Ofsted to bin gradings and go pass/fail

[noblegiraffe]

The latest rumours suggest that Ofsted will be scrapping school gradings and be replaced by pass/fail inspections from next year.

This would be amazing for education if true. Health inspectors instead of restaurant critics encouraging schools to jump through ever-more bizarre hoops in the pursuit of the ‘Outstanding’.

schoolsweek.co.uk/could-ofsted-be-about-to-wipe-the-grading-slate-clean/

Maybe I’m being unfair but given the track record I suspect the bar would be set at outstanding...

I dunno, Amanda Spielman seems quite reasonable, and the DfE just put out that video with all the education main players about reducing workload. Setting the pass bar high would increase workload and jeopardise teacher recruitment and retention even further.

I’m assuming the bar would be about Requires Improvement level. Or maybe they’ll completely revamp inspections make them totally different.

That would, tbh, be sensible.

The current 1 day inspections for 'Good' schools do not allow for anything other than confirmation of Good (or moving down, either catastrophically for safeguarding or following a summonsed second day) - so it feel;s like a 'Pass/ Fail' process already, as 'Outstanding' is essentially an unavailable grade in a routine inspection.

So moving to Pass = at least current Good and Fail = SM + RI (or possibly just lower RI) would pretty much reflect current situation.

It would also remove the current idiocy which is never re-inspecting 'Outstanding' schools - presumably all schools would be reinspected to see whether they Pass or Fail.

The only thing is that it would further ossify the current grades in perpetuity in the public mind- so School A would be 'oh, but they were old Outstanding [from 2006, never reinspected] so they are better than School B who were Good [from 2017, new framework]

I don’t think ofsted visiting every 2-6 years really affects teacher recruitment. It’s a way more complex issue than this. More to do with prestige of the job, joining a moaning workforce and not being interested in children and their problems is a bigger factor.

Ofsted do need to get rid of the Outstanding grade and inspect all schools regularly and on a sharply defined basis. How ever the RI (or fail) is defined, those schools will need assistance to improve. That should be the main focus of inspections and their aftermath. What do they need to do to improve and how should they do it?

Get rid of ofsted and SATs, don’t mess with GCSEs and A levels and you would entirely get rid of the recruitment problem. Other countries manage just fine without so many interim measures of assessing children and teachers.

I don’t think ofsted visiting every 2-6 years really affects teacher recruitment

Contributes hugely to workload and stress. The threat of a crap Ofsted ruining your career can also be very off-putting for prospective heads.

And, schools with poor ratings really struggle to hire.

I spent years working in a school that rollercoasted from SM to RI to good to SM over a period of time. No matter what the current judgement, we were constantly bombarded with "you need to do this because OFSTED..." It's never ending. If they go to pass/fail then there will surely be less pressure - even if the school is outstanding (not that mine ever was) there is the "we have to do this because we need to maintain our Outstanding judgement" beyond that, there's the "journey to Outstanding" bollocks.

I hope they do this.

Some on Twitter are worried that a just-failing school will get the same grade as the worst school in the country and that pass/fail is too sharp a cliff edge.

I don’t know. They should definitely scrap ‘outstanding’ but do people think the distinction between inadequate and RI is useful?

Anecdotally, I’m sitting outside a school right now waiting to pick my kids up. DH and I were commenting on how attractive the school buildings are. He then said “shame it’s such a crap school though - no one wants to send their kids here” which is true - in the town, it’s the one that parents put at the bottom of their lists and consequently it’s massively undersubscribed. However, from where I’m sitting, I can see about half a dozen banners with “OFSTED good” on them, with smiley photos and quotes from the report. So maybe it doesn’t matter. OFSTED says this place is “good” but you’d be hard pushed to find local families who want their kids to come here.

This sounds like a terrible idea. I presume that all GCSEs and A-Levels will now be marked either pass or fail, since we've decided that any finer gradations of assessment are unnecessary?

ET,

It does depend - from recent allocations and attempts to appeal / change schools, there are definitely families who would prefer it to another much-renamed local school

I would also say that perceptions like your DH's are as much to do with cohort as they are to do with education. Ofsted's job is to ask 'is what the school does with its cohort good enough?' whereas what public opinion is based on is much more often 'what is the cohort like and what are the raw results?'

So a 'Good' school with 17% PP and a 'Good' school with 55% PP can both be doing 'good enough' jobs in Ofsted's eyes (and given the depressingly strong statistical link between high ofsted grade and low P, you could argue that the second is doing a better job against higher odds). However public perception will still see the 55% PP school as 'less desirable' because it's 'where all the kids from the rough end of town go'.

I think, btw, that the distinction between RI and SM is useful for the school/LA/MAT - and should dictate the level and rapuidit of support and turnaround required.

However, I don't think that that 'internal' distinction ('how big and how rapid should the support package be?') should necessarily be made public. Or rather, an action plan should form part of the report, and the nature of it would be informative, but the distinction in public grading may not be helpful, if that makes sense?

in the same way, a 'scraped pass' school would have an action plan to move it away from the boundary, whereas a 'doing fine' school would not need such a substantial one.

Whales, I don't think it is comparable.

Even grading a couple of papers correctly for GCSE can be problematic, as we see every year for remarks, especially in subjects with a subjective element like English. Imagine that a person's GCSE grade is based on every single piece of work they have ever done on anything that they have ever done, right from reception, and that because no one person can look at all of those, lots of different people look at different bits of it, but have a very short time to do so, and sop may rely heavily on the grades given to pieces of work - even though those may not be comparable across different teachers and different schools the child has been to. Then multiply it up a few times. That is, essentially, what an Ofsted inspection is like - trying to encapsulate a school of hundreds or thousands of pupils, in 1 or 2 days, with 1 or a few people, into a single grade.

A different team on a different day would often give a different grade, for different reasons, and the results drift with time (a current 'Good' is graded under harder criteria than an Outstanding from a few years ago, but the old Outsanding grades stand).

Having a 4 level grading process, in which not all schools are included (Outstanding schools, however old their grade, are almost entirely exempt) but where results cannot be compared over time and sometimes between inspectors, implies a level of accuracy that is imaginary, and thus would be better replaced by a 2-level system that does not imply arbitrary distinctions that do not really exist.

This has been swirling around for ages. I disagree with it and Ofsted acknowledge that parents really value the current gradings. There is a world of difference between just scraping and truly great education; it’s important for everyone that it’s recognised.

NotAnother,

The thing is, designing a system by creating two polarised extremes is not helpful.

It's a bit like grammar schools. People set up a false dichotomy between 'academic geniuses' and 'those who need vocational training', and design a system where there is a very large percentage of children in the middle who get arbitrarily split into 2 different schools, who on a different day with a slightly different test of the same standard would have been assigned to the other school.

So while yes, for the truly amazing schools and the just getting by schools (in terms of progress, not the 'absolute results' that so many of the general public blindly accept), it seems unfair that they should be put into the same 'Pass' pot, there are a huge number of schools which are 'very good' and yet are arbitrarily split into 'Good' and 'Outstanding' in the current system. Many of these 'very good' schools could be on the other category on a different day, or if inspected a few months later or a few months earlier, or by a different inspector.

I think the new system of only converting section 8 into section 5 inspections in case of serious issues helps sort out Good from Outstanding, and allows for the Outstanding schools to be identified as they’ll have their section 8, followed by a section 5 if they are moving to Outstanding. The judgement for Outstanding now requires, to my mind, consistency over two inspections often some time apart.

NotAnother,

However, is it fair that schools now have to jump through this 'double hoop' to move up, while they can be moved down simply through extension of the same visit?

Also, (more iniquitously) existing 'Outstanding' schools, sitting on inspections 10+ years old, judged in a single inspection under very lax old frameworks and in some cases so old that the inspection occurred after several weeks' warning, are never reinspected unless their results drop catastrophically.

I would not be so against the 'Outstanding' label if ALL Good / Outstanding schools were reinspected on the same cycle, and under the same criteria (ie can only be Outstanding if judged to be so under 2 inspections a couple of years apart - so all older existing Outstandings demoted to Good until reinspected)

I'm not sure we achieve anything by having an "Outstanding" category other than to give those working in schools the impression that nothing is ever quite good enough. Even those schools that are judged "outstanding" pile the pressure on to maintain that.

Also, there is plenty of evidence that schools with certain demographics never make it to "outstanding".

can'tkeep this school is definitely trying to campaign for a change in cohort - we live on the other side of town from it, and had a 16 page full-colour newspaper (must have cost a fortune) through the door recently advertising the school. I'm assuming it went to all the houses in our area. This is a school I don't tend to post about so not sure if we're on the same page... The much renamed school I used to teach in does seem to be pulling itself up a bit in terms of reputation (and this is having an impact on the intake for next year) though the way the new Head is going, there will be no teachers left to teach them...

Totally agree re: reinspection of Outstanding schools. There should be a reinspection of Outstanding schools if the inspection frame work changes, or if the Head changes, at the very least. Or make Ofsted judgements time limited.

The feeling I have is Ofsted is being moulded to suit the move to academies. Lots of the local high schools here have coincidentally gone from outstanding to needs improvement in one move, just as the LA are brassic (thanks Central government) and keen to offload expensive to maintain schools. We currently have no academies and one independent school

If I ruled the world, inspections would be descriptive, rather than graded. They would be linked to targeted school support. I think pass/fail could end up being even more brutal.

I think it's a great idea. Especially as Outstanding often doesn't actually mean a school that's really really good. It means a school that is good at manipulating statistics and brow-beating staff. The appearance of superiority given to such schools is bad for education.

School I am thinking about - lovely modern building, religious in name, 44.5% PP in last year published.

Quite a lot of 'forced assignment' to much renamed school for next year, which must be improving the current look of those supposed to be admitted. All I know aiming to move elsewhere, some to other school I have mentioned, as 'preferable last resort'.

Part of the problem with a judgement of outstanding is that parents/the public expect absolutely everything to be outstanding and it never is - never can be in fact because the people involved and their circumstances change. But it's difficult for people to accept if they find their child affected by the weak department or teacher etc. Equally in a school in special measures there may be a few excellent staff - who sadly suffer the stigma of working in a SM school.