Official evidence that school is crap!

[appropriatelytrained]

Some of you know for having posted about school under various names over the last few years.

Today, a friend of mine who moved her son to another school two months ago, came to visit. She'd had a running battle with school about a variety of things. Her little boy was really struggling just getting in to school in the morning with anxiety. She felt her son was falling behind but was told 'he's where he should be'.

She tells me that new school put him on the SEN register and believe he's dyslexic and they are treating him as such until he's formally tested.

Not only that, but he has just done with SATs with them (optional - the boys are Y3) and he is a whole level BEHIND where the Ofsted outstanding school had put him. A whole level.

Seriously, how do Ofsted let schools like this get away with it.

Because everybody knows what is going on, but no one person/group has the ability to change it. It is not just 'that' school, it's endemic through the whole system.

The sad truth is that those schools that do have a conscience and treat SATS as a measurement of an individual child's progress and not a tool to improve the schools ofsted rating, are often those schools that suffer in the ofsted ratings. They do not play the game.
Back in the days when i went to school, there was no ofsted. There were still schools that were better than others. If you lived locally you knew which had the best reputations because the parents talked and the news spread.

The new school seems an improvement though. Just how do you spot the difference if they all 'talk the talk'?

When i changed schools for my DS i took him round and asked him what he felt. I often think that children get a vibe about schools that are 'honest' and the ones that they feel comfortable in.

We'll have to sit it out for the rest of the term for now as we have a Tribunal pending but the last week or so has demonstrated to me how prepared this school are to lie about delivering provision - even to a child on a statement who is old enough and intelligent enough to challenge what they're saying!

This is so true and so sad. My DS (ASD, DCD) had severe school refusal for a year, to the point where he couldn't even attend school. The school in question was NOT meeting his needs despite a 32.5 hour 1:1 statement, countless complaints from us to Governors, LA, Ombudsman etc etc. Fast forward a few months and a military posting to a different area and different school and my boy is in full time, happy and has a good group of friends. The reason? This school WANTS him there, is fully meeting his needs and treats us (parents) like we should be treated, as human beings, and not something on the bottom of their shoe. It is amazing the difference a good school has made not only to our DS but to the whole family. There are good schools out there, I've seen for my own eyes how awful some schools are. :(

DS' teacher told me that ds will regress during the summer holidays 'because they always do' so to expect his Reception teacher to find him behind where she is rating him now

Okay - er - not!

The only thing that makes this not an issue for me is that I already know that he is a whole level IN FRONT of where she is rating him and that when he isn't at Nursery he progresses faster than his peers.

StarChartEsq

Maybe they are thinking along the lines of my DD school (NT) We constantly get bombarded with newsletters saying children lose information soaked in during the summer holidays due to not being at school and prints on them hoards of websites and brain boosting online lessions for them to do at home. To be honest if I did everything that they asked my DD to to on the net for she wouldnt ever get to go outside as they also get summer home work with a diary to sign AND a chart for them to fill in on what study of their choice they did on each day apart from what they gave.

I am all for learning but it is way too much.

Your friends is obviously way better off where he is now and had a great chance of thriving there by the sounds of it :)

coff, duno. There isn't any evidence that children lose skills except that there is a difference between the assessment level a class teacher gives a child at the end of a year and the level they give them at the beginning of the next.

Someone cynical might argue that there is no regression but simply an attempt of teachers to amplify the progress children are recorded to have made whilst in their class. Mark them down when they arrive and mark them up when they leave.

hmmmm you could well be right there!

Ooooh, I very strongly believe that they don't regress over summer, but that teachers mark them down in July and up in Sep.

There was research saying that in the US (where school holidays are 3 months not 6 weeks) kids from deprived backgrounds slipped back over summer.

That research has been used as an excuse to say our very non deprived kids slip back over 6 weeks. It's just not true.....

(If they give me that line again in Sep, I will be complaining to the board of governors..... (which I'm on ) )

Re the OP. It is possible that both marks can be properly explained. That in the old school using teacher assessment he did do significantly better than in a new school in a more formal exam.....

When my DS moved school I was told he was behind where the old school told me he was. I was very anti the old school and saw this as evidence as to how bad the old school was. However next term his levels had shot way up, so it was possible that it was just a 'settling in' thing and his marks weren't really that low........

That could be the case Indigo but it does fit in with what she suspected - i.e. that school inflate grades. I think it matches her perception of where he is and is why she couoldn't understand why she was being told 'he's fine'.

He's clearly not.