Today, after chatting to a number of friends with small pre-school age children I thought I'd give my advise and opinion on the best way to pick a Primary school for your children.
Its not often that I will publicly slate something or somewhere, I usually try and be open-minded to give everything the best chance, but in this instance I am happy to openly display my contempt for OFSTED and explain why their reports should hold very little value to your choice of schooling.
In the region where I live, there are a number of Primary schools, at least 9 in the space of two small towns that I can think of. Of these 9 schools, 8 of them are really, really very good. The 9th one possibly is good, and i've heard nice things about the teaching staff, but no one that I know has ever put it down as a choice for their child.
So lets retrace our steps a little bit. A couple of years ago I went through the same process myself of choosing a school. I found it all very easy, because I live about 10 yards from the school I chose for my daughter and I knew I liked it before I moved into my house! But going through the process, you would normally look for the following:
1. How far away is the school from my home?
2. How good is the OFSTED report?
3. what are the other children like?
Not a bad process but I would, in the light of day now REMOVE point number two, and this is why....
OFSTED is a bully. OFSTED knows nothing about teaching and OFSTED has predefined ideas of how it will grade a school before its set foot onto the premises.
The role of OFSTED is supposed to grade schools as to their teaching methods, whether they fit in with government rules and how well in general the children are developing. However, there are a number of schools around the country, where the children are not developing as per their peers, and this is down to any number of reason from style of teaching, quality of teachers, background of children (parents make quite a difference to how a child learns), religion, nationality etc.
In the case of the last two possible reasons - religion and nationality, we run the risk as a country, that if we slate these schools and mark them lower than neighbouring schools, we will be called racists. I am no way racist, and talking about race and religion does not make me racist, but it cannot be overlooked that a school in England, where none of the children's first language is English, is not going to do as well against the school guidelines as a school where children speak English at home. Fact! There are state schools in England that have no English children, there are state schools of various religious background where teachers have different views to the government, and put their views before the government views when teaching the children.
So that we don't upset our peers, a number of good state schools outside of the above categories have been marked down so that the other schools don't look quite so bad.
This in turn is a direct reflection on the good teachers at these schools, who work so hard to educate our children, love teaching our children and watching them develop and progress, but are bullied into a state of emotional stress, thus of course affecting their work, purely based on a pre-defined decision. This is PC at its worst, whereby genuinely good, honest staff are being penalised for no reason.
I'm not only picking on religious and schools with English being the minority. Back to the 9th school in my area. Until very recently, 8 of the 9 schools were single form entry. 30 children per year. Two years ago, one good performing school was told they HAD to increase their entry for just one year to 60 children. They've not been asked to do this again.
Last year, the school that no one puts down on their choice of schools received planning permission for building works to extend the school massively, in order to accommodate a 2nd form entry every year going forward. This started in 2013. "But" I hear you say, "You said no one wants to go there!"
Now, I don't want to sound like Katie Hopkins (and I can't believe I've just given her some publication on my own blog!), and I'm not at all a snob in the slightest, but my reason, and from what I can tell the reason for a lot of friends for not choosing this school as an option was simple. I looked at the school at pick up, and thought, do I want my children spending the next 7 years with children who's mothers stand outside the school, fag hanging out of their mouths, language that I wouldn't even use at a football match shouting across the street, and the dress sense of a couch potato who hasn't quite managed to get up to get washed and dressed yet. Call me what you like but I spend a lot of time teaching my kids right from wrong, and however much I like to swear, I certainly save that for the office and the car when I'm on my own. I groom my children as best I can (yes, my best clothes DO still come from Tesco though) and I also make them eat fruit and veg. I want them to continue with this and I don't want them to continually ask me why they have to eat fruit when others around them are only eating chocolate or KFC. I don't want to hear swearing from their little innocent mouths and if being completely honest, I don't want them to start smoking... EVER. Unfortunately, the impression I got from this 9th school was that. I might be wrong, and I know that I am being very generic and I'm sure there are a number of fantastic families at this school, whose children and lovely and polite and well-behaved. But in this case I'd rather be in the majority. In a school where parents are less interested in their children's education, you do of course run a greater risk of a problem with bullying Yes, it happens everywhere, but in a school where parents know what is going on, and are actively interested in their kids, this is more likely to be nipped in the bud before it gets too bad.
So how does the government persuade parents to put this school down as their choice? OFSTED reports. This school, at its last report (2012) got Satisfactory across the board. The grading has now been changed, so that what previously was Satisfactory is now "Requires Improvement". If you are not sure of a school and how it is operating, and therefore relying on OFSTED to give you this vital information, Satisfactory seems much more positive than requires improvement doesn't it? If I were to choose a school only on paper, then I would certainly go for this option, and with a brand new school building, its got to be popular to require the extra space? Right? so so SO very wrong.
So as I mentioned earlier, when you are putting your three or four choices down for your children's primary school, look at the area around you, and then go for a walk between 3pm and 3.30pm and see if you like the look of the other mothers, see what the language is like, and most importantly, see if the children are smiling.
One last note on the mothers thing before I move on to my cake of the day - you will be spending 7 years with these other women. Get a good bunch and you stand to have a fabulous social life with them too, its not just the children who make friends at school, its us Mums too (and Dads lets not forget!).
Ok, so today's cake was a birthday cake for my American boss who is missing little Sam, his Bassett Hound. So I made him a chocolate banana nut tray bake, and tried to recreate Sam on it! What do you think?
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