The Inspection of Schools in the UK
The quality of education in the UK is monitored regularly by the Queen’s Inspectors. They belong to the Office for Standards in Education OFSTED and have to be specially trained for their work.
All schools in the UK have an Ofsted inspection at least every 3 years. Inspectors visit the school with 3 days notice so the school has to be well prepared all the time. Inspectors spend 2 days in the school.
The Headteacher and staff have to judge themselves and have a self evaluation form. This form is used all the year, not just for inspection. The inspection judges how good the school is at making judgements about its own standards and areas for improvement. The inspectors make judgements on many areas of the school’s work and publish a report which is sent to parents and published on the internet.
What is Inspected?
· The quality of education for children and young people of all ages and abilities
· How inclusive the school is
· The standards achieved in exams and teacher assessments
· The quality of teaching and learning
· The contents of the curriculum
· The quality of leadership and management of the Head and others
· The school’s management of its finances
· The spiritual, moral cultural and social development of students
· The contribution made by students to the community
· How well the school cares for its students.
· The Overall Effectiveness of the school/ Value for Money
· The school’s capacity to improve
What do Inspectors Look at?
· The schools assessments and results
· Financial accounts
· Teaching in most classrooms
· The work of students
· Curriculum documents
· Reports about the school
Who do inspectors talk to?
· Parents
· Students
· The Headteacher
· The school governors
· Teachers
· Other people in the school community
· The Local Education Bureau
How are the judgements graded?
1 Outstanding
2 Good
3 Adequate (satisfactory)
4 Unsatisfactory
5. Poor
The grades are published for all the areas of the school’s work and the school is given an overall judgement in the first sentence of the report.
If schools are judged to be unsatisfactory overall they have to be placed in a special category and are revisited by Ofsted every term until they improve. The also Bureau is judged by Ofsted every 4 years. The more good schools they have, the better the bureau is considered to be. If they have failing schools they have to make them better in 2 years or the government will close them.
How Does Ofsted help to improve schools?
Ofsted makes its judgements against a large set of published criteria. These criteria apply to all areas of school life. The school can therefor judge itself and the Local Bureau can also help schools to improve against these criteria.
It is helpful to have a national agreed set of criteria to measure education provision by. All education professionals, not just inspectors, can use them.
The schools know they will be judged publicly every 3 years so they are always working to improve standards because they don’t want their school to be judged unsatisfactory.
Parents can talk to the school about their standards because of the public report and can read about schools on the internet.
It is also helpful for the Bureau to have a measurement of the schools from a national organisation. They can test how good they are themselves at helping schools to improve.
The part schools don’t like is the inspection days in the school. Teachers get quite nervous about having inspectors in their classroom and you never know what children and parents are going to say about your work!
What are schools like in North Lincolnshire? The majority of the schools in North Lincolnshire are good. We have no failing schools and a small number are judged Outstanding.
Some of the criteria for good teaching and leadership have been shared with schools in Dalian. Dalian teachers and Headteacher have had training from North Lincolnshire Officers on how to use the criteria themselves if they wish.
Jo Moxon
11-07