How to prepare for Ofsted inspections this term

How to prepare for Ofsted inspections this term

With the potential of an Ofsted inspection this term, we’ve been speaking to Arbor schools and MATs about how they’re feeling and preparing. Although Ofsted are calling this term’s inspections “interim visits” that will focus on supporting schools to welcome students back to full-time schooling, the inspections are still likely to cause upheaval for schools.

Ofsted may not be asking schools to do any formal preparation, however School Leaders will naturally want to present as much evidence as possible about how their students are doing this term.

To help you best prepare for Ofsted, we’ve gathered together some of the key questions they’ve been asking over the last few weeks, and how Arbor MIS can support you to prepare for each of them.

 

1. Attendance

• What impact has Covid-19 had on your attendance?
• How does your attendance compare to this time last year?
• Have you had any children not return to school?
• Are any children on reduced timetables?
• How have you encouraged pupils back into school?
• What have been the challenges?
• What have you put in place for those who need support?
• What adaptations have you made to your attendance policy?
• What adaptations have you made to the school day? What impact has this had?
• How has your Inclusion Officer supported you?
• Are you planning to spend any of the catch-up funding on supporting attendance?

 

Gather your evidence in Arbor… 

In Arbor, you can quickly pull together attendance data over time, and compare classes, Year groups, demographic groups, or Covid-19 bubbles:

Arbor’s Covid-19 Dashboard is your reference point for daily attendance across your school, split into the key DfE categories, including students with an ECHP, with a social worker and cases of Covid-19. Click into any measure to see a full list of students in each group:

For MATs, Arbor’s Group MIS gives you real-time attendance stats across your schools, allowing you to drill down from the trust-level data to the individual students:

 

2. Behaviour

• What has been the impact of Covid-19 on behaviour?
• What changes have you noticed in pupil behaviour? Can you give an example?
• What have you put in place to support children coming back to school?
• What has changed in terms of how you manage behaviour?
• How have you adapted your behaviour policy?
• Have you had any external support? Give us an example
• Are you planning to use any of the catch-up funding in relation to behaviour?

 

Gather your evidence in Arbor… 

Arbor’s built-in dashboards help you understand behaviour across groups of students (Year groups, Form groups etc.), and track how the types and frequency of behaviour has changed over time:

You can also add new types for Covid-19 related behaviour, such as pulling off another student’s mask during a lesson. Arbor will notify the relevant staff who need to know about the incident, and set up your follow-up actions automatically:

Track the effectiveness of your behaviour interventions groups by pulling together a quick report in Arbor:

 

3. Safeguarding

• How have you identified and supported vulnerable children?
• What have been the challenges? How have you overcome these?
• How have you adapted your safeguarding  policy in light of COVID?
• What additional training have staff received?
• How have you found working with outside agencies?
• Online safety: how have you ensured children are safe online?
• Talk us through an example of how you have supported a family
• They were keen to hear about individual cases and what we did in response to concerns

 

Gather your evidence in Arbor… 

Arbor’s new My Homepage gives your Teaching and Pastoral Staff live information about the student groups they look after, so they’ll never miss a new detention, pastoral or medical note. Easy filters also help them keep track of the behaviour, attendance and attainment of their key demographic groups:

 

Check out this interesting example from a mixed-phase MAT in Leicestershire, The Mead Educational Trust (TMET), about the methods they’re using to assess the impact of Covid-19 on their most vulnerable students.

 

4. Curriculum

• What impact has COVID had on your pupils? How do you know? What have you noticed?
• How are you assessing where pupils are?
• What are you doing to identify the gaps in learning?
• How are you going to incorporate missed learning?
• How have you adapted your Maths and English curriculum?
• When do you expect to return to a full curriculum?
• Has COVID impacted on specific subjects? If so how?
• Talk us through your remote/ blended learning policy and provision
• How will you support vulnerable pupils?
• How do you plan to use the catch-up funding?

 

Gather your evidence in Arbor… 

In Arbor you can set up customised formative assessments which allow you to track how your students are developing during the year. Easy-to-use colour-coded dashboards will then help you monitor performance, and show you clearly where you need to intervene:

You can then filter your results to see how particular Covid-19 groups are performing:

Set up interventions to get certain students back on track, and review the cost and effectiveness of your interventions in one dashboard:

 

For guidance on how to utilise the Government’s Catch-Up funding, you might find this cheat sheet from The Key useful.

 

If you’re new to Arbor and want to find out how our cloud-based MIS can help your school work faster, smarter and collaborate more, join one of our webinars at ArborFest – our exclusive online event for schools across the country. You’ll hear how fellow school staff have transformed the way they work with Arbor MIS. Find out what’s on and book now – it’s free!