By Kyle Stealey September 2015

Transcription

1 By Kyle Stealey September 15

2 For many parents of Year 6 pupils, there are two priorities for their children during the new academic year; 1) preparing for KS2 SATs exams 2) applying for secondary school. This report will look at the latter of applying to secondary schools and analyse whether the information available from Ofsted s website can fully assist parents in making an informed decision on the schools available within their local authority. Ofsted has been responsible for the inspection of schools in England since 1992 (Baxter and Clarke, 13, p73), visiting schools and reporting on their quality to aide school improvements. The reports are used by a number of stakeholders. In the School Inspections: A guide for Parents (15), Ofsted note that they inspect schools to provide information to parents and reports are published for the school, parents and the wider community (p5). The government s own website advised visiting the Ofsted website to find school reports (Gov.UK, 15). A survey by the Wespieser et al, (14) asked parents what were the most important factors when choosing a school, over a third of parents said that Ofsted inspection ratings were one of the three factors that informed their decision, with 16% saying it was the most important factor (p3). There survey also uncovered that 86% of parents undertake their own research on possible schools (p5). The finding from the survey, clearly demonstrate the importance of Ofsted in the decision making of which schools parents wish to send their children to. With many parents conducting their own research an important source will be Ofsted s own website. Methodology Using the Ofsted website, 9 local authorities were randomly selected, then noting down the school type and whether there was Ofsted inspection rating and report. The local authorities selected are from across England, varying from counties to towns. There were a total of 7 state secondary schools included in the sample. The local authorities chosen were as follows: Local Authority Type of area Region Barnet Borough Council London Bedford Unitary Authority Midlands Derbyshire County Midlands Kent County South East Oxfordshire County South East Sunderland City North East Surrey County South East Trafford Metropolitan Borough North West York City Yorkshire

3 Findings Figure 1: Schools with an Ofsted Grading Schools without an Ofsted grading Figure 2: Percentage of converter schools with/without inspection rating on the Ofsted website Academy Converter without Ofsted rating Academy Converter with Ofsted rating Source: Authors calculation from Ofsted, 15b.

4 Figure 3: Percentage of schools in the Local Authority without an inspection rating on the Ofsted website Source: Authors calculation from Ofsted, 15b. The evidence from the analysis provides some concerning findings that the Ofsted website is a weak source of information to aide parents in making an informed decision on school choice. Figure 1 shows that almost 1 in 5 schools in the sample do not have an Ofsted grading on the inspectorate s website. The investigation found that it was only schools noted as Academy Converters that did not have a rating with 38% of these schools not showing a report. It would appear from looking at Ofsted s website, that the reason for this large proportion of missing information is that, when a school choose to convert to Academy status its previous inspection history from Ofsted is removed. It is unclear why this is the case and Ofsted needs questioning on why this decision was made. Of the 9 local authorities that were included in this analysis all of them had at least one school with no Ofsted rating available on the website. The percentage difference varies greatly in each area from 5 45%. It would seems that those living in the county of Oxfordshire benefit the least from the Ofsted website with 45% of schools in the authority not having a rating score available. The urban city of Sunderland also had a large proportion of Ofsted reports missing, with 33% of schools not showing an Ofsted rating.

5 Conclusion The evidence from our analysis is conclusive that using Ofsted s website to assist in making a decision on school choice is severely limited. The finding showed that almost 1 in 5 of the schools used in this study did not have an inspection rating available on the inspectorate s web page. With a third of parents using Ofsted school rating to inform them on the school choices available in their local areas, it is essential that Ofsted rectify this lack of information available. References Baxter, J. & Clarke, J., 13; Farewell to the box inspector? Ofsted and the changing regime of school inspection in England; The Open University UK Gov.UK, 15; School Admission (Accessed on 6th September 15) Ofsted, 15a; School Inspections: A guide for Parents; Ofsted chool_inspections_-_a_guide_for_parents.pdf (Accessed on 6th September 15) Ofsted, 15b; (Accessed on 6 th September 15) Wespieser, K., Durbin, B., Sims, D., 14; School Choice: The Parent View; NFER