WHETHER you have opted for that three-bedroom house in Twickenham or four-bedroom house in Finchampstead, choosing the right school is vitally important. The good news is that, if you do your online homework properly, your search should be a whole lot easier.
A glance at the Department for Education performance tables and the Ofsted website is a must. But if only you could just ‘glance’. The amount of data, deluge of statistics and seemingly endless jargon can mean hours of arduous – but necessary – study before making a decision that could impact the rest of your children’s lives.
“Satisfactory doesn’t always mean satisfactory” said a former Ofsted inspector to me. Oh dear. I could tell I was going to need help. I was aware of the four gradings by Ofsted – Grade 1 Outstanding, Grade 2 Good, Grade 3 Satisfactory, Grade 4 Inadequate – and had naively assumed they did what they said on the front of the tin.
“My first action on moving house” she said “would be to go to the government’s schools finder website and type in the post code of the house I was thinking of purchasing to find the schools within easy walking/travelling distance. Then I would check a school’s website to see how current and relevant to parents, pupils and staff it is and how it reflects the work of the children.”
She makes the point that it is worth reading previous Ofsted reports as well to see how a school has changed over the last few years. At the very least, check the date of inspection reports you are reading and keep an eye out for any change of head teacher.
But how do you get past all that jargon? Jargon perhaps isn’t quite the right world. But you do get the impression when reading the reports that the inspectors are writing in a code for which parents don’t have the key.
“Ofsted inspectors write letters to the pupils. These appear at the end of the report, and put their findings into simple, non-jargon language. This can be a good starting point before tackling the full Ofsted” said my mole. Phew.
She went on: “All Grade 1 or a mixture of 1 and 2 is a good school. Mostly Grade 3 Satisfactory with some Grade 2 two or three years previously need not be a matter of concern especially if a new head has been appointed recently.
“Unless it is right across the board one or two Grade 4 need not be a complete write off as it results in measures which attracts extra funding and quite often a change in leadership.”
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