School given a poor OFSTED - what to do?

[TwentyOneGuns]

Background - DD is in Y9, she's happy at school and seems to be doing OK.

Don't know the rating yet but head wrote to parents last night outlining all the things they'd been pulled up on and it doesn't sound great. The last report (which we obviously looked at before sending DD there) was much better but a while ago I think.

I was in 2 minds about the school anyway, it seemed pretty good but I preferred another local one, we decided on it as DD is quite shy and lacks confidence and hated the idea of going somewhere she didn't know anyone. I'm now wondering if we should have stood our ground.

There's a meeting next week about GCSEs, this is obviously a really important time for DD but I think moving her might do as much harm as keeping her in a not that great school.

Any advice? I don't know how much an OFSTED report really reflects day to day life in a school. If a kid is happy and works hard should they do OK wherever they are?

Oh I didn't realise they weren't supposed to do that . He said it will be published next week and available on the school website but he wanted to share in advance areas for improvement that were highlighted during the inspection. Apparently they are disappointed that it's not as good as previous reports so obviously it's not going to be great.

OK if the head knows from Ofsted that it is due out next week then they may not have jumped the gun too much.
The fact that they want to share with you areas for improvement is probably a good sign that the school have accepted the issues highlighted and are already making appropriate changes.
Your daughter is in year 9. Any move to another school may give problems over courses being studied and you don't know how your daughter may react to a new school. Unless there are very significant issues that relate directly to your daughter I would stick with the school.

What grade did the school get in the last inspection?

I don't remember off the top of my head but it must have been positive because I remember considering it when we were applying for schools.

From my days in state middle leadership, and countless OFSTED training days, the school is usually graded prior to arrival based solely on results. They then look at the same results on beautifully coloured spreadsheets for a couple of hours on Day 1.

One time, the school was borderline 3/2, in the days when satisfactory actually meant that, and SLT blagged their way to a Good. We certainly shouldn't have got one. I then went to work in an Outstanding, where resulfs were amazing but everything else was hideous.

In short, the OFSTED reports are highly spurious, and have an innate lack of (OFSTED buzz word coming up....) consistency.

If your dd is happy there, keep her there.

It doesn't sound as if you know how bad the grade will be? Requires improvement used to be satisfactory, and isn't that bad.

My DC's school had Outstanding at its last inspection, but that was 8+ years ago, I'm not even sure it has ever been inspected since my eldest joined the school (and officially isn't even the same school as it became an academy...).

Ofsted are in for two days. Most of the morning of day 2 is spent in laying out the judgment, and the afternoon in debriefing the headteacher and chair of governors. That leaves one day to observe lessons and meet a representative sample of staff and students across the school. There simply isn't the time to go through files and files of evidence and I disagree with pp that Ofsted are obsessed with exhaustive record-keeping. If teachers are being asked to do this, then it is by senior leaders who think that this is what Ofsted want, not by Ofsted themselves.

Ofsted will triangulate what they are told; if the HT tells them that every child writes in purple ink, they will ask similar questions of staff and students and make their own observations to check that this is happening. If it isn't, then they will drill down further into monitoring and evaluation evidence.

They will be familiar with the school's performance data and website before they arrive. In most cases this will inform the areas they wish to examine before they come. Judgements aren't a foregone conclusion but the inspectors will arrive with a hypothesis to test.

There is a huge focus now on safeguarding, particularly on radicalisation. I am aware of recent inspections where inspectors have checked that staff are familiar with the government's 'Prevent' training, for example. It's possible that safeguarding could be a limiting factor on a judgement for a school with otherwise excellent teaching and outcomes.

OP, as a parent, I suggest that you look at the DFE performance tables for the school and check how pupils like your daughter (in terms of KS2 SATs results) do when they leave in y11. Read the report when it comes out, and if you have concerns, request an appointment with the headteacher. If I were otherwise happy with a school in your situation (teaching good, staffing stable etc), I'd probably only withdraw my DD if there were serious safeguarding concerns in the report.

Incidentally, I have never heard of a school being expected to maintain records of pupils' sexual orientation.

I'd wait for the report - OFSTED are cruel. Our school was inspected last year (without a doubt we're a 'Good' school) but the judgement was constantly on a knife-edge with 'Requires Improvement'. The report will outline clearly which years/subjects are under threat or whether it's a policy-wide issue affecting everyone. It could be purely a management thing and the teaching is still good. I hope that helps.

Blimey, I didn't realise so much went on behind the scenes. Thanks so much for all the info, definitely sounds as though I need to actually read the report before jumping to conclusions.

I think there have been some ludicrous suggestions of how Ofsted operate on this thread. The crucial info you can look up now is the data on the progress the children make at the school contained in the data dashboard. This will alert you to what Ofsted may have wanted to check out before they arrived. For the latest info on how Ofsted inspect, look at the Ofsted Insoection Handbook . If the school had any doubts as to improper inspection techniques they would have argued about the outcome of the report. It appears they have not.

When the report is published, see how it compares to the data dashboard and see how it might impinge on your DD. It has become more difficult to get Outstanding. Good is what the majority of secondary schools get. It is rarely just a "management thing". Rarely is a school requiring leadership improvement if everything else is perfect. That really makes no sense. It may be that some children do not make enough progress or that some teaching is not good enough.or both. It could be that the school is not assessing progress accurately or that it does not know what its weaknesses are and is therefore not addressing them.

Poor Reports can make a difference if good teachers leave and this really can impinge on the individual child, especially if good recruits are not available. If a school is poor at assessing and reporting progress, they may not, accurately, be able to tell you how well your child is doing. That could be one of the problems. Do report back when you seen the full report.

A report will not outline what subjects are under threat! Maths or English to go! Obviously not. The curriculum is a matter for the governors, not Ofsted. Sadly, parents rarely know if teaching is good. They are not the ones being taught. They do not know how good teachers are in other schools. It is a very difficult judgement for a parent to make if a child has just started at a school.