assessment - Doubled Up

Too many schools are coasting according to Ed Balls, and they will be added to those in the National Challenge that are not getting good enough results. Luckily, it seems that this time they will not be named and shamed, so that demotivating aspect appears to have been removed. But secondary schools that have been labelled 'satisfactory' and whose results lie in the middle of the average national results for GCSE grades A*-C are those that will be targeted. They will get support in improving standards and financial support as well. There is talk of sharing good practice and providing training. Sounds good. I'm all for improving standards. If you want to read more, go to this BBC article.

Interestingly, the school where I am governor (albeit an infant school) was accused of coasting at the last Ofsted inspection. I wasn't around at the time, and don't know if it was true or not. However, I do know that we have a new head teacher who has brought in lots of new initiatives and that SATs results have improved. We are now expecting another Ofsted this year, and interestingly a huge focus is on proving that we are not coasting. To me, the important parts of this proof include that staffing has changed, the lead teachers offer great support to others, good practice is regularly shared and that there are heaps of enrichment activities such as health week, music week, dance week. Children get to learn some French in year 2, there are loads of extra-curricular clubs and the children are happy and motivated to learn. They are polite, they show respect to each other and to members of staff. There are areas that could be improved, but any school that is worth its salt should be looking at how they can be doing things even better and I hope that we will be able to address them in future.

So, that's the good stuff. But interestingly, although our SEF (which I am working my way through at the moment to summarise the key points for the governors who have offered to meet the inspectors when they come) covers these in detail, the thing that comes up again and again is monitoring, assessing and SATs results. Part of this monitoring includes proving that the intake is not as good as one would expect in a leafy suberb such as ours. That's to say, showing that the kids aren't all that clever and many of them can't hold a pencil when they arrive, so actually their results are even better!! Whilst I am sure this is the case, I find it really frustrating that the head has to spend her time proving this, when any inspector should be able to come into the school and see that the expectations for learning and behaviour are high, that the children want to achieve, that they love to come to school and that it is most definitely not coasting.

But now I'm becoming negative, so it is a good time to stop!

I would like to know other people’s opinions on the Ofsted letters to children. After an inspection the inspectors write a simple summary of their findings, which are supposed to explain to the pupils what they have found – supposedly to “boost transparency”.

From what I have read (sorry, Torygraph again!), the comments are not particularly simple – one contains a 23 word sentence, including words such as ‘providing, effective, aspects, education’ etc. I wouldn’t say that this is considering the reading age of your average primary school pupil, but, heh, what would I know?

And fancy telling pupils (who will presumably tell parents) that their teachers are not “making sure you are learning as fast as you can”. Can’t really do the morale of staff or students much good! Certainly in one of the schools that I worked in (it was in Special Measures at the time), I can just hear some of the children there loving the fact that they could blame their teachers for the fact that they were not achieving, rather than the fact that they came to school 30% of the time and when they were there, they beat up their piers, swore at teachers and refused to put pen to paper.

Further comments included “you are not well prepared for your next stage of education, nor your future adult lives.” And – get this – they were still at primary school!