Poorly performing schools ‘stuck’

ALMOST 500 schools in England are “stuck” in a cycle of poor performance, Ofsted has said.

Inspectors have judged the affected schools “inadequate” or “requires improvement” at every inspection since 2005.

Amanda Spielman, Ofsted’s chief inspector, has called on schools to “get the basics right” and policymakers to resist the appeal of “fashionable gimmicks” from the technology world.

Launching Ofsted’s annual report in London last night, Ms Spielman said the quality of education in the country was improving but too many pupils had “the deck stacked against them”.

Overall, inspectors found 95 per cent of early providers to be good or outstanding and 76 per cent of further education (FE) colleges and 86 per cent of schools are at least good.

Ofsted rated 82 per cent of children’s homes as good or better and the number of local authorities judged good or outstanding for children’s services is rising.

But Ms Spielman said wealth remains a “predictor” of how well a child performs at school. “There are still children who lag behind. Children for whom it seems the die is cast, even before entering nursery, and who never catch up in 12 years of schooling,” she said.

“FE is too often seen as a poor relation to schools, somewhere for ‘other people’s children’, while the outlook for too many children in contact with the care system remains bleak.”

Ms Spielman said the report highlighted the emergence of new problem areas, such as the poor progress of pupils in coastal towns and white working class communities.

Colleges look less financially secure, she warned, and the consideration of what constitutes a “full education” has been “eroded”.

“Across the education sector a mentality of ‘what’s measured is what gets done’ trumps the true purpose of education,” Ms Spielman said.

The chief inspector argued that children from poorer backgrounds, who face challenges at home or struggle with learning, faced a “steeper” path to educational progress than pupils from wealthier families.

“There is a group of young people who seem to have the deck stacked against them,” she said.

“Perhaps the most important thing we can do to reduce that gradient is to get the basics right.”

Ms Spielman urged policymakers to avoid searching for “magic potion” technological solutions to these problems. She said: “Indeed, despite the history of snake oil, white elephants and fashionable gimmicks that have in the main been debunked, there remains a curious optimism that the elixir of education is just around the corner.

“But the truth is, we don’t need an elixir to help raise standards, because we already have the tried and tested ingredients we need.”

Emphasising the importance of early literacy, Ms Spielman expressed concern that the percentage of children on free school meals reaching expected standards on the phonics screening check was 12 points lower than more affluent pupils.

She warned that schools were becoming “another front in the new culture wars”, with parents expecting them to tackle social issues such as knife crime and obesity. Ofsted’s annual report found that about half of the 19,000 GCSE-aged pupils that dropped off school rolls between 2016 and 2017 did not reappear on another state-funded school roll.

Inspectors said this was a “huge cause for concern” and suggested many schools were practising illegal off-rolling to boost performance data.

There is a group who seem to have the deck stacked against them. Amanda Spielman, Ofsted’s chief inspector.