One-word Ofsted judgments for schools to be scrapped immediately by Government
Previously, Ofsted awarded one of four headline grades to schools it inspects: outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson
“Single-word headline judgments are dangerous and reductive. They are unpopular with parents and teachers, and their simplistic impact has made the daily job of improving school standards harder for everyone except the bureaucrats.
Dangerous and reductive eh? That's a good summary of politics, so a C for Ms Phillipson. Although she remembered the phrase, she has applied it to the wrong activity.
Presumably she doesn't expect to see much improvement over the next few years, so getting the fudge in early could be an astute move. Or is that a dangerous and reductive conclusion? Probably not.
9 comments:
Short version: “From now on, the teachers will be marking their own homework”.
They are probably anticipating the claim that if schools can be judged inadequate, then so can governments. Having a quango named "offguv" would attract too many offensive prefixes.
"Single-word headline judgments are dangerous and reductive"
Like Far Right?
Peter - that's what it's about isn't it?
Sam - perhaps 'inadequate' will become hate speech.
DJ - ha ha, good point.
I asked an Ofsted inspector who was writing a report on her findings at our secondary school, how my department had done?
'fairly satisfactory for a school of this type', she replied.
'That's a real copout', commented my teacher when I reported my exchange later, 'the whole prospectus of the comprehensive system was that all schools were to be at an equal standard!'
Tammly - I hope your teacher was being sarcastic about all schools being at an equal standard.
Well the opinion of most of my younger teacher colleagues was that the comprehensive system was a failure.
Tammly - interesting. It's a pity we don't hear more inside views on it.
But that would go against 'the received political narrative', that it's all been a great success.
Post a Comment