Late, lengthy opinion which is mostly letting off steam. I usually have my finger on this pulse, but have been pre-occupied elsewhere so thanks for the thread & link @PSBD.
I didn't appreciate how well-off we were at primary. Based on my experience Mr Wilshaw was quite correct to say (in their annual report) that the primary sector has upped their game, but secondary sector has not. The index of findings in this new 'most able' report is a perfect fit for a secondary comp which is yet another Ofsted 'Good' and not in a challenging area of the country.
Transition was dire. It's also March now and for the most part we still don't have a clue how DD is rated or performing in most subjects. Yes we eventually got levels and targets for all subjects in January, but it was a formula around KS2 SATs (plus two sub-levels to make the target) and we were supposed to treat that junk as if it were a grave and serious teacher assessment. Worse a couple of DD's teachers don't appear to know how to do credible assessment.
Perhaps it will be better when they set all the academic subjects in Y8 and gradually edge towards GCSEs, but in Y7 they only set maths and [::suprise::] that is one of the sunny spots where her passion for the subject is undiminished. It varies by subject e.g. French seem fine and for that matter so does DT, but mixed-ability lowest common denominator fluffy accessible English is doing a quite effective job of suppressing and 'normalising' the highers i.e. tall poppies and chop, chop, chop...
There is no modest way to say this: DD has her flaws, but for the most part she is a natural top of the range model. It's also difficult to coherently explain this, but I think her extreme gives me a good place to stand and survey the landscape. We inevitably have difficulties because the system isn't designed for either end of the ability spectrum, but I certainly don't believe the highers, approximately that L5+ bunch, have been very well served in this school this year.
I hope this latest report improves matters, however I had the same hopes for the original 'most able' report. Ditto for the related Sutton report and ditto for the Ofsted inspection guidance which acquired some quite explicit new text around these areas well ahead of this academic year i.e. surely they would all read that and start running around trying to tick those boxes the same way they do for all the other Ofsted tick-boxes?
I suppose we could argue that the secondary scale means there is more inertia than primary, but several years have gone by now and there is no mileage left in some of the common excuses. So it looks like some secondary schools have to be noisily singled out and dramatically downgraded specifically for weaknesses in this area in order to get the others to sit-up and do something instead of paying yet more lip-service to it (I'm looking directly at SLTs and governors).
On one hand I think Ofsted are part of the problem and probably should have been scrapped, but it looks like we do need them for this. I now want Ofsted to deliver their promise of a 'sharp focus' on this area and I want it to be razor-sharp.