The investigations into the Trojan Horse affair, where a group of schools in Birmingham were accused of failing to protect children from extremism, has provoked a number of criticisms centred on the way…
The question about how to inspect UK schools has become a live political issue in recent months. As the fallout from the Trojan Horse affair over the protection of children from religious extremism in…
Ofsted’s recent report into competitive sport in schools – provocatively entitled Going the Extra Mile – criticises state schools for not doing enough to develop sporting talent. A significant number of…
The process of reform in any complex organisation is difficult, uneven and subject to being blown off course by events. In two recent articles in the Conversation I have drawn attention to the cultural…
The long-awaited inspection reports on 21 schools in Birmingham accused of involvement in the “Trojan Horse” affair over alleged Islamic extremism, were released on June 9 to a hungry media. The affair…
Allegations of an “Islamist” plot to infiltrate and take over schools in Birmingham at the centre of Operation Trojan Horse are looking increasingly thin. But they have caused a very public row between…
The English schools inspectorate Ofsted has announced it will be terminating contracts with its three private inspection services providers from September 2015 and will be employing school inspectors in-house…
Singing, dancing, touchy-feely school governors are in the firing line. A new website designed to attract and inspire more school governors was launched on May 15 by Michael Gove, the secretary of state…
Schools inspectorate Ofsted has once again been in the limelight with the suggestion on May 10 that it could be tasked with the inspection of all independent schools. The idea of Ofsted inspecting private…
The recent furore around the so-called Trojan Horse plot, which has seen 25 Birmingham schools being investigated over fears of a takeover by radical Muslims, raises wider issues for the already beleaguered…
We are often told that behaviour is not really a problem in the vast majority of English schools. In 2012, the government reported that classroom behaviour was “at least satisfactory” in 99.7% of schools…
Every few months a story appears about the declining speech and language skills of children arriving in primary school. The epithet “the daily grunt” was invented by one newspaper to capture the lack of…
There has been constant criticism levelled against Ofsted, England’s schools inspectorate, since its inception in 1992, most recently in a report from the think-tank Policy Exchange. Almost everyone in…
England’s 164 state grammar schools form a distinctive but controversial part of the nation’s education system. These schools are distinctive in terms of their high levels of performance – one consequence…
It is not very often that an education story is the lead item on the BBC’s Today programme, but the apparent sacking of Baroness Sally Morgan as chair of schools inspectorate Ofsted and comments by its…