To send dd to a school in special measures?

[Specialcircsmay]

Graded 4 in all areas. No light at the end of the tunnel - ofsted report was damning.

New head is coming in soon. But would this alone make you think it's ok or should I avoid like the plague?

I've always found OFSTED pretty reliable myself.

They don't get everything right but they do get it right most of the time.

Well our local church school was in sm but it was still a fight to get DC in. Its now outstanding and have no regrets. Will buy In catchment to ensure youngest gets in
Someone told me it's 95% parental expectations and education level. Not sure if true

How can OFSTED judge a 2 year old school? They are so data driven and focused on progress that it sounds difficult to judge in at least some areas. None the less 4s all round sound awful.

I would go by your impression of the school. Do you like it? Do you think it would suit your DCs? That is really all that matters.

I guess they'd judge it by looking at:

The teaching - engaging, challenging, differentiated to fit students' needs, books neat, students taking pride in their work ? Curriculum that's appropriate and interesting? Teachers with good subject knowledge?

Or - a series of random tasks, tatty exercise books, work half completed or not at all, covered in graffiti, schemes of work downloaded from free resource sites, no evidence of differentiation.

Are books and folders marked conistently and with targets to help the child improve? Or are they not marked at all?

Behaviour - are students sensible in lessons, well behaved around the site, respectful? Or rude and boisterous and bully each other?

Does the HT and senior management have a shared vision of the school that's enhanced and driven by governors, or not?

The fact it's only been open 2 years is neither here nor there - it's perfectly possible to judge still :)

How musical is your dd? Does she participate in activities outside of school with a local music centre? The reason I ask is that if she does or will start to take her music quite seriously then her out of school activities are going to be much more important than school bands and choirs - certainly for me I participated in the school ones but they were very much second fiddle to my 'proper' orchestras etc outside of school and I wouldn't have really minded if I hadn't been able to do the school ones for logistical reasons.

I agree that it is possible to judge in the way you have suggested, it just seems a different approach to the very data driven approach taken for established schools, though it is possibly a better way to do it.

I think it's a good thing that they've identified these things now in fairness before what I presume the first crop of exam classes hit KS4.

They probably will have looked at data and either found it to be inaccurate, non existent or more likely, not showing adequate progress of students.

Usually loads of arguments on here about how great failing schools will be as spot light shined on them can only go up. I see the value of this, but I would want to know why failing in first place, its not that hard to get good ofsted.

Personally I would not touch it with a barge pole.

I wouldn't go near it.

If it has a bad report on behaviour, that would make all the difference to me, even if the teaching is supposedly good. Government funding and whatever support it is that schools in SM get isn't going to make that much of a difference to the attitude to learning and behaviour of the intake a school has.

It's easy to get information on how Ofsted judge schools, just Google.
I've worked in schools for many years and am seldom surprised by the outcome of an Ofsted report to be honest.

What bothers me sometimes is how quickly parents will be upset because they lose a "lovely" HT and an expert replacement is brought in. Don't they realise who is responsible for the poor deal their children have been getting?
The whole academies initiative is yet another Gove bright idea of course. It doesn't automatically produce quality, a lot of the early academies who converted because they were "Outstanding" are failing now. The biggest Ofsted surprise I had recently was a school getting Outstanding where there were all sorts of problems that would normally take them into Requires Improvement. That was clearly political to me.
Anyway Op, if you decide to do homework it will be interesting to hear how you get on and what you decide.

What we found with a lot of pupils from OFSTED outstanding schools is that the majority of the pupils were having extra tutoring at home so you could not tell whether the teaching was good or it was the tutoring that forced up the grades pupils were achieving

I would.

The school will have loads of money and resources thrown at it and be under great scrutiny to improve. By the time she hits year 9, the school should be a different place in time for her to start her GCSEs.

chrome100

no

My DCs' school was in Special Measures in 2007. In 2012 it was right at the bottom of the school league tables. In 2014 Ofsted had this to say about my DCs' school: This is a school that requires improvement.

Special measures is not an automatic hand up for crap schools. It takes time to turn a school around. However this doesnt happen if the underlying problems arent addressed.

Money, I wish SM got you handouts, it doesn't consultants fees and redundancies take money away from the school.

Losing pupils, costs the school money too.