Does a bad ofsted really = bad school?

[Soboredsorry]

This is more thinking out loud than anything but does an Ofsted report really determine how good a school is for your child?

Neighbour is thrilled her daughter got into the school in the next town, when I asked why she didn’t want the school on our road (about 30 secs from her door!) she scoffed and said ‘have you SEEN the ofsted’

My kids go there so it did sting, and she did backtrack but it got me thinking... does an inadequate inspection really mean your kid won’t do as well there as they would’ve at a ‘good’ school? What really makes a school good or bad? What do you all think?

She's a fool. When was the Ofsted? What's changed since then? What were the concerns?
The Ofsted framework has changed recently. Lots of schools with outstanding have been downgraded or they've coasted so they are going to.
There's no comeback to her. She was just rude and thoughtless.

On the positive side it means that whatever problems they might have are going to be addressed and they will have support to improve and this will be monitored. Sometimes “good” rated schools can slowly decline but without a new Ofsted you would not know. How did it feel when you looked around?

Oh sorry I see your kids already go there. Are you happy with the school? That’s your answer.

You can look up how they do their assessments and then decide if you agree with how they grade schools.
There are also the gov.uk ranking tables which rank schools by performance as well as Ofsted.
www.gov.uk/school-performance-tables

A friend of mine was very excited to be offered an ofsted outstanding school on an in-year transfer, then found out the inspection was 7 years ago, there’d been three new head teachers since then, virtually all the staff had changed, and parents were pulling their kids out over chronic unaddressed bullying and low expectations.

Conversely a friend who is a primary school teacher chose a “required improvement” school because she’d spoken to the new team, and was really enthusiastic about the changes they were making and the new resources they were being given.

Ofsted is part of the picture, but it’s definitely not the whole picture.

Depends why the report was bad

Depends on the child

Couple of years ago the secondary school my children were at got Requires Improvement. Various reasons - not least that they were dishing them out like sweeties at the time - but one of the things highlighted was that they weren't doing so well with middle-ability boys. Now obviously that's not a good thing for the school, and they made an effort to address that, but for our children it was irrelevant. There were other things that were considered good that did impact their education, and we've always found it the right fit for both of them.

To be honest it’s been inadequate for a long time, got closed and became an academy and is still inadequate at the last few inspections since being an academy. The school felt great when I looked around and my kids seem to do ok there.

I guess thinking about it, it is strange that it hasn’t improved.

Have a look at the report and see what the reasons were. Like a PP said - they might not be reasons huh value or which directly concern your child.

IMO an Ofsted outstanding school simply refers to a school that knows exactly what Ofsted is looking for and ensures that it has the evidence required at the next inspection.

You value - sorry!

My DS's school is not highly rated by ofsted but it is excellent. The pastoral care and ethos is great and my son is thriving there despite SEN. Yes, school is not easy for him but the school really are doing everything possible.

Also, as pp addressed, a lot of Good and Outstanding schools haven't been inspected in a while. I'm a governor at a primary school that recently came out of RI, and our LA Education Development Partner told us he reckoned there were a fair few schools that are in for a shock...

Actually, five years previous to that judgement our school had been judged good with outstanding features. What with various staffing issues and a radical overhaul of the Ofsted framework, it was a totally different place in 2017. However even at the time things were being addressed (we were Not Happy with the report, it has to be said) and we took things on board and worked with the EDP and the diocese and took lots of advice so that a year later the interim inspector said things were moving in the right direction and eighteen months later we got back to Good.

it depends that the issues highlighted in the Ofsted are really.

My children were in an inadequate school. It was a very nurturing environment and the teachers were lovely and I really rated the teachers. My more robust child did fantastically there. The issues highlighted by Ofsted were around their SEN practice and safeguarding and sadly my child with a SEN was badly let down. I cam away feeling that this particular inadequate school was only inadequate if your child was vulnerable in some way.

A few years ago the nursery DD2 attended was closed down by Ofsted. It was able to open a few weeks later when some changes had been made (part of the reasons were to with some structural issues). Policies were updated. All the parents pulled together to get things right. A new manager was appointed.

I believe it's Good/Outstanding now. However the main factor was they had no concerns with the care the individual staff gave (safeguarding etc), it was stuff like it following the curriculum for Under 3s...

My children’s primary went from good to RI to good with outstanding features. It stayed pretty much the same. In my view it was at its worse when it had outstanding features. So I generally don’t take that much notice of OFSTED.

OTOH, I did supply teaching for a while, and every school I went to that was in SM was pretty terrible.

What areas are it graded inadequate on? That's the key thing

I worked in a school with a HT who hated OFSTED and who OFSTED hated. They got slated over planning paperwork and a certain level of disorganisation. She was ultimately quite an old-fashioned HT and felt that teachers should be teaching and supported them in that. She refused gimmicks like certain coloured pens for certain things and allowed teachers to just get on with their jobs.

However, their safeguarding was excellent, their pastoral care was excellent and their ultimate results were excellent. All of which mattered far more to parents than the things they got slated for. The school, with a new HT, is now rated excellent by OFSTED, but parents think it's considerably worse.

She's now the HT of a an excellent private school after basically being beaten down by the state system.

Interesting perspectives, I guess my worry is if your child does well at a ‘bad’ school, would they have done even better at a ‘good’ school or was it all just tick boxes.

In our case the report praises SEN and safeguarding as well as teachers but says the curriculum is bad. I assumed the curriculum was the same everywhere, shows how much I know!

Depends on the school.

In my experience of 3 schools (so pretty limited!) Ofsted status is a reflection of the leadership. Poor leadership equals poor school equals poor Ofsted.

However, the opposite does not always follow. Poor Ofsted does not always lead to a poor school. I would say on balance it is more likely though.

I don't think a poor Ofsted = bad school. My dc got a place at a rated 'Good' secondary but we moved house and the only place he could get in our new area was at an RI school.

It has been a RI school for a long time but when we looked round, we liked it. Turns out the school he was going to had dropped to RI and the new school was so nice, I started working there as a TA.

What I found out is that my son's school takes all the children who get pushed out by nearby schools. As a result they offer fantastic pastoral care and SEN support and the teachers genuinely care for their students.

Inadequate is a lot worse than requires improvement so I wouldn't send my kid to an inadequate school.

The second thing is that people move areas to get into the 'best' schools so you tend to find that inadequate schools have a much higher proportion of disadvantaged students which does impact on behaviour, SEN and therefore the way the teachers teach. I often think teaching is better in inadequate schools but they are often fighting an uphill battle.

Have taught in many schools and I’m still undecided on this one! I’ve worked in two ‘outstanding’ schools- one was actually brilliant and felt valued and children seemed happy and supported etc because staff were, and one where there was such extreme safety issues I can’t even talk about it online for legal reasons,, but they managed the situation to get around the inspectors (also suspect some bribery etc going on) as they were a large federation with a historically excellent reputation. I think if your children seem happy and safe, and the staff don't seem like they’re losing it, then it’s a good school and there’s nothing to worry about!

I worked in a school which went in to RI. I would say the experiences of individual families really varied. For example, I looked at the teachers some individual kids had had over the 4 years. Some had swapped between 2 outstanding teachers back and forth (same teacher in y3 and 5, and same teacher in y4 and 6). Others in the same cohort had gone failed NQT, ok NQT, ok NQT, struggling second year teacher. Those kids had very different educational experiences. Some parents loved the head and sung her praises - others couldn’t stand her. Some things like safeguarding were done very well. Others, like SEN support possibly weren’t. If you didn’t have an SEN kid, you probably wouldn’t know this and it probably wouldn’t bother you.

Not all outstanding schools are actually any good - see examples earlier

There’s a school local to me that is ‘Outstanding’, but not according to a teacher who just left who said there are several failing departments.

My current school got RI a few years back, then got good, but tbh, it has very poor behaviour. The students were very well behaved during OFSTED, very loyal, but the normal behaviour is ruddy awful.

Outstanding usually means Outstanding at paperwork imo as an ex teacher /parent/grandparent. It's more important to know and understand individual children than have loads of spreadsheets and treating children simply as data.

A secondary school I know got Requires Improvement because they were sending too many to isolation, the behaviour has gone badly downhill since they started to address that. The parents of children there that I know preferred it the way it was.

I’m not sure about whether a bad Ofsted means a bad school but having worked in a school that got a good one I do know for sure that a Good or Outstanding Ofsted doesn’t necessarily means it’s a good or outstanding school. It can mean having a SMT who are experienced and expert at showing Ofsted what they want to see, particularly when supported by a data manager (me) who was very good at presenting the information Ofsted requested in a format that showed things in a very positive way.

There is a lot more to a school than Ofsted. My own DCs school always got Outstanding but things I know from behind the scenes were very far from that!