Excellent Ofsteds

[greenmash]

Is there a list anywhere which shows all the schools with Excellent ofsted reports in the country, rather than having to know the name of a school and then finding out their rating? It would make searching for schools much easier.

Yes it is on the ofstead website. On the main home page look down the right handside there is a section marked Outstanding Provider List, you click on that and then choose your area.

We have a school with an excellent ofsted near us but I would never send my children there!

Searching on that basis isn't ideal, imo.

For one thing, a school that is rated Good today could be rated Excellent by the time your dc starts there (as happened recently at DS's school).

Another school locally which was rated as Good in the last report (and is/was very oversubscribed) was rated Inadequate in the summer (so well after parents had submitted applications).

The only way to choose a school is to select all schools within reasonable travelling distance that you stand an iota of getting a place at, and visit them. By all means consider Ofsted reports, but to exclude schools that are not rated as Outstanding would be utter madness.

I don't have much faith in OFSTED ratings, and I'm a teacher. I have woked in one school that hadn't had an OFSTED for a while, but had had LEA intervention as 3 of the 7 teachers went on long term sick leave at the same time, and the school was told that if OFSTED were to visit just then they would be rated as Grade 4 (Inadequate). I was a supply teacher, covering for one of the sick staff, and I thought it was a lovely little school, the children behaved well, it had a nice caring atmosphere, etc, and I would have been happy to send a child of mine there. I then worked in another school, that had been judged to be Outstanding, and had a horrible time there with bullying staff members. Also, although my class were well behaved, there were some behaviour issues further up the school. So I didn't think it was particularly brilliant. I also worked in a school that was 'Good with Outstanding Features' that split the children into 3 ability based classes from the age of 4, and did so many other things that I thought were awful that I would never recommend a child to go there. Plus, the Senior Management treats its staff appallingly, and although on the whole these days it is quite hard to find a teaching job, that school is always advertising because the teachers they recruit can't stand to work there for very long! So I don't really trust the judgement of the Inspectors.

grade 1 ofsted is the top grade, otherwise known as "outstanding" (rather than 'excellent' iyswim)
Don't automatically go for those, they're not all necessarily that fantastic. The one I work in has mostly grade 2's overall ("Good") with a couple of areas for improvement which were graded as 3 (Satisfactory), but it's an absolutely wonderful school and I'm seriously considering moving DS1 there from his so-called 'outstanding' school.

My child goes to an 'outstanding' school, amd IMO, they are usually heavily oversubscribed and in my experience, if your child has SEN, (which mine has), they are a nightmare.

I second everything you say there Tink, hence why I'm considering moving him.

The school near us is outstanding and has a higher than average number of SEN pupils. It is actually very good in this area so it is not always the case. The schools near us with excellent GCSE results are however, no good for SEN children and one school will not employ SEN teachers for fear that they will have to take more SEN children and this will lower their 100% GCSE passrates.

My son's school is 'outstanding' as of June 2010 (was 'good' previously) but doesn't appear on that list yet, so it's clearly not updated v frequently.