ATL

RSA: Government not addressing 'coasting' schools

05 December 2011

Schools which fail to improve on their 'satisfactory' Ofsted grading within two further inspections should be given notice to improve and treated as 'inadequate', according to a new report by the Royal Society of Arts (RSA).

The RSA report also proposes re-classifying consistently satisfactory schools as 'performing inconsistently' as a means to increase accountability and encourage improvement.

Treating satisfactory schools as inadequate would strongly incentivise raising standards, the RSA claims.

Author of the report, Professor Becky Francis, the RSA director of education, said that what struck researchers was the scale of the problem as around one-third of schools are graded satisfactory.

"While the government has concentrated policy on school structures (Free Schools and Academies), a significant proportion of schools – including some of the new models – continue to provide lower quality educational provision," she said.

"There is currently little in the way of a framework for supporting them to improve."

Ofsted's annual report published last month discovered 800 schools were 'coasting' by failing to improve on their satisfactory levels.

Speaking at the time, Minister of State for Schools Nick Gibb MP said that it was "worrying" that Ofsted found so many schools not improving beyond a satisfactory rating.

"It's a real concern that some schools with very able intakes are merely coasting instead of making sure students achieve their full potential," he said.

Published in conjunction with Ofsted, the RSA report '(Un)Satisfactory? Enhancing Life Chances by Improving "Satisfactory" Schools', used Ofsted data and inspections to assess the location, demographics and characteristics of 'coasting' schools.

It found that pupils from more affluent backgrounds generally attend better schools, while for disadvantaged pupils the opposite is true.

According to the study, there is an over-representation of disadvantaged pupils in 'satisfactory' or 'inadequate' schools, while schools with high proportions of children from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to decline from 'outstanding' to 'good' than schools with more advantaged pupils.

Schools with large disadvantaged pupil populations were also found to be much less likely to improve at their next inspection than those with more advantaged pupils.