Ofsted

Further to my post yesterday about The Honourable Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, it transpires that political interference in education continues.  Up until recently, primary education was trumpted as the success story in British education.  However, that seems to have changed as it now transpires that the children leaving primary education with the expected grade of Level 4, 45% of them do not get the bench-mark 5 A-C G.C.S.E. passes, whereas obvioulsy 55% of children do.  Is it fair to point the finger at Primary Schools for this 'failing'?  It shows that G.C.S.E.'s are doing their job!  Separating the academic children from those that would be better suited to folowing a more vocational path.  (It is not quite as simple as that, however).
However, this post is about one of the tools that the Government use in their interference in the British Education system.  My wife's youngest daughter works in a Primary School in London.  75% of children do not have English as their first language.  She has told me how many Nationalities are at her scholl, but increasing age means that I have forgotten.  They had OFSTED this week and the school was rated as 'Good'.  The Head Teacher, however, was not pleased.  An I.C.T. lesson that was observed would have got an 'outstanding' but for the fact that the children 'swivelled' on the chairs in the Computer Room.  As someone mentioned to me: "swivel chairs were useful in a Computer Room so that the children can turn round and look at the teacher as they explain something on the board".  Not so, these items of educational distraction cost that teacher an outstanding grade.  There were other examples where teachers were marked down, but I think you are get my point.  OFSTED seemed to be looking for excuses NOT to give an outstanding, even if it appeared to be justified.
All this is sounding very familiar, and it seems that political interference will continue, at least for the life of this Parliamnet, and Britian will continue to fall down the Global Educational League Tables.  Someone else has said that there seems to be a negative correlation between Governmental Interference and Educational Standards.