Ofsted says that access to a good education is down to luck

[Norudeshitrequired]

www.theguardian.com/education/2013/dec/11/access-to-best-teaching-down-to-luck-ofsted

Ofsted has announced that accessing a good school is down to luck and very much a postcode lottery. It goes further and states that even taking into account deprivation there is no logical reason for the difference in the performance of schools.
I am now left wondering whether the differences in opinions often expressed by people with regard to the quality of state education is partly down to this postcode lottery and some people experiencing genuine low standards which isn't understood by those in areas where the schools are much better.

what those who run management courses don't seem to understand is that the only thing you gain control over when you measure things are the things you are measuring

They do understand that. In my experience the point they are making is that if you want to control something you need to figure out a way of measuring it. So if you want to improve the quality of teaching you need to find a way of measuring it. If you want to improve the school experience you need to find a way of measuring its quality. Ofsted's parent surveys are a way of measuring some of these things.

You do, of course, need to apply measurement properly. As we've seen in the NHS (as you correctly raise), setting targets without thinking it through properly can lead to the target being met in ways that fail to improve the quality of experience. So setting a target for time on a waiting list resulted in imaginative ways of keeping people off waiting lists and patients with urgent clinical needs being made to wait so that non-critical patients who had been on the waiting list a while could be dealt with. Tony Blair seemed surprised when he found out that this was how the NHS had responded to his targets. It would have come as no surprise to anyone with experience of actually running something (a problem with politics generally - in my view we have too many politicians in all parties who have never done anything else).

Sticking with the NHS, if you want it to become more caring you need to come up with a way of measuring how caring it is. If you want to improve the patient experience you need to come up with a way of measuring its quality.

SATs tests should be a way of measuring how effective schools are at teaching the curriculum to pupils. If that is not what they achieve they need to be changed. And yes, there may well be other factors we want to measure as well (as Ofsted seem to recognise). But I have to say that I am of the opinion that whether or not the pupils are learning the things they are supposed to learn is a pretty important measure. That is, after all, the primary purpose of schools - to teach.

The primary purpose of schools is to teach, as you rightly point out, prh47bridge, not to test...
And I'm sorry, but society in all its belief that everything can be measured and tested appears to have lost sight of the fact that nothing can be good if the will for it to be good has been lost in the quagmire of tests. People don't suddenly care because someone is suddenly testing them on their caring skills - that is not caring at all. People care because they have belief in the goodness of what they do, because they feel responsible and trusted and helpful and that makes them feel worthwhile. These feelings have never been engendered by testing people and never will be, you need a far more subtle philosophy to engender a REAL will to do better. If society is set up on the assumption that human beings are basically lazy and greedy and so will only work for profit and/or if someone is leaning over their shoulder making sure they do as they are told, then society becomes like that - inclined to be lazy and greedy and only to do what it is told to do, because that is the expectation of it. That is the signal that the current testing, weighing and measuring, bonus-or-punishment culture sends out.

So until tests can be viewed and treated as a positive thing, not as a government or Ofsted naming-and-shaming exercise, and until all stakeholders feel they are valid and that they can learn from them and improve as a result of them and get positive ideas from those who have performed well in them, they are not something I want more and more of. A bad test is worse than no test.

I actually have no objections to testing. What I object to is the kind of testing the KS2 SATs represent - mechanistic, inconsistent and often meaningless. Take the SPaG test - yes, it tests whether children know the rules of grammar and spelling. However, it does not in any way measure whether children can apply these rules in independent writing. I understand why short and long writing were abandoned, given the marking fiascos; having said that, why were they replaced with something that was equally unfit for purpose?

Then there is the inconsistency in the quality of the tests themselves - in the year DD1 sat her SATs, the L3-5 reading paper was substantially harder than the L6 reading paper which she sat. There have also been issues with inconsistent difficulty levels in maths. Yes, you can mitigate that to some extent by tinkering with grade boundaries, but that is no excuse for the poor quality of these tests - no wonder people are sceptical.

Lastly, why are so many people so eager to accept a judgement of one piece of work on one day as a true reflection of a child's ability over the ongoing assessment over an entire year of work? The impact of these snapshot tests on a school can be devastating, and coupled with an inspection framework which is completely politicised and unaccountable, it is no wonder that people object to the current system.

I don't think there are any easy solutions, but Wilshaw's suggestion of 'more of the same' is laughable.

I don't feel that SAT's are a useful measure as they only pinpoint the level that the child has reached on a particular day. They don't take account of exam nerves caused by the enormous pressure being placed on young children by their desperate schools. They don't take account of the amount of time a school has spent preparing for the tests and neglecting other areas of the curriculum. They don't take account of the children who receive additional tuition outside of school and therefore skew the results.

I would rather we had more teacher assessments to determine how good a school is. Assessments where the teacher is not given prior notice. Surely it's the teachers that make good schools and so it's their ability that we should be testing.

Norudeshitrequired and many schools already run benchmarking systems where the work their children do is assessed by teachers at another school who do not know these children. Personally I would rather trust the judgement of a qualified teacher than that of a low-paid pieceworker with a mark scheme in front of them.

But the work of the children being assessed by teachers at another school isn't really assessing the quality of teaching as we still don't know whether those skills that the child has have been taught by that teacher or a private tutor or the parents. I would much rather see teachers being physically assessed by somebody (probably ex teachers with additional assessor training) sitting in on lessons and observing.

Lesson observations as an assessment of a teacher's ability to teach are bullshit (especially in their current 20 minute format). There's no evidence to show that they can accurately assess whether a teacher is any good, and also, there is evidence that the assessor can be swayed into a higher judgement by things unrelated to the actual teaching such as the personality of the teacher.

I'm with noblegiraffe on this, assessment in person - especially in the OFSTED short format - is hugely subjective.

Benchmarking done across an entire year would allow an external person to see progress, and that is what matters - does each child irrespective of where they start out from make sufficient progress? Yes, some children will have the advantage of tutoring and/or involved parents, but I am not sure that can ever be taken out of the equation.

The current inspection regime seems based predicated on an absolute mistrust of and disrespect for the teaching profession. The way Wilshaw goes on about 'vested interests' is very telling.

Observation of teachers does not just have to be done by Ofsted. A good Head will have procedures in place for observing staff and offering assistance from the better teachers to help the weaker ones. This has been the case in good schools for years. There has been a reluctance in some schools to allow this to happen and it could be there is a correlation between schools whose staff work together to improve teaching are better than those who find this difficult. LA advisors can also be helpful in promoting good teaching and have worked with schools in my area to good effect. Although LAs have so few staff left and schools are increasingly acadamies the help available is changing. Schools working together can also help the quality of teaching. Schools must keep detailed records of each child's progress so indeed children are already benchmarked year on year. This is how their targets are set! The unfortunate truth is that testing makes no difference to attainment at all. High quality teaching and learning do. It is up to the leadership in schools to ensure both take place. If a Head tolerates poor teaching and poor progress they are letting everyone down. I can never understand why Heads do nothing about it BEFORE Ofsted come calling. Unless, of course, they do not know teaching is poor or that the children are not making good enough progress. If they do not, why not?

No, observations don't have to be carried out by Ofsted, but because Ofsted only do 20 minute observations, that's what heads now do. Ofsted have their list of criteria of what makes a good lesson, so that's now what heads are looking for. Except Ofsted inspections are shit and subjective, and school ones are even worse because they haven't had any particularly extensive training in the new criteria. And neither have the teaching staff so it's like the blind leading the blind.

You know that experiment where they randomly reward a pigeon with treats and the pigeon thinks the rewards are associated with its actions so ends up doing a bizarre dance in the hope of getting more food?

That's what it currently feels like in schools.

If this report in the Independent is correct, the actual teaching is probably quite irrelevant!

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/nature-trumps-nurture-in-exam-success-gcse-results-mainly-determined-by-genes-says-landmark-study-of-twins-8998782.html

I think the map in this article is very clear.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-25332808

It would appear that areas with very high immigration and EAL perform poorly in literacy and numeracy (taught in english).

Now, that's a surprise, isn't it?

Ipadquitely - that article is quite telling. I particularly found this extract interesting:
Individual schools are now deemed to be below target if fewer than 60% of their pupils do not achieve Level 4 or higher in reading, writing and maths and pupils are not making the expected progress in these three subjects between the ages of seven and 11.

Surely no school (with exception of special schools) should be having less than 60% reach level 4, unless level 4 is an unrealistic target. I don't think immigration and EAL can explain the figures alone as lots of children who go to school with EAL do very well and catch up quite quickly. I do think that those schools that take large number of EAL children late in school (from KS2) should be able to exclude those results from SAT's as it must have a negative and unfair impact on the stats.
Come to think of it, they should just scrap SATs full stop.

Compare Tower Hamlets and Suffolk SATS and the results are astounding - the former has 15 times as many EAL speakers and three times as much disadvantaged yet had more children (78% compared to 70%) achieving level 4 or above.

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/from-fail-to-worlds-best-a-lesson-from-the-east-end-8996454.html

But of course the cultural context and geography (metropolis vs rural) are completely different and now academy brokers are encircling Suffolk which was not the case for TH under the City Challenge.

It's not more testing we need, it's LA-wide improvement.

There was an in-depth report and interview with the Ofsted chief on Newsnight last night. Here's the link for anyone who missed it.

Hardly surprising education is a post code lottery when the funding per pupil varies so widely.
funding per county

I know London salaries are higher, but do teachers in London actually get paid twice what those in the shires do?

Tower hamlets gets almost twice what we do per pupil

From the spreadsheet Tower Hamlets gets £8,052 per head and Suffolk £4,676.

Tower Hamlets would get a lot more pupil premium money. But also inner London weighting for teachers (staff costs represent 85% of budget?):

Outer London: £25,369 to £35,468
Inner London: £27,270 to £36,751
Rest of England and Wales: £21,804 to £31,868

Richmond in London gets best primary SATs but only £5,162 per head. Not much more funding than Suffolk but teachers face rents twice as high.

Still, it must be a different ball game to recruit in a rural area where there are fewer graduates or foreign teachers and Suffolk's transport links put it at a disadvantage. Hasn't there been a middle school system there till recently? Perhaps it just didn't give continuity.

Recruitment, especially of MFL and qualified SN TAs is very difficult.

We are a awkward 30-60 minute, no public transport commute from the nearest towns.

Given they have grammars and private schools as well as several comps and a collage many teachers find work nearer home.

Traveling expenses and time are particularly off putting to TAs (as any before and after school care costs more per hour than they are paid)

I don't think pupil funding tells the whole story though, because if I look at three LA's nearby to me, the one with the highest level of funding (£900 per pupil per year more than the others), produces the worst SATs and GCSE results.
The two other LAs get very similar funding but have very different results. Both of these have low levels of immigration and similar low levels of FSM and EAL.
I think London is the exception with regard to funding because it is so vastly different from the rest of the country.

Regardless of funding not giving the full picture, I do feel that all LAs should receive equal funding per pupil with only a realistic London weighting allowance which reflects the actual additional costs.

The posters who mention the quality of teaching/leadership are right IMO and you rarely get good teachers that stay while leadership is weak. It only takes a few short years for a school to go downhill but once it does, it's a downwards spiral as teachers come and go, and links to the community are lost.
The school my child left was just like this - ineffectual leadership, staff who stayed a year or two - yet the nearest other school was and is doing brilliantly.

The Newsnight discussion was interesting - I was wary of Wilshaw and his insistence on testing which just stresses young children out and encourages more teaching to the test in my view. But he did support qualified teachers - just that the probation period should be 2-5 years. So not the government line on the quick fix of unqualified teachers and bright graduates breezing in - teaching is a hard job and has to be supervised by good leadership.

Then the other teacher/blogger backed it up by saying he was crap at first and had to learn it the hard way. Also that there are pockets of excellence and weakness in every single school whatever the rating. Teachers are (apart from TAs) on their own in classrooms so it depends so much on individuals. Good heads move them about and encourage a lot of team teaching so they really don't feel on their own.

I do feel that all LAs should receive equal funding per pupil with only a realistic London weighting

The government is moving towards a national funding formula. This will consist of a basic amount per pupil, additional funding per pupil for deprivation, additional funding to protect smaller schools and an adjustment for areas with high labour costs. It may also include additional funding for pupils for whom English is not their first language. They are also forcing LAs to simplify their arrangements for passing on funding to schools - some take into account more than 100 different factors in deciding how much to give each school, including many factors that have no direct impact on pupil attainment.

Tower Hamlets gets all that money because its results were so dire. The places with the worst results get the most money thrown at them. It would be interesting to see if they would then take money away from Tower Hamlets now that its results have improved.
My school is pretty poorly funded, we have always been told that our results are good so we clearly don't need the money.
Even within my school, my department (maths) is the best, results-wise in the school. We get the shoddiest provision, the crappiest classrooms, the worst ICT. All the money goes to the struggling departments. It's tempting to let our results slide for a couple of years so that we can afford better kit!

It's tempting to let our results slide for a couple of years so that we can afford better kit!

Noooo - not while the coalition is in power. They will send in the flesh-eating zombie academy brokers because 'we believe ... make no apologies ... academy sponsor no evidence just seizing opportunity to privatise' usual spin.