Which subjects are most likely to be deep dived by Ofsted? (Updated to Aug 2022)
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🔬Which subjects are most likely to be deep dived by Ofsted? UPDATED.
ICYMI: In June, we set out to find excellent practice at subject level by researching deep dives.
We read 800+ Ofsted reports and logged every single deep dive across every single inspection (between Sept 2019 and Feb 2022).
Now, to help you find even more great subject practice, we’ve read another 400 reports.
This new article shares updated deep dive stats for the most recent inspections published between Feb 2022 and the end of the academic year, Aug 2022.
1. What we did.
read every report for all inspections (1200) of all secondary and all through schools from Sept 2019 to August 2022
extracted which subjects each and every school had a deep dive in
logged them and analysed them.
2. What we noticed.
English was the most common subject to be deep dived, with this looked at in 1047/1199 (87%) of inspections.
The next most common subjects were Maths, in 879 inspections (73%), Science (including Physics, Chemistry and Biology) in 780 (65%), History in 647 (54%) and MFL in 558 (47%).
Comparing the period pre-pandemic (Sept 2019-Mar 2020) with the period after the return to full inspections (May 2021-Aug 2022), there are small differences in the % of inspections looking at particular subjects. Including a slightly higher proportion of inspections looking at Art (+9%) and PE (+7%), and small decreases in English (-7%), Maths (-8%) and Science (-7%).
Reading was deep dived in 52/1199 inspections. Four of these were in Secondary schools, 7 Middle-deemed Secondary schools* and 41 in All-through schools.
The vast majority of schools inspections included deep dives in 4 or 5 subjects (880/1199, 73%), but there were a small number of schools with 8+ (5 schools).
*Middle-deemed secondary schools are middle schools with a higher % of secondary-aged children.
Want to know how often deep dives happen in your subject?
Access the full analysis here>
This gives you the breakdown of:
all deep dives by subject
number of deep dives per school
a split by inspection outcome on the new framework
a split by previous inspection grade
and a split by date of inspection to the two periods 1) pre-pandemic (Sept 2019-Mar 2020) and 2) after the return to full inspections (May 2021-Aug 2022).
3. How we're making this useful.
Like last time, we've taken this data one step further to create a database that enables you to:
learn which subjects each and every school had a deep dive in
find out which schools are in the We Are In Beta network and
request an introduction to them so you can learn how they do things
How does it work? Watch this demo 👇
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