OFSTED 'stuck' schools — The New School

After yesterday’s ‘stuck’ schools report from OFSTED, Lucy Stephens, Founder of The New School, wanted to share her thoughts on how the current testing system is failing schools and why education reform is desperately needed.

There’s a key issue related to the way we define ‘good’ schools – OFSTED and the media will look at GCSE grades, and value added scores and make a conclusion based on ‘effectiveness’. There may be other aspects to what stuck schools are offering socially and intellectually that isn’t valued because it isn’t measured, in particular a secure and supportive environment for young people. However, the more these schools are written about negatively, the bigger the middle-class movement away from them, leaving them with funding issues because there are not enough pupils on roll.

Empty hallways and classrooms lead to reduced funding for schools, less resources and poor staff morale

The teachers are then having to teach more subjects, with a more difficult cohort of pupils due to lack of social mixing, leading to a drop in staff morale. They are then pushed into adopting more teacher-centred ‘chalk and talk’ style teaching practises, which is not in the best interests of the majority of the pupils. This is educational triage – the schools that have more high attaining pupils (as defined by narrow standardised tests), attract more pupils overall, therefore are fully funded. With funding comes resources, the ability to attract talented teachers, and the ability to get higher grades.

Stuck schools get their agenda hi-jacked by behavioural and resource related issues, stemming from inappropriate testing expectations and an inability to ‘see’ through the accountability and performance related agenda that perpetuates the problem. You cannot determine ‘success’ of a school internally, without placing it in the external economic and political context that it operates within. Unfortunately the way these schools are likely to improve is to find a way to attract middle-class students who have strong English skills until the school is oversubscribed, and thus enabling it to improve on the measures we currently expect of mainstream schooling.

Current testing expectations are inappropriate and are hi-jacking the agendas of many schools

Or we look at things differently and revisit the outcomes and testing model of mainstream education, recognise the values we want to see in education – young people having a sense of agency; a sense of purpose and goals, with the skills and talents to action those goals, building a strong self identity. Until we change the way we hold ourselves accountable in education, we will never change the outcomes that leave too many young people marginalised and disadvantaged – with ‘bad’ schools, ‘bad’ teachers, ‘bad’ parents held up as the scapegoat.

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