• Bonuses for senior Ofsted staff rise to £110k, and 5 more annual report findings

    Ofsted has today published its annual report and accounts for 2018-19. Schools Week has rounded up the key findings.   1. Bonus pay-outs to senior bosses rise to (up to) £110,000 Eight senior staff got bonuses this year, totalling between £70,000 to £110,000. The reason for the size of the range is that bonuses are…

    14.35 Jul. 18th, 2019 | News

  • Spielman: 'Red herring' to blame plunge in D&T numbers solely on EBacc

    Ofsted’s chief inspector has defended the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) as being the main driver of plunging pupil numbers for subjects such as design and technology. Amanda Spielman said today that between 2003 and 2017, the number of design and technology GCSEs taken by 16-year-olds in England “plummeted” by nearly two-thirds, from 420,000 pupils to just…

    15.26 Jul. 10th, 2019 | News

  • Ofsted: Curriculum intent isn't new, and it won't be the 'next big thing'

    Ofsted has said that its curriculum intent requirements are “nothing new”, nor the “next big thing”, as it attempts to alleviate concerns over the new inspection framework. The schools inspectorate said today that there was no need for headteachers to write new statements, adapt websites or restructure staffing to cover intent. The watchdog said it…

    12.53 Jul. 1st, 2019 | News

  • Ofsted downgrades hundreds more 'outstanding' schools

    Almost a third of previously ‘outstanding’ schools inspected since last September have dropped to ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’, Ofsted has revealed. Data covering the period from September to the end of March shows that just 16 per cent of ‘outstanding’ schools inspected during that time kept their top grade. Twenty-five per cent dropped to ‘requires…

    11.07 Jun. 13th, 2019 | News

  • Ofsted mulls creating school reviews website

    Ofsted has refused to rule out creating a TripAdvisor-style reviews website for parents after more than three quarters of respondents to a survey backed the idea. The watchdog is designing a replacement for Parent View, the service it uses to gather the views of parents about schools. I’m a real fan of parental involvement, but…

    5.00 May. 3rd, 2019 | News

  • Ofsted's evidence is so unfounded that their case for retaining grades collapses

    Ofsted’s defence of its four-point grading scheme in its recent paper (Retaining the current grading system in education, April 2019) has two, but only two, positive features. First, it acknowledges that there are strong arguments against its use of these grades.  Second, it admits that “we have never directly asked (parents) about the four-point grading…

    12.36 May. 2nd, 2019 | Opinion

  • Parents want more 'outstanding' schools inspected, plus 4 more Ofsted findings

    Parents want ‘outstanding’ schools inspected more often, but believe short inspections are increasingly behind unreliable judgments. Ofsted has published its annual parent survey today. A total of 1,111 parents responded to the poll, carried out in November last year. Here’s a round-up of some of the more interesting findings.   1. Parents think Ofsted is…

    0.01 Apr. 30th, 2019 | News

  • Spielman ordered sanction of off-rolling school

    The chief inspector intervened to downgrade the Ofsted rating of a school found to have off-rolled pupils, Schools Week can reveal. Inspectors visiting Discovery Academy in Stoke-on-Trent in January were advised by Amanda Spielman (pictured) to rate the school’s leadership and management as “requires improvement”, rather than “good”, after they discovered evidence of off-rolling of…

    5.00 Mar. 8th, 2019 | News

  • Ofsted refuses to name 300 'off-rolling' schools

    Ofsted will not name the 300 schools that could be off-rolling pupils in case it alerts them to upcoming inspections. The inspectorate’s annual report in December said the schools were identified as having particularly high levels of pupil movement in years 10 and 11. However, Sean Harford, Ofsted’s national director of education, told Schools Week…

    7.00 Feb. 17th, 2019 | News

  • Ofsted framework: Heads warn audit culture will ‘switch’ to exercise books

    Headteachers have dismissed Ofsted’s claims that its new inspection framework will reduce workload, warning that a proposed shift from internal data to pupils’ books will only create more problems. The watchdog has proposed that inspectors no longer look at schools’ internal assessment data, admitting that its collection can create extra work for teachers. Instead they…

    7.00 Jan. 21st, 2019 | News

  • Exclusions: Ofsted will look more closely at 'repeat' patterns of suspension

    Ofsted will look more closely at whether schools are “repeatedly” suspending or isolating the same pupils, under its new inspection framework. A school found to be using suspensions or fixed-term exclusions “inappropriately” would only then be able to achieve a “requires improvement” grade at most. But some teachers say schools need to be able to…

    7.00 Jan. 20th, 2019 | News