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Original poster

Dozens of “Outstanding” schools downgraded after not being inspected for years

52 replies

noblegiraffe · 30/03/2019 14:32

Prospective PM Michael Gove in his wisdom as Education Secretary decided it was a good idea to remove Outstanding schools from the inspection cycle.

Years later it turns out that might not have been such a good idea.

“Ofsted revealed yesterday that inspections of exempt schools carried out between September and December last year, before it was ordered to step up its efforts, resulted in just 23 per cent maintaining their top grades. Of 117 schools inspected, more than one-third were rated “requires improvement” or “inadequate”.”

The DfE says that this means their system of triggering inspections when concerns are raised is working - but this relies on concerns being raised and acted upon, and given that some schools went from Outstanding to Inadequate, for how long was this decline overlooked? This is especially concerning in the case of flagship teaching schools who would not be getting funding and resources had they been reinspected sooner.

schoolsweek.co.uk/ofsted-downgrades-dozens-of-outstanding-schools/

OP posts:
BubblesBuddy · 30/03/2019 15:01

Well the goalposts have changed so it’s not surprising many are now good. The schools that are now RI or worse should really look at themselves to see why they couldn’t maintain a decent grade. They clearly should not have been exempt but there was published data about all the schools and if value added and outcomes were below average then it may well have been fairly obvious they were no longer outstanding.

It’s quite heartening to read 117 of these schools have been inspected in a fairly short space of time so parents will have more up to date infuriation and the schools themselves can focus more accurately on where Improvement is needed.

Of course the decision to exempt them in the first place was wrong but it did allow Ofsted to look at schools that, arguably, needed more attention. The mistake was not changing the policy sooner and not imposing a time limit for an inspection of say, 5 or 6 years for the outstanding schools. We all know there can be changes that affect a school and even a short inspection would have picked up concerns.

Punxsutawney · 30/03/2019 15:00

I mentioned on the one hour travel to school thread that my child is at a really poor grammar school. It last had an Ofsted in 2011 which was graded at outstanding. In my view it is nowhere near outstanding now.

Last year the school was given money from the grammar expansion fund. Their results are good but that's a given really, they have taken the most able kids. Everything about the school else is pretty poor.

There is a real culture of violence vandalism, poor behaviour and lack of respect there. Much of the teaching is poor, and there is very little to inspire or motivate the kids. Their pastoral care is non existent and there is not much SEN support (Ds's difficulties became more apparent after he started year 7). In recent months there seems to be a really issue at the school with cannabis too. Last week 4 year 10's came in completely stoned at the start of the school day. There has also been other year groups smoking cannabis on school property.

I just can't understand why Ofsted feels its fine to leave a school 8 years without any kind of inspection.

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