

When you have the courage to make professional judgments that serve children over compliance, engagement appears.

You just have to start.

One child. One choice. One moment of professional courage.

Then find other teachers doing the same. Build collective courage. Support each other.

Stop jumping through OFSTED's hoops. Start serving the children in front of you.

You became a teacher for them. Not for regulators.

Remember that.

You didn't become a teacher to serve OFSTED.

You became a teacher to serve children.

Your children are waiting for you to remember that.

Kate Markland
Former Physiotherapist | Founder, StoryQuest™

"I spent 20 years outside education. When I entered classrooms, I was shocked. Teachers were serving compliance over children. Parents were locked outside offering help. Children were disengaging. And everyone had normalised it. The real world doesn't work like this. Neither should schools."