Ofsted proposals
It’s hard to miss all the talk of Ofsted and its proposals: almost on a weekly basis, we hear of Sir Michael Wilshaw, the Chief Inspector, and his ambitions to raise standards in schools. There’s currently a consultation process which sets out seven proposals for changes to the way schools are inspected. From September 2012, it is proposed that:
- Schools cannot be judged ‘outstanding’ unless their teaching is ‘outstanding’.
- Schools will only be deemed to be providing an acceptable standard of education where they are judged to be ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’.
- A single judgement of ‘requires improvement’ will replace the current ‘satisfactory’ judgement and ‘notice to improve’ category.
- Schools judged as ‘requires improvement’ will be subject to a full re-inspection earlier than is currently the case.
- A school can only be judged as ‘requires improvement’ on two consecutive inspections before it is deemed to require special measures.
- Inspections will be undertaken without notice.
- Inspectors should undertake an analysis of an anonymised summary, provided by the school, of the outcomes of the most recent performance management of all teachers within the school, as part of the evidence for a judgement on leadership and management.
I don’t often comment on affairs beyond the great things happening at Moortown Primary. However, in this case, please allow me to present my own response to two of the proposals:
Point one
When we were inspected in November, teaching at Moortown Primary was judged to be ‘good’. Some lessons were deemed to be ‘satisfactory’, some lessons ‘outstanding’. This proposal means that Moortown Primary may be inspected again sooner than anticipated. A re-inspection might lead to a ‘good’ judgement for the school as a whole, assuming the quality of teaching was the same as in November. There are two issues with this:
- First, I believe teachers at Moortown Primary are not prepared to play the ‘Ofsted game’ of pulling out of the bag amazing, all singing, all dancing lessons that are likely to lead to a judgement of ‘outstanding’. Instead, I know from my frequent visits to classrooms that teachers deliver quality lessons consistently – all the time, not just for an inspector. My point is that good teaching and learning all the time is surely better than mediocre lessons except if there’s someone in the classroom watching.
- Second, the consistently high quality of teaching at Moortown must play a large part in the exceptionally high standards that our children reach when they leave the school, as noted just this week by Nick Gibb, Minister of State for Schools. In the last few years, Key Stage 2 test results have improved so much that they are now amongst the best in England. Surely this outcome – learning over time – should inform an Ofsted judgement more than a snapshot of teaching on a particular day, by an inspection team who may or may not be able to deliver consistent judgements.
Point three
Despite the high standards we achieve, I believe we still need to improve. I believe all schools must keep on getting better and better. The proposal that the ‘satisfactory’ and ‘notice to improve’ judgements should be replaced by ‘requires improvement’ suggests that ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’ schools don’t actually need to improve, or worse, they can rest on their laurels. This is certainly not the culture at Moortown Primary, where we continually evaluate and reflect on what, why and how we do things, and make improvements to suit our learners, not ourselves.
Put forward your views of the proposals here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ofsted-gefa-sch (Click the ‘next’ link to start expressing your views, not the link back ti the consultation paper itself.) Consultations remain open until Thursday 03 May 2012.
Dynamic Dancers
Look out for Year 1 in the future as they are certainly “dynamic dancers“. On Tuesday, we all went down to Allerton Grange to work with some Year 10 pupils. There was an hour long workshop where we learnt different moves and had lots of fun putting together a dance sequence. Thanks to all the Year 10 pupils and to the adults who worked with us.
16 March 2012
This week’s spellings are words with the ‘ow’ letter pattern. Your child will be tested on Friday 23 March 2012.
| cow |
| how |
| now |
| down |
| brown |
| clown |
| town |
| flower |
16 March 2012
Your homework this week is creative and is due in on Wednesday 21 March 2012.
I know how to use question and exclamation marks.
We’ve been learning about different forms of punctuation. Homework is to produce a piece of work that shows what you have learnt.
Ideas could include:
- Some art work.
- A sentence or two.
- A short story.
- Finding examples in a variety of books or magazines.
- Your own even more creative idea.
16 March 2012
This week’s spellings are connectives that can be used as openers for a sentence related to the previous sentence or paragraph. For example: “The acting in the Lion King was amazing. In addition, the singing was superb!” They have been separated into two groups:
- adding connectives – add more information to the previous point
- reason + result – gives a consequence to the previous point
| LO: connective openers |
| adding connectives |
| In addition, |
| Furthermore, |
| Moreover, |
| Additionally, |
| reason + result connectives |
| Consequently, |
| As a result, |
| Therefore, |
| As a consequence, |
These connectives will really help with the children’s writing next week as they are learning how to persuade someone to do something.
16 March 2012
Spellings this week are all ‘ly‘ words. Your child will be tested on Friday 23 March 2012.
| A | B | C |
| approximately
extremely frequently particularly emotionally despicably undeniably thoroughly outrageously
|
approximately
extremely frequently importantly thoroughly particularly physically perfectly finally |
actually
highly gently gingerly gradually smoothly carefully perfectly finally
|
16 March 2012
Your homework this week is creative and is due in on Wednesday 21 March 2012.
I can express my opinion about the novel Snow Merchant.
We have been reading The Snow Merchant. Homework is to produce a piece of work that tells me your opinion of the book.
This piece of work could be:
- Some art work.
- A timeline.
- A cartoon strip of the story so far.
- An interview with you answering questions about as though you were one of the characters.
- A prediction of the exciting events still to come.
- Your own even more creative idea.
16 March 2012
This week’s homework is creative. It’s due in on Wednesday 21 March 2012.
I know things that use pushes and pulls to move.
16 March 2012
This week’s spellings are plurals that end in ‘es’. It is used instead of ‘s’ for words that end in ss, sh, x, o and zz. Your child will be tested on Friday 23 March 2012.
- buses
- bushes
- heroes
- boxes
- foxes
- dresses
- crashes
- buzzes
- fishes
- classes
16 March 2012
The homework this week is creative and is due in on Wednesday 21 March.
I can show what I have learnt in our Animal Kingdom topic.
As we are coming to the end of this term’s Big Topic, we thought it would be nice to celebrate what the children have learnt. Children should show creatively something or some things they have learnt during the topic.
Some ideas:
- a poster
- a storyboard
- a poem
- a leaflet
- a report
- an observational drawing