Update on Ofsted and CVA

At the end of May, John Dunford, Peter Kent (author of ASCL's guidance paper on CVA data) and Inspection Consultant Keith Dennis met with senior staff at Ofsted to discuss ASCL's serious concerns over CVA data and the online SEF.

In response, in Inspection Matters 14, Ofsted stressed to inspectors that whilst CVA gives a view of past standards and achievement, the focus should be on current standards and progress. It said that CVA should be used with care and in conjunction with further material provided by the school (for example Fisher Family Trust analyses), recent internal assessments and inspectors' own observations.

Ofsted's official view is that trends in CVA should be viewed with caution and too much significance should not be attached to a school's percentile ranking.

Ofsted will help schools struggling to understand why their CVA is as it is. If contacted (enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk), Ofsted has promised to follow up every issue with the online SEF. Please let Keith (keith.dennis@ascl.org.uk), know if this does not happen.

Members are strongly advised to check the information entered about their school on RAISEonline. Some members have found inaccurate data in their reports. The easiest way to do this is to go to www.raiseonline.org and download the whole report as a pdf file. If you find errors, you should inform Ofsted and record it as an issue in your SEF.

Further meetings are to be arranged between Peter Kent, Keith Dennis and Ofsted's chief statistician to monitor these issues. ASCL will issue guidance on using RAISEonline in the autumn.