My feed
Premium

Please
or
to access all these features

Join the discussion on our Education forum.

Education

Have OFSTED ever been known to retract a bad review?

4 replies

OneInEight · 28/08/2015 08:34

Am curious as ds1's school has just had a dire review which based on our experience of the school is unjustified as we rate the school highly. In our opinion they have not taken into account fully the profile of the children attending the school (special school) when commenting on academic progress and behaviour. E.g. whilst academic progress is very low compared to a mainstream school it is as good or higher than special schools that take kids with a similar profile and this is not mentioned. I know they will be reviewed again in the Autumn but our concern is the viability of the school as this report will definitely put parents and LEAs off applying for placements. weeps at prospect of having to find another school for ds1 as finding this one was difficult enough

OP posts:
lougle · 28/08/2015 09:03

Once it's been published, any review of the decision has been completed. Before it's published, the draft is shown to the HT for comment (for e.g. 'you have this really negative stuff here and here but this positive point is hidden here. Could that positive thing go first?' or 'you say our %SEN is 4% but actually it's 11%') and then to HMIS before the agreed report is published.

It's hard to say re. the profile. We had a report a few years ago which didn't seem to acknowledge the profile of our children. In our last report the progress was marked outstanding because our HT could demonstrate the progress compared with expected progress for our (PMLD-SLD-MLD/complex needs) cohorts.

If it's a state SS I wouldn't worry too much about placements dropping off. If it's indie then I can understand your concern.

OneInEight · 28/08/2015 09:46

So probably too late then Sad. Think I will still write to OFSTED to praise the school to hope that the next review will be more positive. Unfortunately, it is an "indie" so the reviews are very important to get more placements. I also hope that the knee-jerk changes that the school are putting in place to satisfy OFSTED aren't actually detrimental to ds1.

OP posts:
JenniferYellowHat1980 · 28/08/2015 20:43

I suspect an agenda. The same has just happened in the mainstream school I used to work at. I know it's a decent school, but it's been put into special measures. Needless to say, it's not yet an academy.

meringue33 · 28/08/2015 20:51

Our DC nursery (privately run) had a bad OfSted inspection and paid for it to be done again - it came out Good the second time. Not sure whether a school would have this option too?

Please create an account

To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.