Ofsted & the Parent View questionnaire

[Saladserver]

Our school is being ofsted inspected at the moment, and we've been asked to fill out the online questionnaire with our views of the school, or speak to the inspectors in person at school.

There are 12 online Q's and for each one you answer strongly agree / agree / disagree / strongly disagree / don't know.

I love our school, yes its not perfect and yes there are a few things that have mildly irritated me over the course of the last few years, but overall I think the teachers do a bloody good job, the head is a good manager and I want the school to do well and be highly regarded, as I believe it should be.

I completed the questionnaire as honestly as I could. I've been reviewing the results as they come in (shows you how many people have completed the questionnaire and what the results are as a % of agree / disagree etc).

It doesn't take a statistician to work out that one parent has answered 'strongly disagree' to every single answer and then said 'no, I would not recommend this school to somebody else' at the end.

This parent obviously has an axe to grind about something (I can't believe they strongly disagree about EVERYTHING!), and it upsets me that someone is willing to complete a questionnaire in such a way.

There is always the cliques of mums in the playground having a moan about something or other, or reckoning they could manage the school better than the head etc. I know we are all overprotective of our kids, but I take the view that teachers have trained at university and have real life of experience of teaching & schools so we'd all be better off not slagging them off in the playground and letting them get on with doing their jobs.

So my question is, how much attention do ofsted really pay to the results of the parentview questionnaire? Particularly when one parent has answered in such an obviously negative and across the board way?

[gillybeanz]

The survey is rubbish anyway, I did it last week.
It really doesn't ask the questions you want it to, so you just answer the questions they ask.
Their agenda has nothing to do with asking if parents are really happy with the school.

[BigWeald]

Zombie Thread...

[unfortunateevents]

I have also wondered how much attention OFSTED pay to the Parent View responses when, as someone else pointed out, you could fill in multiple responses from different email addresses. DH and I worked out once that we could have completed the survey 7 times between the two of us, using different email addresses, only two of which included our names so it would not have been obvious that they all came from the same family. At least we did have children at the school though! If we had an axe to grind we could probably have asked the grandparents, siblings, the milkman and postman to complete the survey as well. All you have to do is tick that you have a child currently in the school.

[newlabelwriter]

Saladserver just reading this - does your school start with a K and in South East London? Could be massive coincidence but my DS school had OFSTED in and very similar experience.

[BambooBear13]

We have 700 kids in school and 1 comment!

[MillyMollyMama]

On a slightly wider point, there have been many cases where parents believe all is wonderful at a school, including believing the children are making good progress, only to find Ofsted disagree. It has happened around here to a few smaller schools. Interestingly, if you are not in a position to measure your child's progress against those of a similar age and ability in a better school, how are you in a position to judge if they are making good progress or not?

When I was a governor of a primary school with challenges, we had parents saying their child had made progress in reading because they could read better than the parent. How does the parent know if this is good progress in reading or not when the parent also states they cannot actually read? Not everyone is able to make judgements and many people have no knowledge of outstanding practice upon which to base their judgements. It just comes down to gut feeling and if their child is happy.

[Snowrose1311]

Hi Saladserver,

Although I can understand your feelings, I think it is possible for a school to be raved about by 99% of parents and pupils, and one individual to feel very negative about it, and for that to be fair.

I am looking for a Year 5 place for DS2 who has High Functioning Autism, and at the end of 2013 I applied to our local (non-selective) prep school, which has an extremely good reputation, including being good with children who have mild special needs. Everyone I've spoken to raves about that school, saying that they've had a brilliant experience there. But when you have a child with an ASD diagnosis, unfortunately sometimes you get a much worse experience than everybody else, and that's what happened to us. Even though DS2 is currently learning and behaving well in a mainstream school with no support, the HT was constantly very negative about his ASD. DS2's current HT spoke to him to no avail and my son's application for a place was rejected with no real reason given. When I got home I burst into tears.

Just recently DS2 was accepted into another mainstream prep, a friendly & accepting school which can see past his diagnosis. Anyway, I just wanted to share this to show that it is possible that 'everyone' absolutely loves a particular school except for 1 parent who feels very unhappy with it, and it is not necessarily the case that the 'odd one out' is just being unreasonable.

I am happy for you that you're having a good experience with your school, maybe the 1 negative parent was being unfair, but maybe the case is that there are circumstances you may not be aware of.

[Retropear]

I thought Ofsted results were based on data so pretty much decided on before their arrival ie parent questionnaire is pretty pointless.

Happy to be told otherwise though.

[007licencetospill]

I think if a child is being bullied, there can be a huge management fail in resolving the situation. And ultimately teachers/head are responsible. Bullying that isn't stopped will deeply effect a child's learning and progress. The teacher may not be managing the learning environment effectively. Their confidence will be rock bottom and they may be isolated and excluded. Heads can easily hide or sweep issues under the carpet - this happened in our 'good' school. As a result parents were unaware of the huge problems that surfaced. How do you really know that your school
Is ok? You don't.


You can't grasp that some students are failed by a school even if its considered 'good'. The parent is probably not girding an axe, more likely grading the school based on her unique experience of it. Just as you have.

[007licencetospill]

I hope ofsted takes a lot of notice of all the feed back. Your experience of school is obviously going to be different to others. Great the school has been good for you. Everyone has a unique experience and for some your school has been a walking disaster. Parents shouldn't have to put up and shut up. Parents are often professionals too and many actually work in education. Parents often have valued input. School doesn't always know best and doesn't always get it right.

[Saladserver]

Ha! No walkingtheplank I'm not that self-absorbed or ridiculous that I'm desperate for my school to achieve no less than outstanding, even if it doesn't deserve it. Why would anyone want that, what would be the benefit of that?

No-body 'cornered' the inspectors, and my friends who submitted letters each had their own (negative) concerns that they wanted to raise with Ofsted.

I simply want parents to be fair about the school and not completely slate it across the board potentially due to an issue concerning only one aspect of their child's education.

[WalkingThePlank]

It's clearly very important to you that your school is rated well. Did the 'right' people submit letters and corner the inspectors this morning?

[Saladserver]

As an update, several mums I have spoken to have completed the questionnaire online but feel, as most people say above, its so generic that they couldn't express what they wanted to say in the 12 simple questions available. So they've written letters to hand to the inspectors in the playground, which seems a good solution.

PLus this morning 2 x inspectors were cruising the playground with clipboards asking parents if they were happy with the school and had any issues to raise. So I feel happy that they're getting sufficiently balanced parent feedback.

[RosesandRugby]

I know many parents who rate my childrens school very highly because they have always had positive results for their children from the education provided. At best I would describe the school as 'ok' but not excellent by any means. I compare it to the school I went to and although this was 20+ years ago this is the standard I look for at my childrens school.

My friend went to a 'mediocre' school in comparison with the school I attended and as a result she finds our childrens school excellent. Its all about personal experiences and expectations.

Its not easy to just move a child to another school either, frequently its due to rising numbers and hardly any new schools opening to help reduce the class sizes. There are many reasons people pick a school. Some are based on the distance it is to their home/work/child care, some choose exam results, some choose sports achievements some are just allocated a place because there was nowhere else for the child to go and some people just don't know that they can change schools.

Just because you personally find something excellent doesn't mean that someone else will. I hate football, my personal experiences have been on the whole dreadful when it comes to football yet thousands of people love it. Its the same with schools.

I really wouldn't worry about 1 persons reply on Parentview. It really wont make any difference to the school anyway. Im pretty sure your school will continue to be run that way it is now unless of course OFSTED uncover something terrible during their visit.

[Dinosaursareextinct]

I can see that someone might do that, but haven't come across it yet, and have searched for a good few schools. Feedback tends to be positive (or non existent).

[MrsCakesPremonition]

All it takes is one family using multiple email addresses to skew the results on Parent view.

[Dinosaursareextinct]

Hardly anyone bothers to complete the questionnaires though, so for several schools I've tried you can't access any results. The system is therefore not working.

[Marmitelover55]

I am a bit sceptical about the whole thing, as you don't need to be an actual parent to comment. Anyone can go in and pretend to be a parent and really skew the results if they want to. A "troll" paradise.

[LadyDamerel]

Hula, you need to go to 'All' in the tabs along the top, or last 365 days, or 2012/13. They start again for each academic year which only show data once there are more than 10 results but all the previous results are there. You have to be on the desktop version to get those tabs though.

[Morebiscuitsplease]

Following a recent inspection I completed it but found it quite difficult as my daughters have had very different experiences. Wanted to do one for each child as outcome would be very different.

[Hulababy]

Does Parent View reset itself after a period of time?

We had OFSTED last year and we had a number of responses. However, when I just looked there are only 2. Why would this be?

[Frikadellen]

I found parentview quite irritating to use it is such a rigid way to deal with issues.

My dd3 have had some serious issues with learning lately School is working to get her to work harder. However due to how the questionnaire was set I had to tick " disagree" to my child makes good progress. She doesn't its that simple. it isnt as such the schools fault but that is reality she is not making good progress. However my ds who was in Y6 at the time was doing amazing but I can not tick a middle of the road box so I had to go with either disagree or agree/strongly agree. as I do know I know 1 child i s doing amazing and one not so good. it is not a " dont know"

also a question like " my child gets appropriate homework". if you disagree with homework at primary level then your answer will be strongly disagree.

When I went through it I put some disagre on the form Not because I as such feel the school is doing badly but because it was the truth for that question.

When looking at the school 32 parents had responded (I think that is about 50% so pretty good really) and only 8% would not reccommend the school to others . I know for a fact one of those is a friend of mine who feels the school is utterly failing her son and who have had some very negative experiences over issues there. She felt that overshadowed how well her dd was doing and responded very negatively. She is currently trying to move her son.

[firstchoice]

Really - same for us sadly.
We are going to move though as there is bullying too.

[Dinosaursareextinct]

I also don't think Ofsted pay much attention to Parentview. But it would be useful to prospective parents if 1)lots of parents filled it in, 2) they were honest. I suspect that many don't fill it in or praise too much because they don't want the reputation of the school to go down / fewer MC kids to attend.