City below national average for Ofsted ratings

“Like I said, harrystotle, compare like with like. Of course Nottingham does badly in GCSE results, because so many of its schools have inner-city catchments. Compare like with like and you find. for example, that students in Nottingham who are entitled to free school meals have better GCSE results than those outside the City in Nottinghamshire schools.

There is certainly an interesting discussion to be had about why some inner city areas in London do significantly better by the same metric, and presumably lessons to be learned for Nottingham, but unfortunately you are not interested in having that discussion because you are too busy pounding out your irrational hatred for the City on your keyboard.”

“"It's a good thing to exercise quite a bit of caution when looking at anything the OFSTED heirachy says"

rdc is correct - the Ofsted "ratings" are pretty worthless. The GCSE league table shows that Nottingham's results are third from bottom nationally and continue to shame the City Council. That is the statistic that matters to parents.

Far from bad mouthing the city The Post has continually highlighted the misleading figures printed in The Nottingham Arrow which claimed that 72% of city pupils had achieved grades A to C when in reality the figure was 44% and that even this figure was massively inflated by Nottingham's fee paying schools which are fortunate to be free of Loxley House incompetence.”

“It's a good thing to exercise quite a bit of caution when looking at anything the OFSTED heirachy says... there are so many question marks hanging over OFSTED in terms of its basic competence and fitness for purpose and successive chief inspectors' (not least the current incumbent, Sir Michael Wilshaw) have been only too willing to be used as political pawns by ministers to bash schools and their teachers. The first thing OFSTED needs to do is ensure that it gets its own house in order. If it can', then it should be replaced. Teachers and parents are entitled to expect that the inspection service should be up to its job.


It's a funny kind of logic that you undermine local councils and take their powers away - and then blame them when things go wrong. None of the teachers I know believe that there is any room for complacency and it's also true that Councillors Collins and Mellen don't exactly help themselves at times with some of their antics in full glare of the media. We shouldn't allow ministers or OFSTED though to use the shortcomings of one or two local individuals as an excuse to trash the whole system.”

“Infact I went to the ofsted website and downloaded the actuAl report. At the end of the thirty five page document that was published today, there was a full list of local authorities. Nottingham Citty were at 71% percent.

How can it be that in ten minutes I can locate the actual figures as published by Ofsted, rather than spurious out of date figures that suit the agenda of the post?

Www.ofsted.gov.uk”

“Bizarre that on the skynews website it has the full list which gives;
- nottinghamshire 72 %
- nottingham city 71 %

If these figures are correct then Nottingham City actually outperforms national by 1%. I assume the Evening Post have got their figures correct!?!

In either case the variation from average is so minor that it is barely worth mentioning. However, the Evening Post always seems to want to do down schools in the city.

If the Evening Post have got their figures wrong then I hope they correct their story.”

“Thanks‭ ‬FormerlyW for providing such useful background information.‭ ‬It is a great‭ pity that the Post is as always unable to do such. I am sure that the paper would start to once again attract readers if it provided this kind of background information instead of just feeding its usual crowd with a daily diet of nonsense. It is so off putting for most people. I just hope the paper that it is printed on is recyclable.”

“Not entirely impossible: the vast majority of people in the World have more than the average number of legs, for example.

But I take your point -- I always think the same thing when looking at the film reviews in the Radio Times, where the lowest grade any seems to get is "average."”

“Assuming 'good' is above 'average' how can the national average be 70% above 'average', if you get my drift?”

“(By the way, you can see for yourself at http://tinyurl.com/c3xwbjg)”

“Nice to see the Post doing its usual best to badmouth the City with its headlines, to appeal to its dwindling pool of self-loathing readers. Of course Nottingham is below the national average in Ofsted ratings: it is a relatively poor inner-city authority with a high fraction of pupils from deprived backgrounds, which you would expect to perform less well than the national average.

Now how about trying a rather more balanced approach, comparing like-with-like across the region? In terms of those being educated whose background is described as "deprived," we have

Nottingham: 50% Outstanding; 50% good; 0% satisfactory; 0% inadequate
Derby: 20% Outstanding; 0% good; 60% satisfactory; 20% inadequate
Leicester: 25% Outstanding; 63% good; 29% satisfactory; 13% inadequate
Birmingham: 21% Outstanding; 43% good; 36% satisfactory; 0% inadequate
Coventry: 17% Outstanding; 67% good; 17% satisfactory; 0% inadequate
Stoke: 0% Outstanding; 40% good; 40% satisfactory; 20% inadequate

So how about "Nottingham Significantly Outperforms Other Midlands Cities with Schools for the Most Challenging to Educate"?”