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?

[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.

[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.

[BambooBear13]

We have 700 kids in school and 1 comment!

[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.

[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.

[BigWeald]

Zombie Thread...

[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.