Ofsted admits complaint about school's prior knowledge of inspection

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/sep/09/ofsted-complaint-school-off-inspection-teachers

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Ofsted: we did get school visit complaint

Ofsted has been forced to admit it was warned last year that a school now at the centre of an investigation appeared to know in advance that inspectors were about to visit.

In May 2013, the inspectorate received an official complaint from a parent, Ian Harris, that his daughter, then a year 10 pupil at Ormiston Victory academy in Norwich, had been told by a teacher that Ofsted were expected the next week. By law, schools are only given half a day's notice. 

Ormiston Victory was one of three schools, all run at the time by the "superhead" Rachel de Souza, which, the Observer revealed, had known of their inspections in 2013 and 2014 days or weeks in advance. Ofsted said at the time that it had not received any complaints about any of the inspections.

Ormiston Victory's inspection took place on 14 and 15 May 2013. On 16 May, Harris wrote to Ofsted to complain, saying: "My daughter was told by a teaching member of staff at the school on Thursday 9 May that an Ofsted inspection was very likely/expected the following week. 

"There was an opportunity for changes to be made and pupils to be 'coached' before the visit, which I believe took place, although I cannot say to what degree."

Ofsted now admits: "Having conducted a broader check of our systems we have established one complaint about one of the schools, received from a parent, claiming that … his daughter had been told by teachers that an inspection was due.

"Our position was to explain … that a school would have a general idea when it was due."

Harris says the response was a "brush off". He says his daughter remembers being taken out of an IT lesson for a year-group assembly to explain that an Ofsted visit was anticipated. "This seemed … to suggest more than a vague knowledge of when an inspection is expected," says Harris.

Last month, the Eastern Daily Press reported stories about both a teacher and a pupil saying the school knew in advance.

Last month, Ofsted ordered an investigation into inspections at the three schools and the security of its inspection schedules. De Souza, who left Ormiston Victory a year ago, has not commented. Ormiston Academies Trust, which runs Ormiston Victory, has said it had no prior knowledge of the inspection.

More fears over inspection tipoffs

Ofsted might do well to consider the case of another school, again part of a major academy chain, where a mother and father also sought reassurance last year that it had not been tipped off in advance about its inspection.

The parents, who asked not to be named, wrote to the lead inspector, via the inspection company Tribal, in November. They were concerned after being told, correctly, on Monday 25 November that the school was to be inspected the following Thursday and Friday. The couple told the inspector that the information appeared to have come from a teacher telling pupils in advance. There was no response to their letter, they say. Inspectors judged the school to be "good".

Tribal said: "[We have] always adhered to Ofsted's guidance on not providing any advance warning to schools that they are due to be inspected.

"As part of their inspections, Tribal lead inspectors will often receive a high volume of parent letters at each school. These are used to help inform the individual inspection and each parental concern raised is considered. However due to this high volume, lead inspectors do not respond to each individual letter as a matter of course."

Student's exam board rant goes viral

An A-level student's angry open letter of complaint to the exam board OCR, after a re-grade saw his mark on an English literature paper jump 33%, has, as they say, "gone viral", with nearly 20,000 "likes" on Facebook .

Jack Lane's letter describes how he was given a mark of 63 for his A2 paper on drama and pre-1800 poetry. When his school challenged the result, a senior examiner revised the mark to 84, pushing his overall grade up from a B to an A. "An increase of 21 marks is outrageous," writes Lane. "The disparity between the first and second grading highlights an enormous issue for OCR. Why should I have to request and pay for a re-mark to gain the grade I deserve? If it requires an 'experienced senior examiner' to mark my exam accurately, then perhaps there need to be some questions raised about who marks the papers initially.

"How many more students in the country have been given incorrect grades as a result of OCR's negligence?" he bristled.

The letter received some enthusiastic comments on Facebook. "If any exam board screwed me over like this I'd be livid," wrote a student at Bath Spa University. Another comment said: "I'm so glad someone has finally stood up to the exam boards."

An OCR spokesman says: "We have offered our deepest apologies to Jack for the incorrect result, for which an individual examiner was at fault. Fortunately, Jack's experience is a rare one."

Lord Nash: should he write to himself?

In July we alerted readers that the position of Lord Nash, the academies minister, in the governance of schools run by the academy chain which he chairs seemed to put him at odds with recommendations of the DfE's own report into Birmingham's "Trojan horse" affair.

The Clarke report into the affair recommended that "no single individual has undue influence over a number of schools", mentioning that no one should be a governor at more than two schools – yet Lord Nash chairs his Future academies chain and sits on the governing bodies of all four of its schools.

Now questions have been raised as to whether Future is in breach of its articles of association – the legal rules setting out how it should operate.

John Fowler, a local government expert who was a governor of a primary school taken over by Future in 2013, has written to Nash with 20 questions relating to the articles. One section says that it is not clear whether the trust has a parent on its overarching board of directors, as its articles say it should. Another notes that its directors should perform "largely strategic", rather than day-to-day management, roles at its schools.

Fowler points out that Nash's wife, Caroline, a Future director, runs Future's Curriculum Centre and that Future's website says: "[Lady Nash] has been responsible for the introduction and development of the history specialism at [Future's flagship school] Pimlico academy." Fowler writes: "This sounds more than a largely strategic role."

In June, Nash wrote to the former chair of an academy trust caught up in the "Trojan horse" affair, mentioning what he said was its non-compliance with its articles of association. Does he now need to write to himself?

The DfE said Fowler's letter was a matter for the trust. The Future trust did not respond to requests for comment.