The latest Ofsted figures show that more schools are being judged as inadequate. In 2008/9 the proportion of schools judged as inadequate was 4% but this has more than doubled to 10% this year.
Why? Well, it has more to do with the way Ofsted works than schools actually getting better or worse. Ofsted is concentrating on inspecting schools which have a poor record in the past, so they are not looking at the best schools as often. Outstanding and good schools will only be inspected every 5 years whilst inadequate schools receive regular visits.
If you only look at good schools once every five years, satisfactory schools once every three years and poor schools all the time then the figures are going to show that a larger proportion of schools are going to be judged poor. (Rather like looking at one Premier League football game, 5 Championship games and 50 Division 2 games and concluding that more football games are poor than they were in the past when 10 of each were viewed.)
It is not very helpful to anyone to compare figures which have been produced using different systems, but maths has never been Ofsted’s strong point!