Civitas

Not surprisingly the report says that parental satisfaction is strongly related to how effective schools are. But, the report then goes on to say that particularly at primary level, a certain ‘loyalty’ means that parents are less critical of schools than they might be. According to Ofsted’s theory, the fact that this loyalty is more pronounced in primary schools explains why parental dissatisfaction is greater at secondary level.

However, it quite possibly isn’t loyalty that lies behind positive parental response – rather a different notion on what makes for an ‘effective’ school. To Ofsted what counts as good education is very tightly defined according to the Dfes’s criteria: a sound inspection judgement and a good set of test scores. The report ignores the possibility that parents, who actually know considerably more about what is going on in schools (including the fact that the school is unrecognisable during inspection), may take a broader or simply different view of what makes for an effective school. And in fact Ofsted suggests this itself to an extent by admitting that: ‘…this (greater parental satisfaction) could reflect…beliefs that broader aspects of education, such as social development, are more important at primary level.’

But what is particularly irritating about Ofsted’s somewhat patronising loyalty theory is the background to the data it has used in order to draw this conclusion. The findings on parental satisfaction come from questionnaires which are now sent to parents during a school’s Ofsted inspection. Ofsted has made much of this ‘pioneering championing of parent power’ that is the rather bland survey. Yet the parental survey turns out to be an unfunded afterthought, pushed through at the eleventh hour by Lord Adonis, as the 2005 Bill went through Parliament in April. Consequently, this tokenistic nod towards ‘parent power’ has not been budgeted for by the regional inspection providers – no time and money has been allocated for any analysis of the findings. The surveys are collected and then more or less ignored.
This sends a rather different message to that being espoused in the new Education Bill – or as Kelly likes to call it, the ‘Parent’s Bill’.