By: Piarina Hennessey

Piarina Hennessey — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:56:42 +0000

I realise that it may be difficult for school’s to accept a failing notice or downgrading as a result of the new safeguarding judgement, which now contributes to a school’s overall effectiveness, but that said, school’s have known since April 2007 that this would form a specific part of Ofsted’s remit and so have no excuse if they have failed to address it or ensure it complies. The separate (and possibly political)issue, and one with which I sympathise,is that school’s are being made to pick up the pieces for possible failures in our current Social care system. School’s used to be places for children to be educated but this education is being diluted because schools are now responsible for, and being made accountable for, many other areas of childcare that mop up weaknesses elsewhere in our society.
My son’s school has recently gone down a judgement from Good to Satisfactory and on the whole this was justified, because the school and Governing Body have not tackled failures since the last OFSTED re inconsistent assessment practice and general progress across the school in all but SEN and low ability groups. The school is using the new “tougher guidelines” to hide their real decline in some areas behind. OFSTED have noted some improvement, but these are where the old guidelines would possibly have shown a greater deficit eg performance in Early years used to contribute to the overall school effectiveness criteria, but now this is no longer the case. Our school has gone from being Good (it was seen as being a real success) for the Reception year, to being only Satisfactory. The current OFSTED focus on attainment is, I believe, a real weakness of the new framework. A teacher can have a low ability child, be an outstanding teacher, make leaps and bounds with that child and yet still attain only average or below average results from the point of view of attainment. In my son’s school, the majority of children arrive as mid to high ability children but they do not make the progress that they should, because of the broadly average teaching they receive and yet they still end up with good attainment because of their good starting points. If my son was taught by a good to outstanding teacher, his attainment would be higher still; as I heard one headteacher of an oversubscribed secondary school say “Good in, good out, is not good enough”. Much more emphasis should be placed on progress than on attainment, so that the length of journey each child travels educationally, carries more weight than simply where they finish.

Comments on: NUT says Ofsted report gives “misleading impression” standards are in decline

By: Piarina Hennessey