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Website with OFSTEd early Warning

sloughman

By sloughman
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sloughman

sloughman

Posted
Posted (edited)

Hello I have been asked by the head to investigate an "OFSTED early warning" functionality which is advertised on a website designers site. I am dubious about the validity of this, too many variables, does anyone know the basis for this claim ? Or have any experience, information ? I have not contacted the site designers yet as I wanted unbiased info first...

 

Any info gratefully received.

Edited by sloughman
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elsiegee40

elsiegee40

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Posted (edited)

Complete and utter nonsense

 

There have been rumours over the years of unusually high levels of activity on policy pages and the like, but nobody has ever provided evidence that it is detectable or consistent with other schools web traffic on the approach to a call.

 

The reality is that the inspectors make the call and are probably checking out the school site the day they make that call. They don't have the time to do it far in advance and doing so would, in any case, make a nonsense of the one day inspection finding a school as it is on a day.

 

Ofsted inspectors aren't working out of Ofsted central office either.

 

Just make sure your website includes all the statutory stuff, list from the DfE is free, and it doesn't take more than two clicks to find it

 

The two clicks business was a moan from the inspectors at my governor school's inspection last month... some policies were MAT policies and they didn't like being rerouted to the trust website to see them.

Edited by elsiegee40
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GuyJD

GuyJD

Posted
Posted

I hate to go against what you are saying @elsiegee40 but I was the exact same as you and thought it was nonsense after hearing about people getting an early warning by monitoring their policy documents but I went ahead and kept an eye on the stats from our site as we were overdue an inspection, right before last summer holidays I noticed a lot of activity on our policy documents, enough to raise my suspicions enough that I went to the Head with my findings and sure enough 2 weeks after we got back from the holidays we got the call.

 

Now I'm not saying it's ironclad proof that it works but I am saying it can't hurt to check if you know you are due an inspection, if anything it will make sure you are semi ready should you get the call.

sloughman

sloughman

Posted
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Posted

Thanks for replies folks. GuyJD, yes maybe the activity you mention was linked, but from what you have said above, there was an approx 7-8 week gap between policy activity and school inspection.....

 

Do other folk use Google Analytics to sniff out the OFSTED inspectors.....

elsiegee40

elsiegee40

Posted
Posted (edited)
I hate to go against what you are saying @elsiegee40 but I was the exact same as you and thought it was nonsense after hearing about people getting an early warning by monitoring their policy documents but I went ahead and kept an eye on the stats from our site as we were overdue an inspection, right before last summer holidays I noticed a lot of activity on our policy documents, enough to raise my suspicions enough that I went to the Head with my findings and sure enough 2 weeks after we got back from the holidays we got the call.

 

Now I'm not saying it's ironclad proof that it works but I am saying it can't hurt to check if you know you are due an inspection, if anything it will make sure you are semi ready should you get the call.

 

The thing is, that knowing that an inspection is due, your own staff will be sniffing those pages too. And not necessarily in school time.

 

By all means watch the policy pages with free google analytics, but don't pay someone to pay for a special website! That's a ripoff.

Edited by elsiegee40
GuyJD

GuyJD

Posted
Posted
but from what you have said above, there was an approx 7-8 week gap between policy activity and school inspection.....
I would imagine Ofsted work the same as schools do with staff holidays, i.e they can only take annual leave in the school holidays, so if an inspector is given an assignment it's not unreasonable to expect that they'd be give in a couple of weeks in advance to gather their information, then if you count in the holidays 7-8 weeks isn't an unreasonable time either.

 

All I'm saying is I was sceptical about this and these were my findings.

GuyJD

GuyJD

Posted
Posted (edited)
The thing is, that knowing that an inspection is due, your own staff will be sniffing those pages too. And not necessarily in school time.

 

By all means watch the policy pages with free google analytics, but don't pay someone to pay for a special website! That's a ripoff.

I agree, it's something that you can do easily yourself and I wouldn't pay anyone to do it when I could in a few minutes myself. Edited by GuyJD
sloughman

sloughman

Posted
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So, the situation is you may, or may not see a spike in viewing policy pages or you may or may not see an ofsted ISP in Google Analytics, which you tell your Head about, who then gets a call an hour later from OFSTED anyway...So I personally don't see the point. And shouldn't schools be OFSTED ready anyway...what difference does an hour or day make ?

But no doubt I will have to implement Google Analytics.....Thanks all who have made comments. Further comments are welcomed.

Bob_the_Goon

Bob_the_Goon

Posted
Posted

My Head asked me to monitor our policies page for the same reason.

 

We never found the results useful in predicting when we would receive the call.

 

Google Analytics itself is very useful though in gleaning other information!

dhicks

dhicks

Posted
Posted
right before last summer holidays I noticed a lot of activity on our policy documents, enough to raise my suspicions enough that I went to the Head with my findings and sure enough 2 weeks after we got back from the holidays we got the call.

 

Hilarious prank, just in time for April fool's day, for the more technically-minded pupil: write a bot that requests some pages from the policy section of a school's website, in a way that looks like the activity of an OFSTED inspector. Possibly coordinate with pupils at a couple of other schools so request IP addresses aren't all the same. Watch with amusement as your school's SMT team freak out...

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Sephiroth

Sephiroth

Posted
Posted
shouldn't schools be OFSTED ready anyway...what difference does an hour or day make?

 

As unpopular as it may be, this is my opinion. I don't see why we should be trying to 'prepare' for OFSTED in the hours/days/weeks that preceed the visit. The whole point is that they inspect what is actually happening, not what we want them to think happens.

 

On the same note, also unpopular is my opinion that OFSTED shouldn't give any warning what so ever; just turn up and inspect a real day.

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elsiegee40

elsiegee40

Posted
Posted (edited)
As unpopular as it may be, this is my opinion. I don't see why we should be trying to 'prepare' for OFSTED in the hours/days/weeks that preceed the visit. The whole point is that they inspect what is actually happening, not what we want them to think happens.

 

On the same note, also unpopular is my opinion that OFSTED shouldn't give any warning what so ever; just turn up and inspect a real day.

To some extent I agree.

 

Living in a perpetual state of stress because the phone might ring is daft.

 

If your analytics show unusual activity, Ofsted might show and the stress may be productive or they might not. If the analytics don't show unusual activity, does everyone relax? I think it unlikely.

 

Ofsted get what they get on the day they come. Your school should have everything in place in its school improvement plan (SIP). They are not expected to have completed everything and you are allowed to have identified weakness as long as the school is doing something about it. Even outstanding schools will have school improvement actions, students not yet working at projected level and students who haven't made sufficient progress; what matters to Ofsted is what they're doing about it.

Edited by elsiegee40
2ilent8cho

2ilent8cho

Posted
Posted
We use Google Analytics , and i had a report setup that if the network name contained the word OFSTED to email me. I got a notification one day to say it had a match, i looked at the data, told the head that OFSTED were sniffing round our website, next day we get a call from them to say they are coming in.
sparkeh

sparkeh

Posted
Posted
We use Google Analytics , and i had a report setup that if the network name contained the word OFSTED to email me. I got a notification one day to say it had a match, i looked at the data, told the head that OFSTED were sniffing round our website, next day we get a call from them to say they are coming in.

And how did that help?

2ilent8cho

2ilent8cho

Posted
Posted
And how did that help?

 

It gave them more time a bit of time to go over the areas they were looking at on our website (i.e. which policies ) and double check everything was in order. The Senior team liked it.

sparkeh

sparkeh

Posted
Posted
It gave them more time a bit of time to go over the areas they were looking at on our website (i.e. which policies ) and double check everything was in order. The Senior team liked it.

Interesting. Glad it worked for you.

 

However I imagine that if documents were suddenly updated between the inspectors looking at the website and then coming in, it might look suspicious.

 

I just think that schools should be confident that all that is in order all the time, not at the last minute.

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JordanT91

JordanT91

Posted
Posted
I can say with 100% certainty that Ofsted inspectors do visit a school website from an Ofsted network. Maybe not in every case, but it happens a lot. I got my daily report this morning and for the first time in two years we've had hits - we had the call yesterday afternoon.
mikeprice

mikeprice

Posted
Posted
As an experiment I have set up the report in Google Analytics to mail me if anything from the OFSTED network comes in. :)

 

I have never used Google Analytics - but I may have a go now - how did you set it up??

 

Mike

siuko

siuko

Posted
Posted
It seems that Ofsted have viewed our site yesterday - thank you GA dashboard and Service Provider report.

 

Interesting because they viewed our site too :D

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