As a parent do you regard Ofsted ratings as important?

[MrsMarigold]

I couldn't give a damn as I think the reports don't look at what is really important to me, but I know some parents use it as a basis for school selection which I find worrying.

I would look at them but take a lot of what they say with a punch of salt. I am a teacher and one of the worst schools I've ever worked in had just been rated outstanding by Ofsted!

All my children's schools and nurseries have always been good, so I don't really know what it would be like if a school was outstanding or requiring improvement or inadequate.

Yes, but not everything

I am not that bothered about good or outstanding but inadequate raises alarm bells for me. My children's old school has gone from good to inadequate and the report is highly accurate and picks up on all the issues parents have had over the last few years. They have a new management team who will most likely turn the school around but as a parent the report is an accurate portrayal of the current situation in the school. If I were a parent choosing a primary school I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole until there was clear evidence that the new team had made sustainable changes.

I read them but only for glaring comments. My nephew started at a failing school but it just received a 'good', his mother believed the school was the right fit and had things in place to turn the negatives into positives. The things that interest me as a parent like staff turnover, number of days children are taught by fill in staff, what relationships the school has with universities, what they do in the community are not reflected in the report. I find I get a better feel for a school by visiting, being shown round by their own pupils, gossip feedback on Mumsnet and talking with other parents whose children currently attend the school.

I don't think the reports are much use but a poor inspection result can cause a lot of upheaval and staff turnover at a school, resulting in a poor couple of years for my dd educationally - because of having so many different teachers. The school was good before, and has now settled down and is good again, but there have been a difficult 2/3 years inbetween. The reason for the requires improvement was largely spurious in my view.

In my experience of nurseries and schools, there's almost an inverse correlation - the Excellent nursery was the only one I refused to send my child near and the school that is now Excellent I think now isn't. And the secondary that got a new head to get it from satisfactory to excellent suddenly turned into a pile of ridiculous policy. Whereas I was extremely satisfied with a satisfactory (later good, then RI, then good) nursery, and the Good primary is way better than the Excellent one (and than the other Good one I know well).

The comments can be useful - when the nursery was inspected after a disgruntled staff member made allegations and it got RI, the report text gave me material to grill the management until I was satisfied my children were safe. But bringing in a uniform for a secondary 'because that will impress Ofsted' I'd hoped wasn't true, until dn got the report and we all laughed over it - apparently children 'show pride in the school by wearing correct uniform' and this was seen as an improvement!

Our primary has gone from outstanding to good to inadequate. All, I believe, under the same head. Whilst I think it's a lovely school, and the pastoral support is excellent, and it is a lovely community school, I do feel it is rather telling that they were happy to advertise the outstanding rating but are playing down the inadequate rating. Clearly it held some merit when it helped their good reputation but now it has raised concerns it is suddenly irrelevant? All the problems highlighted are valid concerns, issues already mentioned by various parents, so I would hope that the staff take it seriously.

I did think it was important but my children are nearly grown up now. They attended an outstanding primary and actually it was only just about adequate. At the time it made me feel that standards generally must be shocking if that was what was regarded as outstanding.

DD then went to a holy grail sort of cofe girls school which had been good and in her first year there was graded outstanding. It was a shocker all round - awful behaviour that was covered up, poor moral ethos, poor role models and then a downward trajectory after that outstanding for the academic results. What I still don't really understand is how a school could be "outstanding" when it only got a 2 for teaching and learning? Can anyone throw any light on that.

What I do think would be helpful is if parents went on the Ofsted parent portal and gave contemporaneous feedback. I think that needs to be publicised far more widely.

What really surprised me when dd's school had its Ofsted inspection was the attitude amongst the pta and the governors. I said well the heads weak and this is an opportunity to do something about it. They said, "I don't be silly, we all have to tick the strongly agree boxes because none of us want our children to go to a school that isn't outstanding". I am still a bit gobsmacked about that attitude.

This is very timely for me, my daughter is due to start junior school in September (find out tomorrow) but,her catchment school which we have applied for have just been inspected and have gone from good to special measures. I found out today and was gutted and beside myself.

I know there is more to a school than OFSTED but the school is failing the children in maths and English. Any advice I don't know what I should/could do, what would you lovely mnetters do?

I feel like I'm failing my dd by putting her into a failing school. When we met the head and looked around the school 6 months ago we were impressed now I'm confused.

Not worth the paper is written on. Our local primary was outstanding and the kids were supposed to be happy. The reality was that there was a lot of bullying going on which was swept under the carpet by the head and the majority of DC had a tutor. The turn over of staff was so high that the childeren sometimes had as many as 3 supply teachers in one week...

I read them, but they are just one source of information. My DD is (hopefully) going to start in reception at our local school in September. It has an RI grade from ofsted. It was clear in the report that there was a significant problem with the year 3 teaching. Those teachers seem to have left, so that situation has resolved itself. But it only takes bad luck (e.g. a teacher to go on long term sick leave and be hard to cover) for a problem like that to arise. That's life.

DD's nursery is rated as outstanding and it is outstanding, but that might just be coincidence.

I think that a very significant problem with ofsted is the question of interobserver reliability - we just don't know whether two ofsted teams would give a school the same grade, even if they saw the same classes, the same data and spoke to the same members of staff and governors. I think there may be some plans to test this out, but I am amazed at how late it is coming.

My experience with our local primary school, the reports have been pretty accurate. 12 years ago when my eldest started the school was excellent. Since the arrival of a new HT 3 years ago the school has deteriorated, is now rated RI, and most children I know are on the waiting lists for other local schools. DS has had 6 different teachers since September! The content of the reports seems to match my experience very well.

I think they can sometimes be a useful snapshot, but they are really just an indication of what the school was able to show at the time the inspectors came. I read them but treat them very much with a pinch of salt and use a lot of other sources of information as well.

I think that visiting is essential. When I was looking for a primary school for DS1 I visited a school which was OFSTED outstanding but we all hated it - it had no natural light, very high surrounding walls and looked like a prison!

When we first visited the school they're at now we all instantly loved it, and it hasn't let us down.

Same for secondary schools - they're all 'outstanding' near here, but some definitely aren't judging by the accounts from both parents and teachers who've worked there.

I've found Ofsted reports to be a bit like sausages. Well-formed and tasty if you keep your eyes shut when consuming them. But as soon as you start to look at how they are put together - particularly the lips and arseholes that get thrown into their production - you quickly start to lose your appetite.

My kids have complex SEN. Fortunately, the SEN they have is one for which specialist teaching exists, and outcomes can be pretty good with the right support.

But Ofsted don't employ any of these specialist teachers as inspectors. So in terms of reliability, Ofsted reports tend to rank somewhere below the David Icke website for us. Once Ofsted start to send inspectors to my kids' schools who know something about this specific SEN - and once they send inspectors who are actually capable of communicating with the pupils - then I'll think again.

When I used to look at the reports, the first thing I did was check the professional background of the inspectors who produced the last report for the school I'm looking at. Ofsted publish some (limited) data - here

Most of the time, this data makes for depressing reading, even for mainstream school inspections. For example, the lead Ofsted inspector who assessed our local primary was someone who last taught psychology at a sixth form college. In the 1990s. You'll find inspectors assessing 1,500+ inner-city comprehensive schools whose last experience of headship was a village primary. Sometimes, they send the right people to the right school. But not always.

Also, the number of inspectors who play both sides of the street is depressing. A large number of inspectors also work freelance as education consultants, selling services to schools, academy trusts and LAs. One day, an individual like this can be inspecting a school for Ofsted. The next day, they can be telling a school how to make itself 'Ofsted-ready.' Somehow, Ofsted don't consider this conflict of interest to be a problem. There is a system of self-declaration of interest, but Ofsted won't say how often or carefully they pro-actively investigate.

As with most reports, there’s a code to decipher and a few questions to ask. - See more at: www.goodschoolsguide.co.uk/help-and-advice/inspection-reports-from-ofsted

No, chose a NI school over an Outstanding one because the NI is smaller and l think better suited to dd. And closer to home.

It's how parents work with the school and their dc that works.

I only wish I knew back then what I know now about Ofsted reports. Ironically I would exercise extreme caution in choosing a school that is outstanding.

They are good references but read carefully between the lines.

Nope. it's Scary what instead miss/ ignore. Not a really picture in some cases

Not the ratings but the details of what they've picked up on. It provides a starting point for asking questions. I sometimes take the exact opposite view to the inspectors and something for which they criticise the school may be a big plus in my eyes, or vice versa.

Nope, my dc's are in a school which RI.
The fact that it is RI means that more effort and resources are put into the school.
Totally agree that OFSTED ratings can be subjective
I would attend Open days in order get the feel of the school.

The ratings are really only important as a predictor of the havoc about to be wreaked on the school. An inadequate school, in my experience, will have some serious issues and will be a tough place to try to learn. Things at system level will change on a weekly basis, teachers will have low morale and kids will get messed about. An RI school is probably fine but not playing to Ofsted's latest whim and what will happen is destructive - teaching will, in my experience, get worse as it will become formulaic and teachers will be bored and demotivated. Pupils will leave, funding will dry up, teachers will leave and then real problems could arise. Not all RI schools react like this, but many do. Good is a very wide category and could mean anything from a fab school to one that is really quite unpleasant - but if the head is strong and confident the teachers will be left alone to get on with their teaching. An outstanding school these days is likely to be already very formulaic and rigid. Some oustanding schools are great and really innovative but in my experience, innovation is only found where school's are prepared to take risks and increasingly outstanding schools don't want to do this.

Ofsted ratings are not fit for purpose. I'm not a teacher, but have friends who are and they all say it's a moveable feast from year to year, based on whatever remit is in vogue at the time a school is rated. I also think the ratings system is screwing up the way we choose schools and has a considerable effect on house prices in the vicinity of 'outstanding' schools. (Locrate makes my mind boggle.)

There is a lot of talk on MN about making education a truly level playing field; some go as far as to say we should ban private schools. Actually the answer would be to ban Ofsted ratings and make the school allocations a proper blind lottery which would guard against people with larger pockets moving to live near the best schools and creating this double standard in the state sector.

I actually chose a 'good' school as my first choice over 2 'outstanding' ones as reading between the lines it was clear that the 'outstanding' ones were just ticking boxes rather than offering kids a sound education.

Anyway, rant over, I just think Ofsted has caused more problems than solutions. Don't get me started on Gove and SATs!