School Inspections Update

On the 26th May, Angel Solutions sponsored the School Inspections: Raising Standards and Improving School Performance conference in London; bringing national thought leaders on this subject together.

Hundreds of headteachers were in attendance and were able to listen to the latest news from Ofsted via the Director of Education and Care, Patrick Leeson. We thought we would share part of that update, and how it might affect the future of Perspective here.

Click here to see Patrick Lesson’s full presentation

As you are no doubt aware Ofsted are currently piloting a proposed new framework, and this will continue in June and July this year and be published in September 2011. The framework itself will come into force in January 2012 and will focus on teaching and learning, pupils’ behaviour and safety, together with an evaluation of the impact of leadership and management.

What became obvious throughout the discussion of the new framework on the day was the continued importance of self evaluation, knowing your school well, and undertaking effective action in order to achieve real improvement, as well as being able to demonstrate this as part of an inspection. The importance of teaching quality and its effect on learning was emphasised massively, plus the role of the leadership team in making sure that quality was sustained and weaknesses being identified and addressed.

The role of leaders in making sure that everyone in the school was focussed on improvement, particularly the key priorities of the school, across all departments/phases/lessons, and that this was shared by everyone, also came to the fore. The great news as far as we are concerned is that Perspective has always aimed to be a vehicle that allows leaders to do just that.

Perspective will continue to make sure that it is aligned to the framework of inspection that Ofsted produce, as well as focussing on the key issues that face leaders in schools such as Quality, Standards and Effectiveness. By adding Performance Management into Perspective the ability to monitor teaching alongside key priorities and targets from across the school is available to school leaders.

We will be sending out more information on what the new framework will mean in terms of content and structure in Perspective in June and July, so look out for more information in the coming months.