Ofsted - does anyone believe what they say?

I was an advisory teacher for a local authority for 7 years and visited many schools, from nursery to secondary. I can categorically say that the Ofsted rating is meaningless. My DC had a place at an Outstanding secondary school and I chose a Good school that had just been RI because I’d been into both settings and seen how students were treated in each.

I’ve had doubts ever since our chaotic and poorly run nursery was rated “good”,
despite a queue of parents requesting to give feedback to the inspectors to express dissatisfaction or report worrying situations they had witnessed. (It was also an inspection triggered by several parent complaints to OFSTED). After that experience I just decided everything they say has to be taken with a massive grain of salt.

Not early years but when I was attending evening classes at my local college, which has been rated outstanding for years, they had an Ofsted Inspection.
Numerous teachers told me they were working until 3am - 4am every day that week and then back in at 7am.
They needed to do this to ensure that all their lessons plans and resources etc were up to standard to ensure that all classes they taught were outstanding.
The college was rated outstanding again.
However, if they were having to work until 4am every day for the Ofsted week then I do not believe that they could be outstanding the whole year round.
If they were outstanding all year round then the teachers wouldn't have needed to work so much overtime that one week

It's fine for an overview but a very outdated way of judging a setting so I wouldn't pay much attention.

I know awful schools that got "Good" and an amazing nursery that got rated inadequate!

It is completely dependant on the inspectors unfortunately. I’ve been in schools where the judgement was entirely fair and the report was very accurate. However, our last ofsted report mentioned that the children in school couldn’t adequately communicate with adults when interviewed about their learning. What they failed to mention was that they requested to speak to our SEND children only, the majority of whom have speech and language difficulties. I had to sit in a room and watch one of our poor ASD students be asked the same question repeatedly until the inspector deemed her response good enough - it was horrific.

Yes I do - although it’s been a while since my kids were early years.

I know reports can vary but every time I’ve d read an Ofsted report I’ve recognised the setting and the strengths / weaknesses have been recognised. The only weird one was my daughter’s forest school setting, as they didn’t have the parameters. But they changed that, came back quite quickly and it got the outstanding it deserved.