Credit: Phil Meech for UCL IOE.

John Jerrim, Sam Sims and Christian Bokhove

This is the final post in a five part series on Ofsted inspections. Jump to: previous.

We have published a new academic paper investigating how Ofsted inspection outcomes vary across inspectors with different characteristics. This has been supported by the Nuffield Foundation and uses data we have pulled together on approximately 30,000 school inspections conducted between September 2011 and August 2019.

You can read a full version of our academic working paper along with our responses to some FAQs about the research.

This final blog in the series looks at the relationship between lead inspector characteristics and short inspection outcomes of primary schools. (more…)

Credit: Phil Meech for UCL IOE.

John Jerrim, Sam Sims and Christian Bokhove

This is the fourth post in a five part series on Ofsted inspections. Jump to: previous and next.

We have published a new academic paper investigating how Ofsted inspection outcomes vary across inspectors with different characteristics. This has been supported by the Nuffield Foundation and uses data we have pulled together on approximately 30,000 school inspections conducted between September 2011 and August 2019.

You can read a full version of our academic working paper along with our responses to some FAQs about the research.

This fourth blog in the series provides an illustrative example of how inspection outcomes differ across two lead inspectors with very different characteristics. (more…)

John Jerrim, Sam Sims and Christian Bokhove

This is the third in a five part series on Ofsted inspections. Jump to: previous and next.

We have published a new academic paper investigating how Ofsted inspection outcomes vary across inspectors with different characteristics. This has been supported by the Nuffield Foundation and uses data we have pulled together on approximately 30,000 school inspections conducted between September 2011 and August 2019.

You can read a full version of our academic working paper along with our responses to some FAQs about the research.

This third blog in the series explores how Ofsted inspection judgements are related to inspection team size. (more…)

John Jerrim, Sam Sims and Christian Bokhove

This blog is the second in a five-part series on Ofsted inspections. Jump to: previous and next.

We have published a new academic paper investigating how Ofsted inspection outcomes vary across inspectors with different characteristics. This has been supported by the Nuffield Foundation and uses data we have pulled together on approximately 30,000 school inspections conducted between September 2011 and August 2019.

You can read a full version of our academic working paper along with our responses to some FAQs about the research.

This second blog in the series explores differences between inspectors who hold different contractual relationships with Ofsted – Her Majesty’s Inspectors (HMI) and Ofsted Inspectors (OI). (more…)

Credit: Phil Meech for IOE.

John Jerrim, Sam Sims and Christian Bokhove.

This post is the first in a five part series on Ofsted inspections. Jump to: next.

We have published a new academic paper investigating how Ofsted inspection outcomes vary across inspectors with different characteristics. This has been supported by the Nuffield Foundation and uses data we have pulled together on approximately 30,000 school inspections conducted between September 2011 and August 2019.

You can read a full version of our academic working paper along with our responses to some FAQs about the research.

This first blog in our series focuses on differences between male and female inspectors. (more…)

CICADA Stories, Bloomsbury Theatre

Carol Rivas, Amanda Moore, Kusha Anand, Alison Wu and Ozan Aksoy. This post is adapted from a blog for Biomed Central.

Even before the pandemic, many people with chronic conditions or disabilities, particularly those from minoritised ethnic groups, faced obstacles in accessing or utilising networks of support, health and social care. During the pandemic, some of these obstacles increased disproportionately, and widened the inequalities gap.

Now, during Disability History Month (16 November to 16 December), it is instructive to consider the interplay of different intersecting factors that compromise good health outcomes when considering inequalities. For example, chronic conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease increase vulnerability to COVID-19 and are disproportionately (more…)

School leadership took on new importance

This blog is the 11th in a series of 12 exploring each decade in IOE’s history in the context of the education and society of the times. Find out more about our 120th anniversary celebrations on our website, and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn to keep up with everything that’s happening. 

David Godfrey. 

IOE’s influence grew during the first decade of the twenty-first century, under the directorship of Professor Geoff Whitty (2000-10). The Institute was well-placed to benefit from the ruling New Labour government’s (1997-2010) interest in education. Ministers supported the need for educational research to inform policy and practice and relationships with policy-makers were actively cultivated. While relations with the Coalition Government (2010-15) were less smooth, the Institute sustained good levels of funding and activity.

IOE also expanded on the world stage during this period, as the post-Cold War impetus for globalisation and collaboration took hold. The Institute fared well in newly-developed national and international league tables. ‘In both research and teaching, the Institute gained prestige from these metrics and established many new research centres that responded to the renewed (more…)

Bernardita Munoz-Chereau, Jo Hutchinson and  Melanie Ehren. 

Finding ways to solve the stubborn underperformance of around 580 schools in England is high on the government’s agenda. The Schools White Paper ‘Opportunity for All: Strong schools with great teachers for your child’ sets out the government’s plans over the coming years, with strategies to address schools with successive ‘requires improvement’ (RI) grades.

Yet since 2017 Ofsted has focused on a group of schools judged as ‘requires improvement’, ‘satisfactory’ or ‘inadequate’ in every inspection over more than a decade. Subsequently, Ofsted conducted qualitative case studies of 10 ‘stuck’ and 10 ‘unstuck’ schools. ‘Fight or flight? How ‘‘Stuck’’ schools are overcoming isolation’ reports that ‘stuck’ schools need more targeted assistance, following more thorough and detailed inspections that are not tied to overall grades .

Our two-year mixed-methods research project studying ‘Stuck’ schools’, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, concluded that (more…)

JESHOOTS-com / Pixabay

Norbert Pachler and Elspeth Broady.

During 2021 and 2022, OFSTED has published a number of curriculum research reviews seemingly with the aim of identifying factors contributing to high quality school curricula and how subjects can best be taught with the help of research findings.

Whilst attempts to leverage research findings to underpin, inform and improve subject pedagogy must be viewed as laudable and desirable, the curriculum research reviews raise a number of important questions and issues, certainly if the recent furore over the maths review is anything to go by (see e.g. Schools Week but see also the journal Routes for a discussion of the review for geography). While controversy is seemingly more intense in some subjects than others, common problematic features emerge from the reviews in general: (more…)

 

Dominic Wyse and Alice Bradbury.

Arguments about the best way to teach children to read can be intense – they’ve even been described as “the reading wars”. In England, as in many other countries, much of the debate has been over the use of phonics, which helps children understand how sounds – “phonemes” – are represented by letters.

The government requires teachers to use a particular type of phonics teaching called “synthetic phonics”, and the emphasis on this technique has become overwhelming in English primary schools.

Supporters of synthetic phonics teaching have argued that teaching of phonemes and letters should be first and foremost. On the other side have been supporters of whole language instruction, who think that reading whole texts – books for example – should come first and foremost.

Our new research shows that synthetic phonics alone is not the best way to teach children to read. We found that a more (more…)