Responding to today’s report by Her
Majesty’s Chief Inspector, Stephen Rollett, curriculum and
inspections specialist at the Association of School and College
Leaders, said:
“Amanda Spielman is right to say that some young people have the
deck stacked against them, but we wish she would acknowledge that
the totally inadequate level of funding in schools and local
support services is undermining efforts to improve their life
chances.”
SEN support
“Schools are working tirelessly to provide the most vulnerable
children in our society with the education they need and deserve
in the face of significant budget cuts as well as the erosion of
local services for families and children. These funding pressures
make it more difficult to give children the individual support
which is so important in helping them to overcome learning
challenges. And it means that schools are less able to put in
place the early intervention which prevents challenging behaviour
escalating to the point of an exclusion. Schools are doing their
very best for children with special educational needs but are
being expected to do more with less.”
Stuck schools
“These schools are often badly affected by nationwide teacher
shortages making it extremely difficult for them to secure
sustained improvement. They also suffer from the impact of an
accountability system in which the dice are loaded against them.
School performance measures and Ofsted inspections are themselves
part of the problem. They stigmatise schools which makes
recruitment even more difficult, and leadership a precarious
business. Part of the solution needs to be a new and less severe
approach to accountability.”
Off-rolling
“The vast majority of school leaders deplore off-rolling and will
welcome any action to crackdown on this unacceptable practice. It
is important, however, that data on high levels of pupil movement
is used as the starting point to a conversation and that
inspectors don’t go into schools with a pre-conceived notion. We
are reassured by the approach outlined in Ofsted’s annual report
but we will need to see how this works in practice.”
