Ofsted school ratings - from inadequate to outstanding?

[IdespairIreallydo]

It's my son's first induction today at his secondary school. Not to bore you, this school was not any of our choices, we lost two appeals and have decided (for the moment) to run with this. The school is currently under scrutiny from Ofsted every six months but was deemed inadequate at the last inspection. The results of a recent one are awaited with bated breath. My question for those who know about these things - can an 'inadequate' school be transformed into a 'good' or even, maybe, an 'outstanding' one and what does it take for this to happen? Can I help in some small way as a concerned parent? All reassurance gratefully received, thanks.

I suppose it depends on what aspects (and how many) were inadequate. Have you read the Ofsted report? Does it look bad overall, or are there some small/specific areas of inadequacy? That's what I'd be looking at.

(Our primary school got a bad Ofsted rating. The overall rating has to reflect the worst finding throughout the visit, ie everything could be "good" except for one particular area of the report, and the whole thing gets marked down to the lowest grade. An inadequate rating doesn't really mean anything in itself - except that there might be more stress within the staff - and there might be a threat to the current governance/management of the school if it doesn't improve sharpish).

Yes it can. We are in a similar primary school position-we have gone for worst local primary as it has just been converted into an academy within a successful chain and is having lots of money poured into it. Aggressively head hunted outstanding teachers-they are determined to make the school a success. I'd rather this school than a mediocre coasting school. My own school went from requires improvement to good and is en route to excellence as well.

Requires Improvement (3) to Good (2) is only one stage. Few go from Inadequate (4) to Outstanding (1) in the space of a year or 18 months. There are usually too many problems that cannot be sorted out quickly. However, I would look at the monitoring reports, which are on the Ofsted web site, to see how the school is progressing, who is running it and how often it has been Inadequate in the past. If it has never been this bad before, I think school may improve quite quickly but if it always flip flopping then I would be concerned. A lot of London schools became outstanding when before they were Inadequate but this was not done overnight.

A quick fix is unlikely. I talk as some-one in a 'requires improvement' school - we have persistently been a '3' under the guise of requires improvement or satisfactory. In our one year of excellent results we were told be OFSTED that we could not be 'good' because we did not have a 3 year history of good, consistent results. I have seen primary schools, with a similar history to ours, go from 'RI' to 'good' on one set of results??? The message OFSTED give to schools is very confusing and it really depends on where a school starts from unfortunately. If a school 'drops' in its rating for a specific reason then it may be able to change this around quickly. Results, and I mean both league tables and 'value added' figures, are a good indicator of the health of a school, the OFTSED report is extra information which sometimes needs interpretation.

Thank you for all of your responses. What can I do to help my bright child get the best results he can at this setting (not me saying that, SATS and school) ?

I would suggest getting in touch with their form tutor to say hello as a start. Look at their homework, look on school website, don't wait for parents evening to get in touch, especially if you are concerned about anything. Encourage ds to take full opportunity of any and all extra curricular stuff like duke of Edinburgh. Be insistent, but never twattishly unpleasant or unreasonable. Does that help?!

Ps I say this as a teacher of several very bright students-I have observed parents for a long time and these were the sorts of parents whose children did well. Actually, that includes the lower achievers as well-didn't mean to sound elitist.

D of E! Gosh, can't be a bad school then. Most of our local RI schools, and even plenty of the others do not offer this! Agree with the advice above though.

It does depend a lot on the teachers in the school-we have lots of outdoorsy ones! D of e usually offered at venture scouts, youth centres and sometimes just a local group. Worth checking out if not offered at school, I think.

In a general way, it depends on the size of the school and its history.

If it is a large secondary with a long history of 3s / 4s in ofsted: unlikely to turn round fast. Big supertanker to turn round.

If it is a small primary, dipping into RI or even Special Measures after a long run of decent Ofsteds, then the turnaround can be very rapid: I have known several turn round within 12 months, as a changeover of a couple of teachers and a new head can mean an almost complete change of the whole staff team.

A secondary school near me did this in about 9 years but the real improvements were showing about two or three years after a new head took over - there were interims before that. The input from a head is vital but he or she also needs a good leadership team which can take a couple of years to build and that head needs a long term plan/commitment. It's definitely not just about a new logo and uniform or even just a quick fix superhead - the whole school community needs to be on board.

Our secondary went into RI about 4-5 years ago but is now good. New head, investment in money and parental terms. The issues were quite localised to certain areas and seem to have been sorted. They now are working towards outstanding. School is still massively over subscribed and everyone seems happy with it

Thank you all again. I have read the Ofsted reports carefully and it seems the main issues are weak HT/SLT and patchy teaching quality overall. Not helped by a good percentage of unsupportive parents, they have improved their attendance rate admirably. The school was a merger of two badly performing schools nearly 4 years ago, but despite many millions of £'s (which would 'buy' good quality teachers?) they bought all the children ipads instead - not the best use of funds, in my personal view.
I'm trying to be optimistic that the school will improve enough to help my children obtain the top grade GSCE's they need for their futures. I know that I will have to help and believe me I will but I just want the teaching to deliver.
Thank you Haggisfish for your helpful pointers, DS was disappointed yesterday not to get to see the new science 'Superlab' - much trumpeted. They do the Ten Tors outdoor thing but not D of E will explore further. I need to get the best out of his teachers for both our sakes.
teacherwith2kids your second para is accurate.