Ofsted report delay?

[DebbieFiderer]

School had Ofsted in over a month ago, no report published yet - is this unusual? Previous inspection was 'Requires Improvement', had been Satisfactory for a long time before that. Feeling among parents/parent governors seems to be that improvements have been made but that this doesn't show in the results yet so uncertain as to whether they will manage a 'Good' this time. Also, not sure if it is related, but DD says they have been told they have to be on best behaviour tomorrow as visitors are coming - could that be Ofsted coming back in prior to publishing the report?

Worraliberty, the procedures around how Ofsted report back have moved on to what is a more sensible system. The draft contents of the report are divulged to the SLT and then to as many governors as are available to listen to the report. Any inspector who is still insisting on only the Chair of Governors being present is way behind the times and needs to listen to what he is being told by his big boss. Still that process in Wales though.

As to who should be told. Yes the contents of the draft report are confidential until it has been moderated, checked and formally sent out but it is for the SLT and the Governing Body to decide who should be told in the interim. To be honest it is an insult to the staff and any governors not present at the feed back meeting if they cannot be told as they might not be trusted to keep it confidential. When the school I was Chair at was inspected I personally told all governors who could not make it to the feedback meeting with the full staff having been told the outcome 30 minutes after the inspection team left the school.

Did anybody blab, not from our end but I was told by people from the LA what the outcome for my school was! Mind you the wide smiles might have been a bit of a giveaway that all was fine.

I had a look at the data dashboard last night, was quite shocked actually, I knew it was bad, hadn't realised how bad though.

In terms of RI twice, my understanding is that you can if Ofsted can see that things are moving in the right direction; only twice though, and I don't know if that still applies if the school was satisfactory before (as that is effectively the same rating).

As far as I know the governors haven't been told details of the draft report, just the random comment I mentioned earlier. A good friend is a governor and she said that she wouldn't be able to tell me if she did know, but she doesn't know anyway.

Apparently the visitors yesterday were in DDs class for just a short time, while they were on the carpet, then left when they went to their groups to do work. The children were told they 'might see a bit of teaching but were mainly there to check the children's behaviour'

I believe that at our school the governors and teachers were eventually told before it was made public. It's pretty obvious really if there is a delay and if the school is being put into special measures what else can they do??

My dd's school had one year of slightly lower sats results (including lower progress) judged RI but there were management problems. It really isnt that hard these days to end up in category.

sorry meant to say hers was previously good with some outstanding.

Probably if the governors/ head consider that the requirements for good have been met but OFSTED disagree then they are not going to consider that the school is moving in the right direction.

It is likely the visitors were the school's improvement partners. Or possibly behaviour specialists if behaviour is a problem in school. If the data dashboard is poor, is this against similar schools? If so, then the school have not acted quickly enough to make meaningful improvements in progress across the school. Also there should have been monitoring visits after the first RI. What did these say?

No issues with behaviour as far as I am aware. Dashboard is poor against similar schools apart from reading which is positive. The monitoring visit after the last RI was also positive, report notes improvements being made.

The similar schools thing is . Comparing the schools it's difficult to see what criteria they have used tbh. It makes the data dashboard v difficult to use imo. Dds school is a rural primary and some of the 'similar' schools were inner city with much larger free school meals/ sen etc.

The data dashboard information of similar schools is comparing schools that had similar attainment results at the previous testing. In other words in a primary it will be comparing schools that had similar KS1 results. As you say it could compare inner city schools with rural schools and that is possibly never going to be a sensible comparison.
I am afraid you are just going to have to sit this out until the report is published. A school can be RI twice but will then be in special measures if no improvement the next time - previous history as satisfactory is not considered as it was based on a different Ofsted inspection framework.
Whoever came in yesterday was not Ofsted, as they will not do anything
until after the report is published.
If I was a governor at the school and had not been told the outcome in confidence then I would resign. I am clearly not to be trusted to keep it confidential and would be very insulted by that. It is typical of both some narrow minded people at Ofsted and of head teachers who believe they are somehow superior.

Got a update of sorts today, can't give details but it seems the outcome won't be as bad as I feared and may be better than hoped.

Debbie I'm on similar tender hooks - it's been month now since ofsted visit. School was good and as far as I see still is. Had self assessed data as outstanding and its dashboard is good (all average or above generally, first or second quintile in comparison to similar schools). Outstanding pupil progress.
But some head is off sick and so there's a temp head. Feel so sad that this could count against all the hard work. Would love to know if there's an alternative explanation to the delay than it being RI.
Any ideas?

That should read 'the head is off sick'

It's so hard but knowing, isn't it?

Our school was inspected 20th Nov 2014.
Report was published 20th Jan 2015. I think parents found out 6 weeks after inspection.

They went from requires improvement to good.

No real explanation was given, but it was communicated to parents (directly and via word of mouth) it was some sort of ofsted quality checking process that caused the delay. I don't know how true that was.

A temporary head in difficult circumstances will not count against the school. As long as the pupils are making progress and all the teaching is good, then the school will be fine. The temporary head is being paid a headteacher's salary, so should do the same job. As far as I can see, Ofsted cannot make a RI judgement because the head is ill. However, hard work is not always productive work. Most schools that are RI work hard, but they don't have the impact they should. Schools are all about working hard and being effective.

OP it sounds like good news then hopefully.

Milly Molly it really depends on whether the management is effective ht off sick or not.

Yes of course you're right, hard work isn't always constructive. It's just that as well as a pretty challenging intake (v high SEN, FSM etc), it also gets results way above national averages. I find it hard to believe that it could be a terrible school.

Anyway, Debbie and Sheep have made me feel better that a delay isn't always doom.

Update in case anyone is interested; report has finally been published (almost 2 months after the inspection!), and the school was rated good across the board. No (official) information about threreason for the delay.

Was it in west yorkshire? I note done published which had been subject to a second inspection (so Ofsted had sent another team in before the report was published). It is quite unusual.

No, no that one. But there was definitely some 'debate' around the report and a second visit. Glad they have got a good outcome, I think they deserve it. And there didn't seem to be much needed to get to outstanding.