Ofsted inspectors are more likely to mention exclusions and absences in negative Ofsted inspections, whereas words such as “art”, “culture” and “wellbeing” feature more often in reports on top-rated schools, new analysis shows.
SchoolDash said its snapshot data “tells us something about Ofsted’s past and present preoccupations”.
Analysis of about 60,000 Ofsted mainstream state school reports since 2006 looked at the words that appeared most often in reports on ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’ schools, and compared them with inspections of ‘requires improvement’ and ‘inadequate’ settings.
“Art”, “culture” and “Covid-19” were the top three words most likely to come up in positive primary school inspections, whereas “assessment”, “exclusions” and “absences” were more likely to crop up in negative reports.
