All our local schools are rated 3 or lower by ofsted

[SiennaBlake]

Dd has a couple of years before school yet but I was having a nosy on the ofsted site before. The three nearest our house are all requires improvement and inadequate. Two out of catchment are rated good as is the local catholic primary.

I've looked at the three schools she would be in catchment for and over the last few inspections two have improved from inadequate and one has gone down to inadequate from requires improvement.

Is this something I should be worrying about over the next couple of years with an eye to moving? Or could the schools turn it around in a few years?

Schools go up and down like a yo-yo. Even outstanding schools can quickly turn inadequate. The OFSTED inspection criteria is far tougher than in the past. Schools which were labelled "requires improvement" were deemed satisfactory in the past.

???? this.

Your best bet is to visit the schools closer to the time. The way a school feels on a visit can tell you so much more than the snapshot you get from a Ofsted report.

DD started at an inadequate school that had just been made an academy. I was beyond fuming when she was allocated the place but after visiting, my mind was changed. The school has done brilliantly by DD.

I think the ones to be most wary of are those that haven't had a recent inspection. dd started at a 'good' school that after a term of her being there became special measures.

The interesting thing is that sm doesn't mean the same as I remember it from when I was teaching a few years ago. Requires improvement for example can be 'rewarded' on real technicalities.

The reports are only a dusty old doc sat on the website, you need to find out what each of the schools is doing to address the identified issues and make decision from there.

moving house to get into a good school which can be potentially downgraded overnight seems pretty pointless to me.

awarded

In the 5 years that my DC were at infants school the school went from

• good with oustanding features to
• satisfactory to
• good (with no outstanding features)

As a parents I felt the standard of the school (well the bits I was interested in) increased steadily over the whole time.

When the school got its "satisfactory" Ofsted there was a large number of parents (who'd previously been quite happy with the school) who started mumbling that it wasn't good enough and they were going to move their DC.

Please take Ofsted with a pinch of salt.

Thanks everybody! I feel a lot less concerned about it now. I will take your advice and visit nearer the time and see how the schools feel. Atm dd goes to a preschool attached to one of the schools and the report seems quite different to the experience I've had of the school so I think a proper visit will help confirm that it's an okay school. It did get a lot of comments about how happy the children seem though and I think that would be the most important thing for me.

It's all so confusing though!

Start looking at them in more detail and go and visit -more than once if need be. Have a think about what you want for your child e.g. formal, big, tiny, faith, non faith etc etc and match schools against that. Try and speak to parents who are actually there and avoid toddler group rumors - which in our area are totally inaccurate.

I visited a few schools and discounted 2 outstanding for a variety of reasons despite them being close.

I am suspicious of OFSTED but its all we have. I have been told by many teacher friends though that its not hard to impress ofsted in the day...so beware of schools that cant even get it together for test day,
I think you have plenty of time to get word of mouth, get a feeling for the school all these things are relevant when choosing as well as ofsted.

I don't think that's true iamslave. The current framework is so based on statistics that most of the time they have made preliminary decisions before they even walk through the door.

That Tobysmum is all too true.
Both DDs primary and secondary were down graded on statistics.

The primary for not hot housing a few shy DCs who just missed their L5s and the senior school on a small cohort of lower ability DCs.

Perhaps the primary did need a wake up call - it's satisfactory was probably deserved.

Throwing the secondary into SM was an over reaction, it bounced back to good in a year.

Why because it is a good school, it cares about it's pupils and it provides them with a decent education.

Yes it has it's faults, it has it's departments that needed a kick up the arse (some still do). But the money SM wasted and the stress it caused was an awful way to bring about the necessary change.

As for the DDs primary - they had a really clever Y6 and got lovely SATs so Ofsted left smiling. Had anything changed no!