‘WHY aren’t Ofsted doing more?’ - Scribbler
WHEN I saw news this week that Fearns School in Stacksteads had once again been given an ‘inadequate’ rating by Ofsted, my first reaction was one of overwhelming sadness.
Sadness for the teachers who are trying their best, sadness of the pupils there who want to learn so they can succeed in life and sadness for the parents who just want to be reassured that their school is getting better.
This isn’t going to be a column lamenting, as some teachers do, the existence of an inspection regime because we do need one, so that local people know how good their local schools are.
But I do find myself wondering whether Ofsted, the regulatory body, is hindering, rather than helping, the efforts of those at the school in making tracks to getting better.
A quick look in the Free Press archives shows that Fearns, in Stacksteads, went into special measures in the summer of 2014.
At the time, the concern expressed was that it was because exam grades were getting worse.
But Ofsted seems to be unable to give the school a clear steer on how it thinks it was doing after that.
After being put in special measures in May 2014, by September Ofsted was praising it for having the ambition to improve.
In March 2015, there was more praise for the school, under acting head Jo Venn.
Then in July last year, there was more praise, with new head Helen Stead singled out for positive remarks about her ‘pace and energy.’
Yet the GCSE results for the year showed the percentage of pupils getting five GCSEs at A* to C had fallen to 27 per cent.
And so followed in December last year a change in view from Ofsted – that things weren’t good enough, and the school wasn’t coming out of special measures any time soon.
And then, this week, another dose of bad news as the latest full inspection resulted in another ‘inadequate.’
Ofsted criticises the school’s leaders for not having plans to bring about rapid improvement.
It says governors can’t govern because they are not given accurate information by school leaders.
It says teachers don’t know what constitutes effective teaching.
Yet this is a school which has been in special measures for two years.
From what I can see, special measures basically means Ofsted comes in to review what’s happening every so often, and in the case of Fearns, provides conflicting reviews on whether things are working or not.
In the latest report, Fearns is praised for making sure children are safe, but criticised for excluding too many pupils who behave badly.
Talk about damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.
Fearns seems to be a school which needs to turn round problems which have been years in the making.
The Ofsted report is critical in many respects, but I have to ask: Why aren’t Ofsted doing more to turn the school around?
Quite simply, a damning Ofsted two years after a previous damning Ofsted is surely as much damnation of the support provided to the school as it is of the school itself.
The first recommendation to the school is to develop a plan which brings about rapid improvement.
If two years of Ofsted inspections and checks and being in special measures have resulted in that recommendation still being required, then surely this is about a failing school, it’s about the system failing a school which is struggling.
And I have no doubt it will be those who care about the school the most – parents, teachers, pupils – who are hurting this week, not those who penned such confusing and conflicting reports which are doing so much harm.