At the Schools and Academies Show 2024 last week, Ofsted led a presentation on the future of school inspections and reporting. Part of this presentation was an announcement that a new style of “report card” for schools was being suggested, making it easier for parents to understand a school’s strengths and weaknesses, and to easily compare schools in an area.
As reported by the BBC, the new school report cards are being piloted in Camden, designed to be viewed on mobile and tablet devices.
A new app-style report card
The new school report cards do away with the one-word Ofsted inspection judgements, instead replacing them with an easy to digest summary of how a school operates.
The cards system allows parents to search the area around them for schools and then browse a site where they can explore what the schools are like, with photos, text and data outlining the school’s performance.
A former head of Ofsted told the BBC that the pilot should help ministers think about what parents’ need from Ofsted’s national changes.
What the report card looks like
The beginning of the report card opens with “Our school in 100 words”, a place for a school to highlight their own values and strengths. This leads into a section called “Our school in 10 photos”, showing off the school’s facilities and activities.
A school’s full Ofsted report is then made available to read after this opening section.
Included in this new style of report card are statistics not currently found in Ofsted reports, such as GCSE results, with a comparison to both local and national averages. Also included is a school’s attendance data.
A school also has to demonstrate its approach to learning, wellbeing, anti-bullying, and SEND support policies.
All of this information is then submitted for checking before it is uploaded in a standardised template, allowing parents to easily compare schools.
What we think of the new system
As parents ourselves, we believe the new report card system is a step in the right direction for making Ofsted reports more “parent friendly”. By making these reports easier to understand, as well as downloadable and readable on mobile devices, it enables parents to compare schools in their area and make an informed decision on where their child learns.
It’ll be interesting to see how much of the Camden pilot scheme is implemented into any future changes to Ofsted inspections. We’ll be following the changes closely to see how these will affect the schools and academies we work with.
