Ofsted announce school report grades are bollocks and to be ignored

[noblegiraffe]

Confirming what I’ve been banging on about for ages, Ofsted have announced that school internal tracking data - the sort of ‘working at’ grades that appear on reports to parents - will be ignored in school inspections because it’s made-up nonsense.

“Too often a vast amount of teachers' time is absorbed into recording, collecting and analysing excessive progress and attainment data within schools. And that diverts their time away from what they came into the profession to do. which is be educators.

“And, in fact, with much of that internal progress and attainment data, they and we can’t be sure that it is valid and reliable information.”

www.tes.com/news/ofsted-inspections-wont-examine-internal-school-data

Maybe, just maybe, if Ofsted are no longer interested in seeing it, teachers won’t have to make it up any more?

Yes very different in France. They’ve always marked out of 20. They say 19/20 is for teachers and 20/20 is for God.

They have to get an average of 10/20 to pass the year/subject. Their teachers are civil servants and it’s hard to get into - there’s a very competitive exam to get into the system. Once in, the government places you in a school and it could be anywhere in France. It’s often in difficult areas. But they don’t have cover and aren’t on duty or doing anything except teach. And yes, when they’re not teaching they’re free to go out of school or do what they want. They can invite an inspector in to see their lessons and therefore go up a pay grade. But schools aren’t inspected like they are in the U.K. Barely any private schools, the state ones are generally really good. At the end of year 10 they go into upper secondary and choose their “route” - academic / technical / mixture of both.

Teachers there don’t mark exercise books just tests / assessments.

Yes if anyone misbehaves they’re sent out and the administration deal with it.

SEN however is barely acknowledged.

But all things said, I think the French system is a lot better. Their systems are all understood by generations and respected.

They do have a brevet at the end of year 10 (collège) and then baccalauréat at the end of year 13 (lycée).

That said, no matter what we may think of the PISA tests and other measures, I don't think France does very well. This may not bother them, of course!