A tale of 43 schools: What Ofsted data reveals about school inspection so far

The 'Headteacher Update' reports on a survey of schools who volunteered to be inspected under the new Ofsted Inspection Framework. As the HU states: 'The new Ofsted regime is up and running and the first reports are out. Paul K Ainsworth analyses the first 43 primary reports to find out what we can learn and why the Attendance and Behaviour category might be the new weathervane...'

Keep in mind that these schools that did volunteer would have probably felt confident that they were secure and ready for inspection. The results (register with the website to see the figures) are really interesting and Paul came to some conclusions.

'Across the dataset, the most striking feature is the dominance of the new Expected Standard judgement. Whether looking at achievement, curriculum, early years, or leadership, a significant proportion of schools are meeting the standard, but not exceeding it.This provides the clear evidence that this is a framework that has tightened its calibration, even more so when we consider the volunteer effect as mentioned above'.