Previous Ofsted rulings on schools to now stand, even after academisation
New sponsor-led academies will carry their previous Ofsted grading even after conversion until they are inspected, in a change to current practice.
Ofsted published guidance on changes to the methodology it uses in reporting school inspection grades.
Previously, Ofsted’s datasets showed no data for some schools which had converted to academy status and had not yet been inspected in their new form. In the future, the Inspectorate will list the grade a school received previously which it will keep until the school is reinspected.
Under the old methodology the inspection outcomes of predecessor schools were only included for schools that kept the same LAESTAB number when they became the new school, but not for schools that had a new LAESTAB. This generally meant academy converters kept their inspection histories but sponsor-led academies did not.
Previously, latest inspection outcomes were missing for around 1,000 schools. Following the methodology change the latest inspection outcomes of 702 schools have been added into. This means that 3% more schools now have a latest inspection outcome reported, both in the underlying dataset and in all associated analysis.
The first statistics to incorporate the change are the State-funded schools inspections and outcomes as at 31 March 2018 It contains a new column “Does the latest full inspection relate to the URN of the current school?” to show where it has been applied.
SCHOOLS NorthEast analysis of the aforementioned statistics shows little change in the distribution of grades across schools in the North East under the new methodology:
