Some “stuck” schools are focusing solely on retaining their teachers and ignoring the quality of the staff they keep, a senior Ofsted official has warned.
Daniel Muijs, who leads research at the inspectorate, made his comments during a talk today on “stuck” schools - those rated as less than “good” for more than four inspections over 13 years.
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Professor Muijs noted that in schools in similar contexts that became “unstuck” - by achieving “good” or better for at least two inspections - put a lot of thought into teacher quality and were prepared to let go of those who “can’t improve”.
“We also see that there is some careful thought about the right balance between teacher turnover and quality [in unstuck schools],” he told a ResearchEd webinar.
Ofsted help for ‘stuck’ schools
“So what we find in some of the stuck schools is that the focus is solely on keeping existing staff in the school, regardless of how well they’re doing - that’s not necessarily the most helpful approach we find.
“Schools that are unstuck, they are thoughtful about that - how can we improve, how can we provide professional development, how can we be flexible so that the staff that we want to keep stay, and that’s looking at things like flexible working, in some cases rehiring retired teachers, looking at things like work-life balance by things like having an email moratorium after certain times of the day, etc.
“But also if somebody can’t improve, not holding on to people for no reason - so teaching standards are really, really important and really central to the work that these schools were doing.”
Professor Muijs also said there had been “very opposing views” about whether it was helpful for Ofsted to “recognise the green shoots of recovery” when it inspected a stuck school with new leadership.
“So some schools were telling us, ‘It’s really really useful doing that. It gives a morale boost. It shows we are on the right direction,’” he said. “But other schools were saying, ‘Well, actually, it’s premature, and it gave people the impression that everything was now firmly in the right direction. Therefore that wasn’t helpful.’”
Ofsted research on stuck schools was published in January, and found that these schools could be geographically isolated as well as struggling to recruit and retain teachers.
In January, the analysis website SchoolDash suggested stuck schools needed more support in attracting teachers. It found that one in five pupils at Ofsted-rated “inadequate” schools came from disadvantaged backgrounds, compared with one in 10 for “outstanding” schools.
