to be confused about how Ofsted reach their conclusions?

[QueenOfFarkingEverything]

DD's school has recently been inspected and been found as 'requires improvement' overall.

It was rated as 'good' in 3/4 areas but the standard of teaching was rated as 'requires improvement'.

But. The report says that the majority of pupils enter the school achieving below the national average, yet by the end of Y6 they are leaving the school attaining levels significantly above the national average. It also says that "pupils' progress accelerates as they go through the school". The behaviour of pupils and the pastoral care are both noted as being excellent.

So... the teaching can't be that bad, can it?

I thought it was all about the results these days? If the children are happy and well cared for, behaving well, learning well, and going from below to above average during their time at school - then isn't that what matters?

The Ofsted report was never a deciding factor in where my children attend school (in fact this recent one is better than the one I read before DD started there). I'm just wondering out of idle curiosity.

@alistron1. Gosh! It's a miracle, isn't it?

Highly unlikely the parents are hiring tutors. Its a tiny rural primary (under 40 pupils, and when sibling groups are accounted for only about 15 sets of parents) with something like 20% on FSM.

And now I think about it, there was a lot of blurb about sustained learning in the report. There was praise for the school's monitoring systems though

there is no way that students could achieve their target grades if I taught every lesson according to Ofsted's version of an outstanding lesson!

I once had an argument with an inspector who was in my lesson with year 11's the day before their exam and therefore we were doing a revision lesson. I had students working on their own, in pairs, groups, peer assessing was judged to fully assessing each student's weaknesses and addressing these within the lesson. I was marked down as they weren't seen to be learning anything new! No matter how much I, my HoD, my HT pointed out the fact that these students had a GCSE exam the next day the inspector wouldn't budge that this one point pulled down my obs.......when they finally get some common sense I might take note of their findings