What makes a good school?

Ouch! Dr Perryman told us what she didn't like but the only way she could characterise a good school was whether it made the children happy. But was she doing any more than airing her prejudices?

I mean there are good schools and there are some very, very bad schools. Surely if you are researching into 'what makes a good school?' you need to try your best to find factors which are common to the good schools and not to the bad schools so that you can advise bad schools on how to get better. And to simply blame the entire variation of schools on socio-economic circumstances is manifestly not true. Otherwise a bad school could never ever improve and we know that they do. And we know that schools with identical SECs can be better or worse.

I was very disappointed in these videos. The attack on Ofsted was predictable but it involved suggesting that Ofsted do not use value added data, only raw scores, when their inspection handbook requires inspectors to take account of the starting point of students. It also brought out the much-repeated and never-evidenced notion that Ofsted teams 'may' have an agenda.

I've been on Ofsted inspections. Yes, the data about the school is important. It is, after all, a measure of the school. But the two days of observation is always used to challenge the data.