The Pointer School (LS)
STEPHEN MCKERNAN
Inspection Myth Busters I’m non-selective, so I can only be Good at academic achievement. FALSE! Non-selective schools can be Excellent. The issue of non-selective schools thinking that they can only meet the Good descriptor is something that has been concerning us in the ISA Inspections Committee for some time. This is not accurate and has been confirmed to be the case by ISI. There are many examples of non-selective schools achieving Excellent in academic achievement, including my own school. All schools whether selective or not can achieve Excellent in Academic Achievement as often as they do for Personal Development. It is not good enough that non-selective schools think it is to be expected that they can easily achieve Excellent at Personal Development but not in Academic Achievement. The onus of course is always on you as a School to demonstrate the progress of all pupils’ groups given their starting points, along with demonstrating the standards your pupils achieve in standardised tests and extra-curricular areas. It’s not up to the inspectorate to magically find the excellence in a short visit that covers so many areas – the responsibility is on the School to show why you are excellent. Do you and your staff have an ‘excellent’ handle on your pupil data and can you easily show how you meet Excellent according to the descriptors? Be prepared to demonstrate your pupils’ successes (get this prepared well in advance of the inspection and as an ongoing culture within the school) and be more up front about the pupils’/ school’s achievements. There is no place for humility when it
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comes to demonstrating to an inspection team why you are Excellent. Show the inspection team how well you support pupils for their next transition point and explain how the destinations your pupils move on to show your school to be Excellent in terms of how you have prepared them for the next stage of their educational journey. Finally, and most importantly, have you got the stories to share of how you have transformed the achievements of pupils who came to you very far behind and are now outperforming even when compared with your outrageously ambitious expectations. That would be Excellent!
I should aim for Good so to seem humble and the inspectors will upgrade me. FALSE! Why would an inspection team upgrade you to Excellent if you only considered yourself Good? Humility as mentioned before, is an important and valued trait but not when you are communicating the Excellent progress your pupils are making along with defending the very hard work of your staff over a continuous period of time. You are the staff representative to the inspection team – don’t let them down! If you declare yourself to be Good, then inspectors will surely never aim to find Excellent evidence. Yes, there may be the very odd occasion when they upgrade you – but don’t hold your breath! Again, get an intimate knowledge of the evidence base required to show you are Excellent. Start to find out where the gaps are that keeps you at Good and as a team, have it as a weekly standing item – finding and
