Ofsted waters down guidance on inspection of school meals

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/dec/09/ofsted-water-down-guidance-school-meals

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Ofsted’s new recipe bound to upset Jamie

Is school food about to hit the headlines again? And could we see Jamie Oliver return to the warpath against ministers and Ofsted? We can’t help wondering since, we learn, Ofsted has radically watered down its guidance on the inspection of school nutrition only a year after introducing new rules on how inspectors should check that pupils are receiving healthy meals.

In September 2013, an Ofsted stipulation that inspectors should “consider the food on offer at the school and atmosphere of the school canteen” was introduced, following pressure from organisations including the Jamie Oliver Foundation. But this August, it was quietly removed, in a streamlining of inspection guidance. Ofsted’s latest consultation on a new inspection framework, which closed last Friday, has also omitted to mention school food.

The campaign group School Food Matters has emailed its supporters, urging them to lobby Ofsted to reinstate the 2013 directive. Stephanie Wood, the group’s founder, says the response was “unprecedented”. “We need Ofsted to reinstate the guidance,” she says. “It’s a lost opportunity if they do not seize this moment.”

In 2012, Oliver accused former education secretary Michael Gove of not listening on school food. Ofsted’s new recipe is likely to be less than appealing for the celebrity chef and campaigner.

Parents back school head over sacking

More than 1,200 people have signed a petition calling on a local authority to investigate the conduct of its head of children’s services after the long-serving headteacher of a small primary school was suspended in dramatic circumstances.

The petition, presented to Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead council, says that Jim Cooke, head of Bisham primary school near Marlow since 1985, was “removed” by Alison Alexander, the children’s services director, the day after an Ofsted report placing it in special measures was published. The petition says Alexander arrived with a locksmith and changed all the school’s locks that day in view of staff, some of whom, it says, left the premises in tears.

Council rules state that a petition of only 100 signatures can trigger an investigation by its chief executive if the petitioners are local residents. The parental campaign group supporting Cooke say they have around 600 local petitioners. Where will the campaign go from here?

The council’s managing director, Mike McGaughrin, says the petition will be considered under its disciplinary procedures. Alexander says: “Bisham has been judged [by Ofsted] as inadequate and we are using our power of intervention to oversee the school improvement.”

School governors: why 2 x 24 shouldn’t go

How seriously is the Clarke report being taken? The report into Birmingham’s Trojan horse affair, published in July, recommended that no individual should be a governor of more than two schools “unless there are genuinely exceptional circumstances”. This, says the report, is “so that no single individual has undue influence over a number of schools”.

We have already reported that academies minister Lord Nash appeared to be in breach of this principle, being a governor of all four schools in the chain he sponsors.

Now we can reveal that two influential academy chief executives sit on at least 24 governing bodies between them. Dame Rachel de Souza, chief executive of the Norwich-based Inspiration Trust chain, is to chair the governing body running Stradbroke primary school, near Great Yarmouth, which the trust took over last week. De Souza already chairs two other governing bodies of academies within the Inspiration chain, according to their websites. She sits on two further governing bodies that cover the other four schools the trust runs and for which governance information is available.

Meanwhile, Sir Dan Moynihan, chief executive of the London-based Harris Federation, appears to sit on at least 19 of its schools’ governing bodies, though he appears not to chair any.

A spokesman for the Inspiration Trust says that its school governing bodies are subcommittees of the trust’s main board, and that De Souza’s involvement “ensures the trust’s culture of focusing on educational improvement and high aspiration is embedded in each school”.

And a Harris Federation spokesman says: “As a multi-academy trust, governance ultimately lies with the Harris Federation, so it is wholly appropriate that the chief executive of the federation is accessible through governance at a local level.”

Failing to make notes down on the Farm

Schools are often criticised by Ofsted for underwhelming test results data. But a report on Kings Farm primary in Gravesend, Kent, is the first we have seen to lament an almost complete lack of assessment statistics available to inspectors.

Ofsted said it could not say whether the school had met government floor standards for year 6 Sats results in 2014 as the data “has been suppressed by the Standards [and Testing] Agency [the Sats watchdog] pending investigation”.

And “most of the school’s data on pupils’ past performance cannot be located”, added the report. Kings Farm was placed in special measures.

The report was highlighted in a blog by education consultant Peter Read, who says it has vindicated the concerns of parents and staff, reported both nationally and locally, over the summer about goings-on at Kings Farm, where, Ofsted reported, two-thirds of staff – including the executive headteacher, Jane Porter – left in July.

Kent county council says that Kings Farm’s problems in “early 2014” were well-documented but that the Ofsted report had recognised that there is now an “air of optimism” in the school.

Strange bedfellows see blog go viral

Finally, the National Union of Teachers and the Daily Telegraph seem unlikely bedfellows. But Kevin Courtney, the NUT’s deputy general secretary, is celebrating after a blog he wrote for the Telegraph’s website went viral.

Courtney’s broadside about teacher workload garnered 58,000 Facebook shares in the two weeks following its publication on 21 November. By comparison, recent Telegraph blogs on Labour’s controversial plans for private schools, by celebrity columnists Allison Pearson and Toby Young and by shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt managed 2,000, 21, and 25 Facebook shares respectively.

“Teacher workload at unacceptable levels”, said the headline above Courtney’s piece. Is he on to something?