Ofsted

[sittinginthesun]

Evil evil evil evil.

That is all.

ShoeWhore

Same here. We are not feeling better yet but fingers crossed. I was like a grenade was thrown into our happy, optimistic school.

Have you seen this take on Ofsted yet?

(warning - bit rude in places)

I think that's it. If the school had identified that they need to improve a particular area, it can be no surprise that Ofsted do the same surely?

My dd wad very happy in reception and doing very well when her school went into SM, but I can honestly say that in the longer term it was the beat possible thing for the school overall in terms of improvement.

Sorry, you probably don't want to hear that OP, but I don't think it's that unusual for children and parents to,love a school which provides a very mediocre standard of education.

OFSTED style so called outstanding lessons can be very boring.

I work with a very, very dedicated teacher whose lessons are planned within an inch of their lives.

She has all the ingredients to tick the outstanding boxes.
Learning objectives, success criteria,talk partners, reference to previous learning,next steps marking for every piece of work,progress in the lesson, AFL blah blah blah. (I doubt she has time for any life outside the classroom...)

But her pupils are like trained automatons- yes they are being stretched, yes they make good progress but-

there is no passion
no awe and wonder
no fun

These are nine year olds...

"I don't think they've actually looked at the school once. They have an agenda - one figure they don't like (progress in one subject),"

DDs school was put in SM for the progress of one group, rather than one subject.

They knew exactly what they wanted to see, did very short lesson obs and claimed to have found it is an understatement as it's cost us our lovely HT,

Brigit you can't have fun! We came very close to losing the schools two best extracurricular activities.

If you are not behind a desk being board to tears you are not learning.

I strongly suspect the lesson I went to at a neighboring schools open day would have been outstanding.

God, it was formalistic and dull. I couldn't believe the DC sat there and listened, we would have been chatting and doing our HW because we knew exactly what was coming next.

well, report officially out now, and actually more positive than I expected. The level is of course devastating, but they have concentrated solely on the one thing they came in to find - the progress in one subject not "exceeding expectations". They are apparently happy with everything else.

as a parent, I wouldn't be particularly concerned, but we'll see.

That's really sad. Am a governor for an outstanding primary and if our kids weren't happy, confident and passionate I'd want to seriously look at the teacher concerned.

Having been a governor I know Ofsted is stressful, but OP I think you need to take into account what the school has been doing since the last inspection. If the governors and head have only just realised that progress is not what it should be, then you will be in trouble even if you are working on it. Improvement is continuous as is scrutiny of data I'm afraid. It is relentless and, believe me, all schools do the soft nurturing, caring stuff well, especially those with challenging families/children. I think progress and good or better teaching is key and, let's face it, many schools do achieve Good from Ofsted. Clearly something in your data rang alarm bells! Progress is a better tool than results to judge a school but you, as a governor, have to ensure the school knows where any problems lie, early, and make sure your teacher assessments are thorough and peer reviewed so plans can be drawn up to tackle weakness before it becomes a calamity. In challenging schools Ofsted never cared about soft stuff....they always wanted progress and satisfactory was never good enough in the classroom, especially for challenging children. No excuse for rudeness though.

sittinginthesunWed 23-Oct-13 16:02:42

the progress in one subject not "exceeding expectations".

That is nonsensical. If they EXPECT a school to "exceed expectations" even if does exceed expectations, it won't have, because that was what they expected and they want results to exceed the expectations.

Choc, I know, it did make me smile.

Don't get me wrong, everyone. I know I was completely shocked and stunned by the actual inspection, because I had never met such a cold and nasty person in my life.

I think the actual report is far fairer than I had expected, because it does make it clear that the progress results for last year were cause for concern and that we were all already aware of the issue and were addressing it.

Thing is, it was one year's results. The previous year's were fine and the LA had made it clear they were happy. They're pretty furious too as they were criticised in the report!

Does the amount of work required to please OFSTED actually distract from teaching our children? Surely if schools are spending so much time tying themselves in knots with paperwork they have little chance of actually working towards raising standards. If as much time and energy could be put into just teaching then schools would be a whole lot better.

Very very true. shebird but we are actually expected to do both- paperwork and raise standards- the main reason why so many teachers are on their knees.

It is very sad and worrying that everything in schools is focused on OFSTED. There must be a better way because this just isn't working. I did not grow up here so only know the present system - but was there life before OFSTED and was it better/ worse? Have standards improved since they arrived?

So the head of OFSTED has a keen interest in academies mmmmm......

Yup, we had a letter on the Head's desk from an academy broker before we even got our judgement! The whole thing is a farce.

shebird I think Ofsted started as a necessary evil, both DH and I's primaries and my comp. left a huge amount to be desired.

But, with the governments, encouragement they have let power go to their heads!

"All pupils will receive a good education" is a wonderful headline.

But it's a mathematical impossibility!

If you define good in terms of hard data, progress and exam results, half of schools are going to be below average.

That's how fucking averages work.

I have nothing against all schools being asked to strive for excellence and for as many schools as possible to try and get close to the national average 5 A-C figures.

You can compress the bell curve of results such that very few schools are getting genuinely poor results, simply because they have low expectations of their pupils and that is right and proper, but you can't stop 50% of schools being below average.

I think it a never ending cycle. As soon as you move up the dashboard, another school has to be at the bottom - they stressed that it was the dashboard that they based their findings on.

As for academy status, we looked into this in detail earlier this year, and went to several seminars etc. The difficulty we, and other small local schools, have is that we would have to employ someone to manage the accounts. We simply do not have the funding to do this without losing a member of staff.

So, it's a choice of becoming an academy and losing a teacher, or carry on as we are. No brainer, regardless of your political views.

Bit too much stick and not enough carrot.

But schools mustn't improve too much, or headline A-C figures go up and there is an out cry exams are getting easier.

Cue the English grades and speaking and listening fiascos.