Ofsted’s National Lead for Governance says no school website is “fully compliant”
Belita Scott, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector and National Lead for Governance, told North East Head Teachers and Governors that none of the schools she has inspected had “fully compliant websites”.
SCHOOLS NorthEast held the final of three sessions in a new series of termly Ofsted Briefings on Tuesday, where school leaders and governors heard from Senior HMI Joan Hewitt and HMI Belita Scott.
Ms Scott urged schools to make sure they include up-to-date Pupil Premium information on their websites, and not forget details about the impact the funding has had upon their pupils, as well as admission arrangements, and governor ratified safeguarding policies.
Ms Hewitt asked for the education sector in this area to have “courageous and difficult conversation” in order to find answers to the “geographical and age variations in performance”. Calling this a collective step forward, the Senior HMI added that the North East has a “strong sense of community” through SCHOOLS NorthEast, something she has not seen in other regions.
Focusing on effective governance, Ms Scott urged school governors to make sure they have good knowledge of their school’s assessment information, and not focus their reports only on the final year of Key Stages: “In governance reports we read a lot about the performance of pupils at the end of Key Stages; but what about the rest of the years?”.
Prompted by a member of the audience on why the number of inspections was much lower in the autumn term of 2015 compared to the same period in 2014, Ms Hewitt said Ofsted had focused on embedding the new Common Inspection Framework, but school leaders should expect the numbers to increase this term and rise faster during the next one.
SCHOOLS NorthEast and Ofsted will host three briefing sessions every term, at three locations across the region (North, Central and South venues) to help schools get easy access to information. The details of next term’s briefings will be made available shortly.