AIBU to think there’s a problem with Ofsted report?

[OfstedOfred]

Ofsted came to DCs primary at the end of June. Still no report. Their website says 38 days max for publication. So where is it? There’s an issue, isn’t there?

Not necessarily. The school will already know the preliminary result anyway.

It'll come soon.

School may be challenging the outcome.
It does possibly mean that they’re not happy with their grading.
Impossible to know though.

Us too - inspection right at the end of term, "report due October". Ex headteacher friend reckons we've been downgraded (was outstanding) and they have challenged it

They only count term time days. The draft report goes to the school who needs to respond. They dont do that during the school holidays.

Lots of draft reports have arrived in the past few days- so they are about 10 days from publication.
I have seen quite a few end of June coming through up to the very end of term.

It wouldn’t surprise me if they’d been downgraded. There have been problems, high staff turnover etc. Would have been better to know before the summer and then potentially have moved the DC before the start of the year.

There was no way that an end of `June would have been published before the end of term.

There was no way that an end of `June would have been published before the end of term.

That. The summer holidays account for the fact that you're not seen anything yet. No need to go making assumptions or predictions.

Inspection reports will be quality assured before we send a draft to the school. In most circumstances, the school will receive the draft report within 18 working days after the end of the inspection.

The school will have 5 working days to comment on the draft report, inspection process and findings.

The final report then comes- about a week later- schools should share with parents and there is a live link but it isnt publicly searchable until about 5 days after that.

They don't count days over the summer holidays. They have been taking longer than usual to be published anyway as there has been a flurry of post-Covid inspections.

DC school inspected mid June & report released to parents this week. Not sure when they received it tho

If you aren't happy then move schools regardless of the report.
If you are happy and your children are learning then would you really move them just because of the report?

School governor.

We were made aware of the draft report fairly quickly (which wasn’t challenged) but it took 3 calendars months to receive the full report. On querying with OFSTED and despite what it says on the website, we were told 38 days is a guideline.

When were they judged as outstanding?
If it was after September 2015 then the grade will not change if it was a section 8 (ungraded inspection)

@BrokenMatress - thank you for the information. When would you expect to see the report online then? Or for parents to be sent a copy?

Yes, I work with Ofsted through my job.

A late report is usually because of a challenge.
More often than not a late report is a signifier of an inadequate judgement. There is more checking and protocols with this.

I see reports before they are published online.
They are nearly all in order of the inspection.

I wouldn't be too worried about the one in July though. Ofsted are piloting the system of checking reports during the school holiday but at the minute this is a trial and HT’s can choose not to have this happen.
Without this, the report won't be sent to the HT until the start of this term, for the HT/SLT to check for inaccurate wording and send back to Ofsted.
We see finalised reports about a week before they are published on line - so by the time all steps are complete, end of Sept/ beginning of October could be about right.

The school has a link that they can share with parents or they can put a copy of the report on the website or send a paper copy

For graded inspections, once a school has received its final report, it is required to take such steps as are reasonably practicable to ensure that every parent of a registered pupil at the school receives a copy of the report within 5 working days (section 14(4)(c) of the Education Act 2005). If a complaint is not submitted, we will normally publish the report on our reports website 3 working days later. If a complaint has been submitted, the publication of the report may be delayed.’Schools may wish to consider whether emails to parents and/or publication on the school’s website can fulfil this requirement.

But anyone else cant search it on the Ofsted website for a few days after it is shared with parents.

They were outstanding a long time ago, went to RI and then the last judgement was good but it was 2015 or 2016 I think. I would be very surprised if they got good again. Parental feedback was not good at all - you could see that a lot of parents said they wouldn’t recommend the school, for example, and that bullying wasn’t dealt with.

We had Ofsted mid June and got the draft report back before the end of term. We didn't contest any of it so it was then available to share with parents in the last week of term.

@TeenDivided - I think anything less than a good would be the confirmation we need. We’ve made many allowances and accepted a below par standard ‘because of Covid’ but that’s starting to wear rather thin now. I would have hoped for the term to get off to a better start but there have been issues and problems already, you couldn’t make it up!

Ours was mid June. We only had notification of the result today and report to be published next week.

@CandyflossKing - was the result what you expected? Was it challenged at all?

Not sure if it was challenged. It remained at good but did say that it may not with a full inspection! They will be back in 2 years!

Very few are challenged as it is a futile process. A challenge does not necessarily delay publication.

If you make any changes to the draft other than factual accuracy or grammar, punctuation and spelling they are rarely excepted. It used to go back to the inspector if a change was made but now simple changes can be made by their admin (such as a typo or spelling ) or a factual correction ie number of children

I read a newly published one last week for a nursery inspected in June. The setting had remained Good and the report was totally unremarkable.

I work in education.

Ofsted was done at the end of June, they downgraded from Outstanding to Good, objection lodged by the school in July, response to the objection received last week, full report to be posted on the website on Monday.