Thank you for a thought provoking post. My dd left mainstream 18 months ago to join a private school for year 9. Her former school was graded as Outstanding almost a decade ago. There are 3 other schools within approximately a 10 mile radius of my home with an outstanding ofsted rating and traditionally dd’s former school had the worst reputation for bullying and for not catering for students as individuals. I can therefore imagine the pressure was immense to get the grade, whereas the 2 of 3 other schools are more rural and have been graded Ofsted outstanding for years. In a way it does seem pointless to put so much effort into getting the grade.
On the flip side, as someone, who grew up when Ofsted was not a thing, we were mercilessly failed at the secondary modern I attended. The school would most certainly have been graded as inadequate and would have been put into special measures. But there was no such thing in the 1980s. I learned so little in the 4 years I attended that school.
Idk how I managed to pass my O levels. I can only imagine the level of knowledge required was lower and it does very much seem that way when I look at what my Yr 10 dd has to learn and she had been taught more than me when sitting my exams by the end of year 9. The gaps in my knowledge were huge and even in top set maths, I wasn’t taught the entire syllabus so when it came to a choice of A or B at O level, I could only do A as I hadn’t been taught B. There was time enough to learn but the teacher used us as ego boosting / therapy sessions to discuss his life. And not all subjects were funded to O level. I only came out with an handful of O levels and the rest, CSE grade 1, which was the highest I could attain and equivalent to the old C grade. English lit was not funded for example and I only got the MFL because I did the exchange visits every year allowed. We did 16 plus for a few subjects either attaining an O level or CSE and I was one of only 2 or 3 to achieve the O level grade.
I do therefore think there is a place for some kind of monitoring to ensure the increased standard we have seen over the past 3 decades since ofsted was introduced is maintained. Whatever form that took, be it peer reviews from partner / local schools, internal auditing or Ofsted, I imagine schools would be a lot better equipped to deal with these if the teachers weren’t acting as social workers, didn’t have mounds of repetitive paperwork to assess their assessments of the children and if there were a better rapport and trust between the students and staff.
From the posts I read on here and looking at the local secondary my dd used to attend, I think there is a lot of fear amongst school staff. I do wonder if the recent skirt issue at Rainford high a symptom of this or of a very toxic culture between students and staff, that the SLT trying to take back control. The way they acted sounds as though they treated the kids like prisoners, who then (if comments from a teacher there that day on a now deleted thread are believed), rioted. Incidentally dd’s friends still in her former school all refer to the school as prison and there are whispers they’re now going to stage a protest about toilet passes.
I do have a lot of respect for what the staff were trying to do at dd’s former school. It is an 8/9 form intake and I can imagine they are under enormous pressure. Dd’s year was a particularly difficult year. However, dd was not thriving there and I had the opportunity to give her the schooling I never had. The way the students are treated at her new school is so much better. The atmosphere is warmer, friendlier. It is such a shame that students and teachers cannot experience this.
You’ve made some very valid points. But unless the government invests what they would consider to be exorbitantly large amounts of cash, how is this fixable?