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OFSTED’S report – politicalbetting.com
OFSTED’S report – politicalbetting.com
Today marks the last day in office de facto of Amanda Spielman, who has been the longest serving Chief Inspector of Schools since Ofsted’s foundation in 1992. She is to be replaced by Sir Martin Oliver, who has a formidable in tray to cope with. Let us consider the problems that face him:
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Private schools are the best.
The money we spend on the DfE give it to parents as vouchers so they can send their sprogs to the best schools.
End the postcode lottery.
Good piece from ‘the doctor’.
Or it will end in tiers.
Could do better
Only joking!
Why is this, given the apparent shambles in English regulation over the last decade? I think that the answer is that, for all its faults, the English system does actually try to do something about failing schools whilst in Scotland and Wales they are allowed to carry on, failing generation after generation of children.
Question: if not Ofsted, what? Back to Local Authority Inspectors?
We could probably learn from those countries still above us in the world rankings.
We should also encourage and enable more parents to drive their kids to school too. End the postcode lottery of having to go to crap schools that are in walking distance, if a better school is a drive away, then choose that one instead.
To say nothing on the effect on roads, rush-hour, the environment, children's health,...
It's already bad enough with the middle-class yummy-mummies in their 4x4 driving from one end of the village to save Johnny having to walk to school at the other end.
Rant over. You're welcome.
Not every parents value education and some will see education as glorified childcare and dump their sprogs in the closest or most convenient school available to them.
But many good parents will pay significant attention to which school they want to go to, and many good parents will be willing quite rightly to drive their kids to a better school than one they can walk to - something many in society dislike and some want to discourage, rather than encourage and reward.
JANUARY THE FUCKING 8TH
No wonder this country is in the khazi
By January 8th it will be too late and I'll be by a pool in the tropics
GET BACK TO FUCKING WORK
Yes people do need to go to work, but most schools in my experience offer before and after school clubs. I drive my kids and drop them off at club if I can't drop them off at the school gate.
As for those yummy-mummies driving their kids to school - good on them! They should be praised for taking an interest in their kids education. 👏👏👏
That might be more productive? 🤔
The Gazette are sending me abroad to review stuff
On the previous thread I idly wondered what developments might aid Sunak in 2024. This analysis from the Graun doesn't provide much hope.
Look at the average mortgage costs chart in particular. Sunak's f*cked.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/29/five-charts-explaining-the-uks-economic-prospects-in-2024
So time for Rishi to crack on with the election at 2 May, no point waiting til Oct
But most people are on holiday at the moment. Its very productive to take holiday leave between Christmas and New Year as next to nothing happens now, and if everyone you're corresponding with is away you're more productive taking now as a time to be away too.
If you get Bank Holidays off its a productive use of your holiday entitlement too as you can get a decent break with only a few days of leave used since there's three Bank Holidays over this period.
So tiny violin for you if people are corresponding with are on holiday during the holiday period. You should have planned for that and sent your emails sooner, or later, if they're important.
I'm off until 8th January too. Taken two weeks leave, Christmas Week and New Years week, so that means a return to work on the 8th. Perfectly reasonable.
I could walk my kids to the school next to my estate, but its not got a good reputation and I value my kids education more than I value the cost of fuel. So I drive much further to drive them into a better school (still a state school btw).
I have more respect for parents who value their children's education and drive them to school than I do parents who view education as no more than childcare and dump them without thinking about it at the nearest drop-off point.
A thought now from somebody who doesn't: What about replacing Ofsted with something simpler and stripped down?
It seems 'inspection' might have morphed into something too big for its own boots, self-regrading, too intrusive, too powerful, inflexible yet at the same time trying to do too much.
So what we do is establish a new inspection body with a new mandate. Stop trying to 'grade' schools in either absolute or relative terms. Just drop all that. Instead go into schools and specifically look for unacceptable things taking place there. If there are some, report this along with the school's plan to fix it. If there aren't, no further comment necessary.
Kind of similar to the Clean Report vs Qualified Report in Auditing.
You need a better job.
“If we hadn't had Keir Starmer putting up with Corbyn during all that nonsense…he would not have been elected."
@DannytheFink
asks Peter Mandelson if Keir Starmer was wrong to serve in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet.
Peter Mandelson is as usual, correct.
That's 16 days off, having only used 7 days of leave.
That's quite productive, not unproductive.
But the country’s performance is also likely overinflated.
Too few students from England took part in the study – meaning the results could be up to eight points too generous, as more higher-performing pupils took part
https://schoolsweek.co.uk/pisa-2022-rise-in-maths-but-warning-over-inflated-results/
And I don't despise anyone, just don't respect them.
Thank you.
* Not that it would; it would just mask those losses.
All is quiet. No one walks the streets. A torpor descends, sans distractions. You can actually get a lot of shit done, when everyone else is on hols
Ditto August
Which provides excellent cover against mistakes, until it gets out of hand. As it did in both cases.
As for what to do, flip knows. The current model has clearly run out of road, but we need to decide why we are inspecting schools. I like "food safety checks, not restaurant reviews" as a headline, but what does it actually look like?
Now you may say 'that's the market' but the consumers are not the ones choosing the product.
Anyhow, it's other people's kids so why should you care?
Fixed that for you. £456.89 + VAT
If the children of parents who don't give a damn end up going to shitty schools because their parents don't care, that's their parents fault, not my fault.
Why should I send my child to a shit school just to even it out?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4845786/Guy-Adams-investigates-Eton-exam-leaks.html
Hurrah for 35 holiday days a year plus stats but I can convert my extra hours worked into hols max 5 days.
So I can have 48 days holiday every year, a reward for working for a bank.
Clearly, they’re working over Twixmas.
I'm just trying to point out that driving your child to a better school miles away isn't an option for a lot of people.
Round this neck of the woods you choice of primary school is determined by where you live as the number of children wanting a space is greater than the spaces available - hence you get a choice of the school you are given with zero chance of an appeal working (because the other schools are full so an appeal can be automatically rejected)..
It may just be that those who can do, those who can't teach, and those who can't teach become inspectors.
We should remove as many barriers as possible that stand in the way of parents putting their children's education first. That's a terrible situation to be in and should be fixed.
We could fund that, I suppose, but it would be awfully expensive.
(One of the reasons that school choice doesn't really work is that good schools often don't want to expand. Partly because of physical limits, but also because many heads would rather run a smaller school really well in a hands on way than a larger one where they never leave their office.
Winchester College, to take a non random example, has 700 boys.
(To explain. Back in the day the article limit was around 800 words. But Cyclefree's articles started creeping up, eventually hitting the 1000-1200 word mark. This was noted and I coined the phrases "Cyclefree limit" (1200 words) and "The Usual Review" ("interesting, well-written, too long, nothing to do with betting"), Cyclefree then dialed it back, making her articles more punchy, although still with a tendency to spike up.
But this new one from Ydoethur weighs in at omigod over 1800 words, which is another step change. I propose the term "Ydoethur limit" (1800 words) for this, although "The Usual Review" still applies)
And it also works if schools can expand and contract, and new schools can open.
A fresh LA led approach. Something considered, consensual, and reflective is required.
Good header though. The retaining of Ofsted is the only point I disagree with.
Anyway, my argument is that having disastrous local election results as a backdrop makes the Tories' job of tightening the polls even harder than it would be anyway.
Driving kids to a better school doesn't deal with the shit a school, which still remains.
Either you invest time and money in improving the shit schools or you invest time and money in closing them and increasing capacity in the good schools (hoping the 'good' schools remain good over time).
Neither option comes without cost.
Progress works very often by trimming the bottom or worst performers and lifting your expectations.
Have a well-funded education system with choice that enables schools to expand and lets parents shop around for which school they want to take their kids to, and let standards be higher.
Todays mediocre school might cut the mustard today, but if other schools improve and it doesn't, then it might be considered the shit school in the future, in which case it would either have to shape up or lose its children.
Competition works.
And with that I'd better get back to it!
- No 10 won't give a stuff about the local election results, if held on the same day as a GE drubbing.
- The rest of the year is going to be poisoned anyway, but would be made even worse by an appallingly bad *GE* drubbing;
- I agree that bad LE results set (or play into) a bad narrative. But the problem is the underlying position, not the revelation of it;
- A LE disaster would put Sunak's leadership into the spotlight. But a GE disaster would do so even more. Why choose the latter over the former?
Why do today, that which can be postponed until tomorrow will rule the roost.
No May election. If it wasn't for Christmas, I'd say January 2025 was nailed on, but thanks to Christmas he'll leave it as late as he realistically can, probably October.
Hence the question comes down to at what point will Rishi be looked upon favourably and that points to a May election (after another employee NI cut in the budget) because there won't be money for more cuts and it's literally the only bribe that's going to work...
That's not May.
But the bigger part is whether Sunak would prefer to lose in May or October. Put like that, choosing December looks very rational.
And who knows, a black swan who has experience as a singing tutor for horses might show up.
hence with pupil numbers starting to fall, DfE are checking numbers to see if some schools can be shrunk / closed..
And then what happens, when that school declines, as it will, and all the others have closed? Or do you fund the others to the same capacity so when suddenly the other schools with about 10 pupils per class start doing really well as a result, everyone switches school?
(And with that, I really must get on...)
We used to have to take 3 days annual leave between Christmas and New Year, but with the ability to WFH we can now work if we have something billable to do. We can even work on the bank holidays and take them on other dates if we so wish. Again, only if you have something productive to work on.
Investing in education is not a waste of money.
Abolish the DFE, cut out nonsense, and give control of the increased purse-strings to parents.
Pensions: we should ditch the triple lock but I can't see any way to cut the cost in real terms (although we could of course recoup NI equivalent from wealthier pensioners.
Health: even more important than education imo. What is the point in having a better 'standard of living' if we are not healthy? Health is vastly more important than more 'stuff' imo. Medium term I would hope for some health premium from AI in prevention, diagnosis, and medication (though not in care). But we spend less on health as a nation than our peers, so we should not expect reductions in health costs as a %GDP going forward.
Welfare: We should strive to keep spend flat in real terms. Better health care can make a big difference here, especially investing more in mental healthcare services. But I can't see welfare spend come down in real terms.
We should imo tax unhealthy foods heavily to drive better health and welfare outcomes (e.g. causes and impact of diabetes.)
My conclusion is: taxes are going to need to rise further. No one seems to be prepared to face into that reality yet.
Does everyone in your urban area shop in the same supermarket? Get their clothes from the same store? Has all but one supermarket, clothing store and every other type of store shut down in the entire urban area leaving only one remaining?
People will make their choices and do what is right for them. What is right for me may not be right for my neighbour with different beliefs or otherwise, let alone what is right for someone across town.
I wonder whether the threat of external inspection is maybe quite effective at maintaining standards even if the inspections themselves are crap. Perhaps Ofsted doesn't need to be good, it just needs to exist?
A lot of the success of Inner London schools in the years around 2000 was down to gentrification and convincing parents that state schools were safe to use by relaunching them as a academies, creating a virtuous cycle.