Do your children go to an Ofsted 'Outstanding' school? Is it?

[MrsJAlfredPrufrock]

My children go to an Ofsted 'Outstanding' primary school but it isn't even nearly as good as the their brother's old Ofsted 'Satisfactory' primary school.

How accurate is your children's school Ofsted rating?

I did - and offered to proof read everything that left the office and very tactfully. Got a terse response and a lecture about how she didn't get into grammar school. It was her because when I was chair of the PTA she used to send me thank you notes! How do you deal with that. Surely as an inspector you must agree that it is something that should have been ironed out at teacher training college or in her early career - not by a parent when she had been promoted to Head teacher.

Yes mine do - its fantastic.

Ofsted are a waste of money. Don't believe their judgement of 'outstanding'. Crikey, have you been in some of the best private schools in the country? Now they're 'outstanding'!

"Don't believe their judgement of 'outstanding'."

My experience is limited to the primary school that DD attended. It was ofsted outstanding and was outstanding in every way.

The point is, Bunbaker, that a school which is 'outstanding in every way' for one child may in fact be a wholly UNsatisfactory school for another, and that is not something that an Ofsted report can ever hope to describe.

Some children's experience of a particular school may be so defined by their individual experience of it (a particular cohort, or even a particular child, with whom that child has problems; a particular teacher's illness or absence; an unrecognised special need or an inexperience of the school in managing that need etc) that regardless of the overall quality of the school their education would better be served in another school.

My son has attended two 'Good' primary schools. The first failed him in every way, and I removed him to be home educated in the middle of year 1 as a very anxious, very unhappy selective mute. In the second he has thrived from day 1. I recognise the features that made the first school 'Good' were, in fact, good and that it did have some outstanding features. They did not prevent DS from being isolated as an unusually able but somewhat 'odd' child, badly bullied by his peers and untaught by a teacher who had returned too early from maternity leave and could not cope with the high-needs class she had been given...

A child's experience of a school is individual to that child. Ofsted has been useful in identifying and eradicating some of the truly egregious faults that had existed in schools - but they do not, and cannot, identify whether an individual child will thrive in a specific year group in a particular school at a particular point in time.

Teacherwith2Kids I am interested by your comment about a particular cohort. We eventually removed our daughter from an outstanding school at the end of year 8 because of a particular cohort in her class that was intimidating and badly behaved. I understand this year, that things have gone from bad to worse and don't understand why schools don't deal with such cohorts rather than allowing a bright, A grade, well behaved child to slip through its fingers. We were lucky we could afford to leave but dd has many friends left there who I am sure will receive lower grades at GCSE than they would have if the bady behaved children were the ones who left.

MIW,

I think that there are various issues with cohorts, not all of which are under a school's control in the way that bad behaviour is (I agree that a school should deal with that).

There may be a huge variation between cohorts each year in terms of balance of girls / boys; spread of ability (DS happened to be the only 'more able' child in a cohort of unusually low average ability); number and type of children with SEN; and simply in terms of characters and friendship groups.

A school cannot necessarily 'deal with' such cohort variations (and within a cohort there may be individual children who may be 'best friend' for almost everyone but a merciless bully towards a single child...) but just manage them as best they can. These uncontrollable year to year variations may be particularly acute for small cohort sizes - one reason why we looked for a large school when we moved DS.

ds's school is ofsted outstanding and it is a very good school. But no school is perfect, much less perfect for every child.

I still think that ofsted reports are a reasonable guide as to whether the teaching at the school is any good. DD did have a problem with one child at school when she was in year 5. Fortunately the teacher nipped it in the bud straight away and this child never bothered DD again. That is one of the reasons I still think it was an outstanding school - because they dealt with the problem immediately.

DS1 and DD are in (different) 'outstanding' high schools which I think are both fabulous

Bunbaker - an Ofsted report is a guide to the statistical progress of the pupils attending the school in the years preceding the inspection, and to the performance of the teachers in place in a 'set piece' lesson on the day of the inspection. At the crudest level, a school placed in Special Measures on the day of the inspection is doing less well at that precise moment than a school given a label of Outstanding (I am less convinced by the finer gradations - a school given an Oustanding on the day may not be better than one given a Good, and a school labelled Satisfactory may well have got a Good on another day with a different inspection team).

However, an Ofsted inspection is out of date by the time it is published. A school in Special Measures can acquire a new head, a group of new teachers and a dynamic action plan ... and by the time your child arrives a year later may be a fantastic place to learn. Equally a school judged 'Oustanding' on the day of inspection can see a head retire, some key teachers move on, a difficult cohort or two arrive .. and either coast into mediocrity or nosedive (Some school go straight from Outstanding to Notice to Improve every year, while others do the reverse journey).

So I'm not entirely convinced by the 'it's a guide to whether the quality of teaching is any good', because it says nothing about the quality of the day-to-day teaching that your child will experience in the future.

It's a pity ofsted inspectors can't just turn up without the teachers knowing in advance. They might get a more realistic view of the school. I realise that this can't be done.

DD's old school has had consistently outstanding reports over the last few years so I still think that it can be used as a guide. If you are new to an area and know nothing about the schools what would you use as a starting point other than oftsted reports and SATS results?

teacher, that happened to one of our local schools - rated outstanding but the head left. It coasted on its reputation for a few years, then the inspectors went in again and it dropped to 'good'.

Our primary, that I posted a month ago as being "Satisfactory", has been regraded "Outstanding" since then. Just to show how easily schools can nip around the gradings, as teacherwith2kids says. Which is nice for the teachers, they are beaming away, but I thought that it was already good enough when it was satisfactory.

Yes - no it not great (and that's an understatement). They fill in the right forms, use the right jargon, set up the right structures. The Head is "dippy" - quoting every parent I have ever spoken to (they have not liaised with one another). She really is dire. There are some good, individual teachers swimming within a sea of chavs. But hey, I can walk there - I don't drive, can't afford the bus just to do the school run, the report they would send to any new school would mean that my SN DS would pretty much fall at the first hurdle (I know because I almost tried).

Besides, I don't have much choice due to shared parental responsibility - the vindictive loser of a soon to be ex-DH has wormed his way into the Head's good books via Skype (most people would see through it, but did I mention that she is very, very gullible).

I could be opening myself up for criticism here but as a teacher, I don't think ofsted reports are particularly reflective of schools.

I know of fabulous teachers that get graded poorly because they don't jump through hoops to do the latest educational fad. But students like their lessons, work hard for them and get great results. Other teachers get graded brilliantly yet students find their lessons boring and don't enjoy them. Of course I also know of teachers graded appropriately. It's all a bit hit and miss, iykwim.

The same applies to overall school grading. The best approach is to visit the schools, talk to the teachers, talk to other parents and get a feel for the school. It's an entirely individual choice. For every parent on mn moaning about their dc's school, there'll be a parent who thinks the same school is amazing.

Yes agree with Leonie - it is as though they think it is OK to be dishonest and generally unaccountable when it comes to SN children. So easy to contradict ts and not take responsibility for it, or pretend something never happened and just gaslight/deny/explain away. I wonder if we are talking about the same school!

The good news is that people who cannot afford to be in the right catchments can buy much nicer houses outside the catchments and also end up with better schools ... if only first-timers were not so trusting of OFSTED reports

Dds' primary has been classed as 'outstanding' for the last 4 years.

It's so far from 'outstanding' it's sad.

For the very bright academic children, it's fantastic.
For the children with additional needs, it's fantastic.
For the children who are 'average', it's anything but fantastic! There is no equality at all. It's really sad to see.

I say this as a parent of one child who is about as average as you can get and was made to feel "thick" all the way through primary. One child who is academically bright, but not exceptionally so. She's fairly confident in her abilities and I think (hope?) that she'll fare much better.
And one child who is only in Reception but often, already, wears an invisibility cloak.

The teachers have obvious favourites, which is another thing that I find so sad. I think it's natural to favour one child over another, it's a human reaction - to let others see this however, is completely unacceptable.

The school are, it has to be said, very good at playing 'the game'

Given some of the comments on this thread, I wonder if I should be considering schools rated "satisfactory"?

I'd been ignoring them so far.

(Just starting to look at primaries, this is all new to me!)

Mine do - Outstanding for Infants, Good for Junior, & I think that's spot on.

To be fair, a lot of what makes the Infants Outstanding is 'under the radar' if you have bright dc with professional parents (eg. mine) - they do very well, but probably would still do well in a weaker school.

The school has a very mixed catchment (lots of EAL) & does a superb job of getting them up to the same levels as their peers by the end of KS1.