Terrible ofsted since we applied

[moaningminniewhingesagain]

I applied for a place at our nearby catchment school for DD. It is just 4 mins walk and I have also considered myself not pushy/not too worried about ofsted/think a lot of it is about what happens at home etc, I was happy to go for it because it is so close and seemed fine.

But, last ofsted was good overall. Just looked at the recent one, which was done after I applied for her place, and it is now a 4/special measures I am feeling a bit fed up now.

On the plus side, does it mean they will be throwing money/resources at the school to improve it?

I know ofsted is just a snapshot, and we do live in a pretty erm, interesting, area. Am I daft to feel a bit concerned?

Yes they will plow a fortune into it.
Local school that went into SM 7 years ago is now considered The Bees Knees, very desirable.

I was able to volunteer to help with guided reading in KS1. I got to see the school from the inside, twice a week, in various classes. It set my mind at rest, and gave me an idea of what to watch out for too.

So good to hear the positive experiences here.

Lots of sensible advice

My dds school generally gets below average sats results because it has a special unit on site, lots of children from deprived families etc.

This makes it harder for a school to get more than SATISFACTORY from Ofsted.

So, to get the sought-after GOOD or OUTSTANDING, the school is now concentrating on making sure every child makes more progress than nationally. So, it's a great school to have a child in.

Plus, since every child is so different (autistic, foreign, rich, etc.), each child is treated as an individual.

It is right to have concerns about a school going in to special measures but you are at the lowest point now. Also, there is not point chasing good ofsteds because schools can also drop down the ofsted levels. Our most popular local school was recently slated by Ofsted.

Cordova totally agree the fact they couldn't pull it together for one or two days would really scare me.

Usually the schools tend to steer ofsted to their best teachers and students and hide every one elese so if the best they has wasn't very good what were the others like.

I would start having a look at were on the list for other schools I love the governor who said about the journey and all that but it could take the school several years to do well also the fact its in special measures may mean all the caring parents pull their children out of the school and it really will be a sink school

Actually, maypole1 , the word around here (and something I have heard about before) was that one school in this area that recently received a bad Ofsted did completely the opposite. They had several teachers that were weak and they wanted to get rid of; the evidence from the Ofsted observations of their classes gave them the chance to do this. The school was given notice to improve and the staff were 'replaced' before the interim inspection.

I don't think the observations of poorer teaching they observed were the only reason the school failed but apparently 'weak' teachers are hard to sack and this questionable strategy was the most effective the school could think of to remedy the situation.

Oh, and I'm about to send my son to a school that's just out of special measures... does that mean I'm not a 'caring' parent?!

Well I would question the wisdom of that myself I wouldn't send my child into the dragons den but each to thier own my lo has a hard enough time learning with out being in a sink school

Ofsted decide which lessons they want to observe and so the Head can't steer them towards the better teachers, Inspectors might get a little suspicious if the same teacher kept appearing in different classes and yeargroups!

spanieleyes , that was the way I thought it worked too! The local rumour mill says otherwise but I should know better than to listen to that.

I know of one school where every class was taught by advisory teachers during Ofsted and another that shipped a weak teacher out to a residential in place of the teacher who should have gone ...

Agreed you will surpassed how many week teachers are on training on that day and the worse students happen to be on a trip

So much of the report is determined by raw data that sometimes it doesnt matter much what you do during the two days.
The inspectors will come with an idea of what they expect based on attainment at the end of ks1 and ks2. I work in a deprived area and in our last ofsted the majority (above three quarters) of observed lessons were graded good or outstanding. But, because of low attainment in sats, teaching was still graded as satisfactory. In some areas, satisfactory is a good really.