How important is an Ofsted report to you?

[harryhausen]

My dcs are in Y3 and Y1. They are both happy and doing well, my dd exceptionally so. They are in a primary in what I can described as area that's not affluent.
When I choose the school the Ofsted rating was 'good'. A year after my dd started we had an inspection and were downgraded to 'satisfactory'. If I'm honest, I was quite upset by it - but as my dd was happy I put it to the back of my mind.

Today we're having another inspection. I feel really nervous and I'm unsure why. I put great store by education (as I'm sure we all do) but I think it's really bothering me how the school will fair in this.

I'm unsure if my nervousness is having close friends in the surrounding areas who have all had their schools inspected recently and received 'goods' or 'outstanding'. Is it just me being competitive or defensive about my chosen school? I think it really matters to me what other people think of my dcs school.

What's not helping, is that in the Ofsted parent view questionnaire they asked to fill in by 11am today - only 16 parents have bothered so far. Out of a pupil roll of 460. I'm really angry by the disinterest of most parents.

So after my long ramble, if your dcs are doing ok at a school but it is given an awful Ofsted, how would it make you feel?

So Rabbit don't local people have a say and are church schools safer from acadamisation?

Well, PolkadotCircus, local people have about as much say as people nationally do in the policies of this coalition government - we apparently voted them in...(not....).... Obviously, you have a tiny bit more say if you are a governor of the school, but the fact is, if support from the LA is reducing all the time so that what you get from them is worth less and less, and the schools around you are being forced to become academies or start becoming academies because they've seen the writing on the wall and want to choose the manner of their academisation, there comes a point when you have to jump ship,too, whether you agree with the idea or not - or you get left having academy status forced upon you in a way that is far worse than if you plan it in advance for your school, yourself... By the time this government is out of office, the chances of getting the lost funding and expertise back into LAs will have become more and more remote. You can't easily undo something so comprehensively undone.