how much store do you take by ofsted reports? would you go for "satisfactory" local school or "good" one further away?

[hatwoman]

this is in a rural area - the satisfactory one is in the village we are looing at moving to, 5 mins walk away from the house. Until recently it was "on notice to improve". The "good" school is in the next village. so the satisfactory one is much better for social reasons (all round - not just for the kids but for dh and I entering village life...)but the good school is, well, good... (and, after a couple of years there we'd be coming back to London where the best chance of a good secondary school is a competitive entry grammar...)

I would carefully read teh report to see why it is only satisfactory and see what they need to do to bring it up. I would then consider how important what they are not doing well on is to me and what the school are doing about raising their standards. If they seem to be working to improve and are serious about this and you are happy after visiting and talking to parents there then I would go for your local school.

well the only thing the school website says is that they are looking to bring the kids that haven't reached whatever "expected" level it is in sats up. but I guess I need to read the ofsted i more detail - if I can ask the head good questions I might get proper answers

always best imo to go for a school on an upward curve rather than one possibly stagnating at a perceived high level. dp chatted to serious education policy bloke a few weeks ago, who cheered dp echoing me on this, as he has always advised anxious parents this and we're the first who ever came up with it. and you can help the satisfactory one reach good next time round by contributing to it.

good point mb - that I had actually thought of - esp as it has a new - and well-respected head

I would be pretty tempted to go with your local school. THe pluses seem to outweigh the minuses.

have you looked round them yet? we went for our nearest school which had a pretty dreadful ofsted tbh and rejected the much trendier option which was further away (although we were offered a place there too). this is london, but still similar to your situation i think. our school is just the nicest place you could wish for, ds is doing brilliantly & is very happy there (& we are all now on waving terms with the local hoodies ). it's a rapidly improving school with a fab new head & we are about to get a new ofsted which is anticipated to be much improved.

i think part of the point of moving to t'cuntry is to do community stuff (we're trying to do the same), so in your position, the school in your village would have to be really dire for me not to choose it. unless it's a faith one, then all bets are off!

What were they praised for and what were the weaknesses?

What are the level 4 and more interestingly the level 5 scores here ?

visit them both, but on face of it sounds like the satisfactory one in the village is a better bet, particularly since it's on an upward streak.

On the visits, which had the most engaged & positive pupils?

tbh there are lots of reasons why an ofsted report might not be as good as you'd like. I would go and visit and see what the atmosphere is like, what is the head like, are the children happy, do the teachers seem to know what they're doing etc etc.

Our school got a satisfactory last year and a lot of the reasons behind it had to do with administrative things that had no bearing on the teaching itself.

Bear in mind that ofsted are only there for three days. Pick the wrong three days and the report will reflect that, iyswim?

As someone who caught the very start of ofsted inspections when I was at school 11/12 years ago and so saw the manipulation/preparation of pupils/school for the week or however long they were there from the inside I would happily take absolutely no notice of it whatsoever.

It is completely meaningless and unreflective of what actually goes on day to day under normal circumstances IMHO.

Ds's school got a worse report than the school I took him out of - that one had a glowing Ofsted but there are staff there who are great at sounding slick, but there's no substance to it. I moved him because of poor / dull teaching and because at the great Ofsted school, children with personality weren't encouraged. Incidentally, new school with worse Ofsted has MUCH better SATS and 11 plus results. Also much better at sport. It's great. I say that as a parent and a teacher.

tbh I'd completely disregard ofsted and go with my gut feeling about the school.

i second littlebella. don't underestimate the importance of gut reaction!

DD's school hasn't got the greatest OFSTED report, but she loves it and is thriving.
I love it too and she'll be staying there, and the DS's will both be going there too unless it goes drastically downhill in the next few years.

I agree with comments about how the school feels - I work in an 'outstanding' secondary and wouldn't send my kids there, even though my local school is 'only' satisfactory

What do you knowledgeable folk think about value-added scores then? Our local juniors has a a value-added of less than 100 (about 98 I think), whereas a school further away has a value-added of over 100. Is this more significant than general Ofsted scoring?

va is a bette rindicator of what they do with the kids once in the school, but that can simply mean hothousing them, all exam driven, no fun

Thanks dingdong. I'd heard that va scores of less than 100 effectively meant that a school was taking children backwards - but you don't think so?

I'd like to go for the local school, but the va stuff worries me a bit.

some really interesting thoughts here - thanks all

Hoxton - they're all faith school - but in actual fact that pretty much has the same effect as would having no church schools. - it becomes irrelevant. and all the schools have spaces - we're talking about an area where 70 kids in total is considered big...

and you're right about the community stuff. if you're moving into a community it rather smacks of "we like your pretty houses and your views over the moors but we don;t want our children to mix with you....did we tell you we're from London fnar fnar" that would go down a right old treat wouldn't it....

and what are your plans? do tell...

i do think faith schools outside london are a different prospect...

oh god, we are trying to move to devon, but 'tis such a bad time to sell a house. very demoralising. had an offer last week, our first sensible one for the 6+ months we've been on the market, & were just negotiating the finer points (well, dp was, i'm rubbish at that kind of thing!) when the buyers got cold feet. ho hum.

sounds exciting - good luck with it all. are you changing job? or have you engineered some fabulous p-t/wfh type thing? we're not selling - we're going to rent and see what happens. current plan is to come back. if it's any consolation trying to rent isn;t much fun either - so little out there.

it would be very exciting if only someone would buy our house . i only work 2 days a week, one of those from home anyway, so will work it out somehow, probably a day or 2 in the office every couple of weeks.... dp intending to go part-time with the same kind of arrangement. so we'll need access to decent trains to london. oh god, hope we're not hated for london jobs. that's someway in the future though!

ooh, hc, how exciting. wishing all power to your elbow with house sale. my best friend trying to buy house next door to us, but finding rate of people thru door of her flat in highgate is slow. not dead, but slow.

hello mb, how's gg? and v? dd so big now. we have had lots of viewers but market pretty stagnant. must hassle agent!