Note the total commitment of every school to teaching literacy well to all the children.
There was a time when I wrote to Ofsted many times to draw attention to the failure of Ofsted school reporting to describe transparently exactly 'what' schools did to teach reading.
All Ofsted reports for school inspections inspected 'literacy' with the presumption that all schools followed the, then, National Literacy Strategy and its guidance.
This was not the case. There were schools even then teaching their pupils to read through a systematic synthetic phonics approach to great effect- but these results were being subsumed into the NLS and were not being noted as a different method from the NLS 'searchlights' reading strategies.
Ofsted inspectors would not use the word 'synthetic' because they said it was 'jargon' and not appropriate.
Thus, there was no transparency and no understanding about the actual teaching practices in the schools.
Now, years later, Ofsted itself has published this latest report that gives a great amount of detail about the methods used, the programmes used, the reading books used and an account of the management of the teaching of literacy and literature.
Times they are a-changing - and this sharing of better information will help to awaken teachers, parents, politicians, academics and the general public as to to what is possible!
