Cumbrian School highlighted in OFSTED report

Keswick School in Cumbria was included as a case study of outstanding practice in Ofsted’s annual report for 2013-14 which was published last week. This annual report receives national media attention and indicates the state of primary and secondary education across the UK.

Keswick School is the second case study in the report (p18) and features as an example of how curriculum design and enrichment opportunities can result in outstanding outcomes for young people.

The report states:

"Case study: a balanced curriculum
Keswick School in the North West offers a fantastic wealth of courses, visits and enrichment opportunities.

The curriculum ensures that pupils’ skills and talents are equally encouraged in activities that range from fell running to Russian and creative writing to catering. Any student who has an idea for a course, a club or a school visit is given every encouragement to make their idea become a reality.

The sixth form curriculum is excellent. Sixth formers are particularly well prepared for future employment and higher education through the outstanding programme of study they are given. They take full advantage of the myriad opportunities to take responsibility and consequently make a major contribution to the success of the school."

My experience of OFSTED inspections over something like 25 years a governor of various schools is that getting this level of praise from them is a considerable achievement. Congratulations to all at Keswick who have worked so hard to produce the excellent results for students which the OFSTED report praises.

Comments

Chris Whiteside said…
Fortunately I do not have to block many comments on this blog - most of the people who read or post here are more civilised than certain people who post anonymously on some other sites - but I did have to remove a couple of rather foolish and offensive anonymous comments on this thread.

Let me make something crystal clear. I know from my time as a governor of Skyswood School and then Garden Fields School in St Albans, and more recently as a governor of Whitehaven Academy (it's not called Whitehaven School any more) that there any many teachers in all our schools who work hard and selflessly to help their students develop as people. All the staff at those schools work incredibly hard and never harder than when there is an OFSTED inspection. I also know that getting unqualified praise from OFSTED is difficult.

The fact that I noted that one of the schools in my constituency and county had been singled out for exceptional praise by OFSTED, in a published report which had a national profile for those people who follow matters relating to education, was not in any way, shape or form a criticism of Whitehaven Academy or any other school.

The other thing I will say is that although people who stand for office have to put up with a certain amount of flak, their kids should be off limits.

Making a general point about your opponents which does not identify particular children, such as saying in general terms that many of them seem to send their own children to a category of school which they want to deny other children the opportunity to go to, is just about legitimate if this is the case.

But whatever you may assume or think you know about someone else's children, every parent has to make the best decision they can for their child in the knowledge of that child's particular circumstances. An outsider cannot possibly know all the things they have had to consider, and whoever employs this form of attack, using a parent's decisions for their children as grounds for political or personal criticism is a discreditable tactic except as a direct response when the person attacked has done the same thing (which I have not).

All the more so if done under the cover of an anonymous post.

Blogger does not keep a count of the number of comments, but it does record them, and the published comments on this blog fill 3689 pages at nearly fifty to a page, so that's probably in excess of a hundred thousand comments. I have allowed thousands of comments which I strongly disagree with to be published on this blog because they added to debate.

But one category I will not allow is those which have a go at anyone - whoever it is - over their children, so please don't bother to post that kind of comment.
11:34 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more