Ofsted reports - how important are they?

[MG]

Asalaam alaikum


this thread is more for parents and those involved in education i.e. teachers or something.

I wanted to know, how much should a school be judged by its Ofsted report? some have got really bad reports and others good but yet some say they "bad" schools are good schools and vis a vis.

Question is, as parents, how much should we consider Ofsted reports when deciding which school to send children to? 20%, 50%, 90%?


should we consider them at all?

Opinions and thoughts please jazakallah

[-Ibn Al Aqwa-]

Im not a parent, but am a student.

I just want to let you know that our college got the best report in the country, but i can tell you for a fact that it is no where near the best.

Thats because OFSTED only inspect the school and teachers, so they say how good they think the college is, but for all you know the students could be bad there...do you get me...the students at the school dont affect the report...

so you have to be cautious not to completely rely on them...

[MG]

Im not a parent, but am a student.

I just want to let you know that our college got the best report in the country, but i can tell you for a fact that it is no where near the best.

Thats because OFSTED only inspect the school and teachers, so they say how good they think the college is, but for all you know the students could be bad there...do you get me...the students at the school dont affect the report...

so you have to be cautious not to completely rely on them...

so are they correct in saying that the college is good but the students are making it bad in your opinion?

[-Ibn Al Aqwa-]

Well, i would say they are correct when it comes to the faciliies of the college.

The teaching and the students, is a whole other ball game...

[dhakiyya]

Do you really and truly want my opinoin of offsted? Really and truly?

I suppose you wouldn't have asked if you didn't.

Basically every two to three years, the Government come up with some vote winning stratergy to "improve" education. They take *one* idea and every teacher in every school in the whole country has to implement this one idea - whether against their better judgement or not - and offsted come round to schools and inspect them and check if they are following all the latest government fads. If they are they get lots of ticks and gold stars, if they're not they get put in "special measures" and offsted people go in to make sure they are implementing and following all the latest fads. There was one primary school in a rural area that was an excellent school, which year on year got excellent offsted reports, until suddenly one year they got a terrible report. They had not changed how they were teaching at all, they had not had any sudden new problems... it was simply because they hadn't implemented all the things that the government wanted all primary schools to implement.

My own experience - basically every single teacher had to teach every single lesson in the same three part lesson format: starter, main, plenary. Now don't get me wrong, this is a very good lesson structure. But for every single lesson of a child's three years in key stage 3??? its ridiculous. this had to be implemented at the expense of every other way of teaching, regardless of any teachers better judgement and experience. Similarly every single lesson has to have lesson objectives shared with the pupils....... objectives do need to be shared but every lesson? the kids just stopped paying attention to them, and many didn't bother with the starter every time because it wasn't "proper" work, because it would stop within five minutes and then the proper work would start. So the constant application of this one, very good, lesson structure meant that a lot of its benefits were being lost. The kids were sick of it to tell you the truth. The bright kids even more so, because no activity went on very long. Fine for the kids with no attention span, but for kids that want to have more depth to their work, or put sustained effort into a piece of work, there was never that opportunity. Also the constant chopping and changing for some kids lessened the amount of effort they put in because they'd be doing something else shortly, and at no point do the kids with poor attention spans have to practice attending for longer periods of time. Wheras among differently structured lessons, the starter - main - plenary structured lessons stand out as fun filled active lessons - when every lesson is like that they just get sick of it. At the school I worked at we even proposed an experiment - putting adults of different abilities (all in the same group) through a whole day of five, one hour starter - main - plenary lessons, and see how many of them were still paying attention by lesson 5.

Back to the primary school I mentioned before - I have never been there or spoken to any of the teachers but I can make an educated guess that they chose not to impliment some of the government strategies because a) in the judgement of the experienced teachers at the school they were not the best ideas and b) they already had very good structres and systems in place and the children were already recieveing excellent education, so if it aint broke, don't fix it!

To be honest a lot of the problem is the government rather than offsted, I think the people who become offsted inspectors are genuinely interested in improving education standards, but its their job to ensure schools are meeting government directed standards.

I'll save league tables for another post inshaAllah.....

My advice for judging how good a school is - ask pupils, parents, teaching assistants and teachers of the school what they think. Try to speak to fairly new teachers rather than any that have been at the same school for 30 years or are senior teachers or are otherwise likely to have a rose-tinted specs view of the school.

btw please excuse my sarcastic spelling of ofsted lol

[MG]

Do you really and truly want my opinoin of offsted? Really and truly?

I suppose you wouldn't have asked if you didn't.

Basically every two to three years, the Government come up with some vote winning stratergy to "improve" education. They take *one* idea and every teacher in every school in the whole country has to implement this one idea - whether against their better judgement or not - and offsted come round to schools and inspect them and check if they are following all the latest government fads. If they are they get lots of ticks and gold stars, if they're not they get put in "special measures" and offsted people go in to make sure they are implementing and following all the latest fads. There was one primary school in a rural area that was an excellent school, which year on year got excellent offsted reports, until suddenly one year they got a terrible report. They had not changed how they were teaching at all, they had not had any sudden new problems... it was simply because they hadn't implemented all the things that the government wanted all primary schools to implement.

My own experience - basically every single teacher had to teach every single lesson in the same three part lesson format: starter, main, plenary. Now don't get me wrong, this is a very good lesson structure. But for every single lesson of a child's three years in key stage 3??? its ridiculous. this had to be implemented at the expense of every other way of teaching, regardless of any teachers better judgement and experience. Similarly every single lesson has to have lesson objectives shared with the pupils....... objectives do need to be shared but every lesson? the kids just stopped paying attention to them, and many didn't bother with the starter every time because it wasn't "proper" work, because it would stop within five minutes and then the proper work would start. So the constant application of this one, very good, lesson structure meant that a lot of its benefits were being lost. The kids were sick of it to tell you the truth. The bright kids even more so, because no activity went on very long. Fine for the kids with no attention span, but for kids that want to have more depth to their work, or put sustained effort into a piece of work, there was never that opportunity. Also the constant chopping and changing for some kids lessened the amount of effort they put in because they'd be doing something else shortly, and at no point do the kids with poor attention spans have to practice attending for longer periods of time. Wheras among differently structured lessons, the starter - main - plenary structured lessons stand out as fun filled active lessons - when every lesson is like that they just get sick of it. At the school I worked at we even proposed an experiment - putting adults of different abilities (all in the same group) through a whole day of five, one hour starter - main - plenary lessons, and see how many of them were still paying attention by lesson 5.

Back to the primary school I mentioned before - I have never been there or spoken to any of the teachers but I can make an educated guess that they chose not to impliment some of the government strategies because a) in the judgement of the experienced teachers at the school they were not the best ideas and b) they already had very good structres and systems in place and the children were already recieveing excellent education, so if it aint broke, don't fix it!

To be honest a lot of the problem is the government rather than offsted, I think the people who become offsted inspectors are genuinely interested in improving education standards, but its their job to ensure schools are meeting government directed standards.

I'll save league tables for another post inshaAllah.....

My advice for judging how good a school is - ask pupils, parents, teaching assistants and teachers of the school what they think. Try to speak to fairly new teachers rather than any that have been at the same school for 30 years or are senior teachers or are otherwise likely to have a rose-tinted specs view of the school.

btw please excuse my sarcastic spelling of ofsted lol


jazakallah for that post sis, lol @ offsted.

i find it quite hard who to believe bcos with teachers, if they arnt new, its hard to get an honest view from them about the school itself :rubeyes:

one school i know got excellent SAT scores but have got an awful ofsted report, not special measures but alot of improvements have been pointed out! so it becomes hard , what to believe

[ummbilal]

Asalaam alaikum


this thread is more for parents and those involved in education i.e. teachers or something.

I wanted to know, how much should a school be judged by its Ofsted report? some have got really bad reports and others good but yet some say they "bad" schools are good schools and vis a vis.

Question is, as parents, how much should we consider Ofsted reports when deciding which school to send children to? 20%, 50%, 90%?


should we consider them at all?

Opinions and thoughts please jazakallah

I looked high and low for the "best" school in my area for my children, I spent hours reading ofsted reports on the internet, i finally chose one, and subhannallah it was the worst decision i have ever made about their education. My children were bullied, the school was very very negative and the head was a complete two faced B**** who one day said we could use a room for our son to do his salah, the next day she denied all knowledge of it.

After home educating for a few years my sons recovered very well and i found an excellent school locally which, though the SAT scores were low and the Ofsted report wasn't too good, is the best most positive school, i have ever come across, children are nurtured and cared for, our religious needs and requests are respected and observed well, Allhumdulilah.

So what i'm saying is i wouldnt pay much attention to Ofsted, its very easy for a school to put on a good front on report week and not show their true colours, go by recommendadtion.

[MG]

I looked high and low for the "best" school in my area for my children, I spent hours reading ofsted reports on the internet, i finally chose one, and subhannallah it was the worst decision i have ever made about their education. My children were bullied, the school was very very negative and the head was a complete two faced B**** who one day said we could use a room for our son to do his salah, the next day she denied all knowledge of it.

After home educating for a few years my sons recovered very well and i found an excellent school locally which, though the SAT scores were low and the Ofsted report wasn't too good, is the best most positive school, i have ever come across, children are nurtured and cared for, our religious needs and requests are respected and observed well, Allhumdulilah.

So what i'm saying is i wouldnt pay much attention to Ofsted, its very easy for a school to put on a good front on report week and not show their true colours, go by recommendadtion.


aww that is awful that your children were bullied :(

so are they at a normal state school now or and islamic one?

cos i have seen one school (islamic) i have heard mixed views about it (good and bad) , they have good SAT scores but had their First ever inspection this year (they have only been running for about 4 years) and their report was awful :rubeyes: not as bad as "special measures" being placed but ALOT of improvements need to be made, so its quite confusing to choose!

mashallah at your sons settling in now, it can be very stressful for you as the parent as well as the kids, when u have to keep going and fighting with the school over issues that they should be dealing with correctly in the first place!

[ummbilal]

Allhumdulilah through this awful experience came much good, their new school is a state school like the previous one and my youngests teacher came to my husband to day to say"Next wed we are going carol singing in the church, and after lunch we're having a christmas party, i have spoken to the head and we think you'd prefer to just keep your children off that day"

Yipee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!

Allhumdulilah!

They know our requirements so well we didnt even have to ask!!

I would give the Islamic school the benefit of the doubt, as sis Dhakkiya said many good schools do badly in Ofsted inspetions

inshaallah you'll choose the best school for your son.

[Eemaan]

one of the schools i was was previously at was bloody awful but got a great ofsted report...my friends school had all the moron kids taken to a trip to the Lake District so ofsted got this wonderful snapshot image of the school and labelled it 'outstanding' (highest grade) so the flippin system can be flawed. Teachers know when theyre in to observe three days in advance so will all be on their best behaviour (no wrestling on the staff room floor please)

the school im at now has an 'outstanding' now and it is actually a brilliant school mashallah-(cos i work there :p) so its has its merits.

If i had a brat (inshallah) i would definately look at the ofsted report, and if your a teacher- read the ofsted reports because i do think they have an excellent 'outside in' judgement you wouldnt otherwise get- before ofsted actually come in they spend weeks collating data about progress and attainment, what improvements it made since the last inspection, how it targets under acheivement, SEN yada yada yada.

AND THEN i would speak to the parents of other brats at the school- ask them waht the educational and faith provision is like and also speak to the head about it what concerns you had quantified about the report (they'll remember you for it @))

I wanted to know, how much should a school be judged by its Ofsted report? some have got really bad reports and others good but yet some say they "bad" schools are good schools and vis a vis.

Question is, as parents, how much should we consider Ofsted reports when deciding which school to send children to? 20%, 50%, 90%?

id say about 70% depending on how established the school is emm jee. see if its a recently extablished faith school- youd expect it to have jack all in terms of learning resources and development of managmental structure- so can be relative in this sense- but youd expect it have a fantastic provision for the moral and spirtual well being of the child which would be at the forefront of any faith school- so why not spend a hour or so looking around the school? youd be amazed at what instincts youd attune yourself into by even being there such a short period of time.

i can walk into another teachers lesson and pick up behaviour management, learning, how well the teacher has organised that lesson, student engagment by the time ive walked in to collect a set of texts books and back out again. its really useful

you want me to interrogate any schools for you? :o you still harassing that head teacher :p
mashallah @ parents like you who dont use us a a glorified babysitting service :crying2:

sheesh this has been my longest post ever *rings the alarm*