Being a nursery owner who recently had an inspection I completely understand the frustrations that any institution feels when having an Ofsted inspection.

Ofsted should be there to help us provide the best care for children by offering support and advise - definately carrot not stick!

Jason, Aldershot,

How right these comments are. If we trusted our teachers our education system would be much better and our children would be better educated. Unfortunately, the same inspection regime is also poisoning our care homes.

What is spent on inspectors would be better spent on front line services.

V Baillie, Scottish Borders,

A basic principle of successful teaching and learning is that people learn more successfully when praised rather than when punished

Given the focus on school failures then the conclusion must be inspectors do not know much about teaching, or that they are not interested in helping schools improve

Jim Smith, Scottish Borders, Scotland

Over the past 20 years, Education has been a fairground punching bag for politicians of whatever stripe to prove their 'toughness' and financial cleverness - reflecting attitudes much admired in current society. Key words: 'Rigour' and 'Robustness' for others. Change that and the rest will follow.

Mark Wilson, Bristol,

My son's nursery school has been similarly "Offsted'ised". I cannot begin to tell you what nonsense they have written. I complained and questioned what evidence they had for what they had written. I got a standard, non-commital response back.

We need a national dabate about this. Keep going!

diana, London,

Currently these inspections are the only tool to regulate standards in Schools. No choice, no competition

I never understood why the schools did not get the criteria, raise their standards, audit sister schools and then the 'big' inspection would be ok.
In the real world this happens all the time

John, N Yorks,

It's time people were speaking out about HMIe!
The situation is as false as painting earth to resemble grass for a royal visit.I was told off the record that I was doing all the important things extremely well indeed,so I hadn't to mind the feedback because it was simply a process.Scrap the system!

Morag Foster, Dingwall, Scotland

We have just come through an inspection. The very good report was a work of fiction. Why? because we are part of the HMIE School of Ambition Programme.
You are so right about the quality or experience of former teachers who make it their ambition to become Inspectors.

john smith, Glasgow, Scotland

How many OFSTED inspections end up with the inspectors writing a few words of praise and stopping there ? None I should think. Never underestimate the capacity of bureaucrats to undertake self - justifying work - how else would the overblown costs of OFSTED be justified.

Jeremy, London,

The description of teachers whose life is not to educate and inspire but to box-tick and use buzzwords is horribly familiar as the husband of a dedicated teacher. My wife loves teaching and achieves amazing results but is giving up to teach supply because the nonsense is simply no longer tolerable.

Matt, London, UK

We have become a society that thrives on blame. We don't identify weakness, analyze the cause and devise a remedy. We see a unsatisfactory situation and look to blame someone. This applies to many of todays problems, employment, politics, marriage, the list goes on. But, don't blame me.

Colin Coghlan, Ramsey, NJ, USA

If you follow the agenda created by the Inspectors you will get a good report, even if your results are rubbish. Your are right about the quality of the teachers picked to be Inspectors and also the type of teacher picked to run our schools. Good, hard working ,inspirational teachersare not picked.

john smith, Glasgow, Scotland

It is far, far worse now, but even in the 60's & 70's teachers, in order to gain promotion, had to pretend to believe the latest educational nostrums. The first career move of the ambitious was to get out of the classroom. For relief, read the village school stories written by 'Miss Read'.

Dave, Wrexham,

Look, it's easy - forget teaching in England: come and work abroad. In foreign countries, teachers are held in high regard, treated as human beings, and left alone to do what they do best......

You can always go back to blightie to pick up the pieces once the anti-society implodes :))

Bill Beetham, Moscow, Russia

Successive governments have ruined teaching both as a profession and a means of educating the young. When teachers aren't obliged to amuse children by a Butlins redcoat style of teaching, they're being slagged off by Ofsted and undermined by the bureaucracy and lack of support of LEAs. Some career!

Peter, Suffolk,

Those who can, teach. Those who can't tell teachers how to teach.

Tom Welsh, Basingstoke,

A case of the teeth biting the dog wagged by the tail. There has long been no appreciation of the position teachers and schools are placed in by being made 'accountable' to politically sharpened inspection tools which might once have served to share questions of practice and philosophy.

JOHN ANTHONY, ALICANTE, spain

It appears to me that Education in Britain is plagued with political interference and points scoring, league tables which verge on the meaningless and targets which are designed to boost the standing of politicians.

Neil, Gloucestershire, England

The excellent nursery my children attend scored poorly in an OFSTED report recently because, among other things, staff were insufficiently aware of the 'learning outcomes' of the activities they were doing with the under twos. I don't think you can take OFSTED very seriously any more, to be honest.

Katharine, York,

In her last OFSTED a friend of mine, the head of a large secondary school was criticised after if was observed that large numbers of pupils knew her personally and had a good relationship with her. Evidence that she wasn't spending enough time on target setting. It's beyond parody.

Helen, Rugby,

My wife is a teacher. I can testify to her experience of moving to a school where the Senior Staff (sorry "senior management team") never leave their offices except to criticise the failure to achieve some tick in a box. No praise is ever forthcoming. the kids are secondary to their ambition.

Olaf, Dundee,

I am a former headmaster. When I first started it was a wonderful career but by 2005 I felt so impeded by OFSTED and the Government generally that I chose early retirement - at some considerable financial cost - rather than continue to try and work within the present appalling system.

James Wheeldon, Carnforth, UK

I left teaching in the UK 5 years ago. Why? The insistence on schools as vehicles for social engineering. It has almost entirely usurped any educational ethos. It left me in despair. Scrap Ofsted. Scrap the curriculum (really). It's the only hope. Let schools answer to parents only.

Sass, Dartmouth, Canada

Bureaucracy is supposed to serve the needs of the people and government. Unfortunately bureacracy now serves itself. I wonder if the Inspectors have centrally driven targets to identify improvements.

John Goode, Welwyn Garden City, UK