You would think it would be impossible to make Ofsted's system for reporting on schools any worse than the single phrase judgement system. And yet, according to Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of ASCL, that is precisely what they have done. The proposed report cards, he said, were “worse than single-word judgements”. 

These were introduced on Monday at the start of a twelve-week consultation period which, in theory, should lead to them being used in inspections from November. This is a timeframe which is extremely short and has already led to whistleblowers from within Ofsted reporting that the whole process has been too quick and lacking proper scrutiny.  Alongside the report card is a proposed monitoring system, the detail of which I have read three times, and still don't quite understand.  

Schools will be placed in ‘special measures’ if any area (except leadership) or safeguarding is a concern, and leadership is also a concern. Those schools will get six monitoring inspections over 24 months. A school will ‘require significant improvement’ if any area (except leadership) or safeguarding is a concern, but leadership is not. These schools will get five over 18 months. Clear?  

It remains to be seen how 'high stakes' this becomes and what the consequences will be if a school gets an 'attention needed' judgement. That will depend on the perception of parents, local media and the rest of the system as to how they respond and whether schools will also get support from inspectors before, during and after each inspection. We can only hope that this will not be the 'cliff edge' judgement that has led to such perverse incentives in our schools for the past few decades.  

The consultation is open now and runs until end of April.  It is open to parents to please consider taking part.   

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This week’s lunch trial has been a qualified success.  Successful in the sense that the plans we had in place were effective; but this was qualified by the fact that it didn’t rain or snow! 

When choosing early February to run a trial, we anticipated that we would get some wet weather which would enable us to see how our plans would cope with high numbers of students wanting to remain indoors.  That didn’t happen and, for most of the week, students have preferred to socialise outside once they had grabbed their food.  Nevertheless, the queues were managed well, adapted space was used well and, as ever, our students coped admirably with the change.  We will have another attempt at trialling this further later in the term. 

On Monday, Year 11 students begin their last round of Mock Exams before the real ones take place in the summer.  The importance of mocks cannot be overstated.  They are useful for teachers in determining what a student still needs to work on and can also influence the tier of entry that a student goes.  For students, they have a big influence on confidence, good or bad.  We urge all students, and families, to treat these as if they were the real thing and prepare accordingly, which means getting plenty of sleep and exercise, but also doing independent revision at home, as well as in school.  This ‘balanced’ approach is always more effective than relying on revision sessions with teachers, or last-minute cramming.  If there is still any doubt about the pitfalls of ‘cramming’ then please look up the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve to see what I mean. 

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I always think (optimistically) that February half term marks the beginning of the end of winter and the start of Spring.  That may not be meteorologically correct but it often feels that way as nights grow longer and the chances of snow and slush recede.  Tomorrow the rugby league season starts and we are just one week from half term.  I hope you have nice plans over the next couple of weeks to spend more time outdoors and with family over the half term break. 

It has been another calm and purposeful week at school and we know that cannot happen without your support so thank you.  And have a lovely weekend. 

Mr Groak

Headteacher