Ofsted

Ofsted asks the head to notify parents about the inspection and invite them to complete Parent View. Inspectors will review the evidence from Parent View throughout the inspection to ensure that all online responses received during the inspection are taken into account. If the response rate for Parent View is low, inspectors may take steps during the inspection to gather further evidence of parents’ views.

Inspectors will consider and weigh parents’ views against a range of other first-hand evidence they gather – for example, lesson observations; discussions with pupils, teachers and senior managers; progress and attainment data and other relevant information – to make their overall judgement about the effectiveness of a school.

From September 2015, there is an extra free-text question: ‘Do you have any additional comments on any of your answers?’ This is only available when a school is being inspected and these comments are not published.

A disclaimer for this question explains that parents should not use this for urgent issues, safeguarding concerns or complaints. It explains that users’ comments are confidential and anonymised and that parents will not be contacted about their comments.

More information about the way in which inspectors make their judgements can be found at: www.gov.uk/government/collections/ofsted-inspections-of-maintained-schools.

Parent View can also be completed at any time during the year. This information contributes to our risk assessment process, to help decide if and when a school should be inspected. If a parent updates their responses for a school more than once in an academic year, the previous results will be overwritten so that only one ‘view’ for each parent, per school, is held.

Parents are asked to indicate whether they strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree or don’t know in response to 11 short statements. Question 12 asks whether they would recommend the school to other parents. The 12 statements and question are:

1. My child is happy at this school
2. My child feels safe at this school
3. My child makes good progress at this school
4. My child is well looked after at this school
5. My child is taught well at this school
6. My child receives appropriate homework for their age
7. This school makes sure its pupils are well behaved
8. This school deals effectively with bullying
9. This school is well led and managed
10. This school responds well to any concerns I raise
11. I receive valuable information from the school about my child’s progress
12. Would you recommend this school to another parent?

There is a threshold of 10 responses before information will be available on the website for schools, parents/carers and the general public to view. Data about each school are displayed in percentages and in easy-to-understand graphs. The results for each school are saved at the end of the academic year, so provide headteachers and governors with a useful year-on-year picture of parents’ views.

Schools will also be able to sign up to the Parent View site to receive regular email alerts about Parent View responses once the results are made public. Subscribers can choose how often they want to receive alerts – for example daily, weekly or monthly.

National response rates for all schools are published annually for both maintained and independent schools, but maintained schools will be further broken down by phase. The report provides a breakdown of the proportion of responses to Parent View by question – ‘strongly agree’, ‘agree’ and so on – as well as the average number of submissions per school nationally and the total number of submissions received to Parent View in the last 12 months.

Parent View is set up securely. Parents must register with a password, verify their email address and accept the terms of use – but the log-on process needs to be simple to encourage parents to use it. Parents and carers use it responsibly and the risk of abuse is minimal: as at September 2015 there are nearly a million reviews on the site and there have been less than 10 cases in four years where we have had to take action to remove reviews.

If a parent updates their responses for a school more than once in an academic year, the previous results will be overwritten so that only one review per parent, per school is held.

We have systems in place to flag signs of misuse. If a school has a concern about responses on Parent View, the headteacher should contact enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk. We will investigate the issue within 24 working hours.