Secondariy schools could improve their GCSE results by following Ofsted recommendations on pupil assessment, the NFER report suggests. Researchers analysed what schools achieved before and after inspections and found that of those that had made the most progress, the majority had had a specific recommendation to do with assessment, pupil tracking or marking made by inspectors.
“It seems that this type of focused recommendation may be particularly helpful to secondary schools,” the researchers write.
“But this does not necessarily indicate a direct causal link.”
There were also indications in primaries that when inspections identified a specific subject for improvement, this did then occur, although, again there was no direct causal link.