What makes a good school?
Analysis
BBC
4.6 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 16 October 2023
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How should we evaluate schools? Is it about delivering a wide range of subjects, or extra activities and pastoral care that make a “good” school? Who gets to decide what is a good school and what does that mean to different people? Many people are influenced by the four Ofsted grades and Ofsted reports so what does research tell us about how consistent those judgements are? Would you choose a school with a good local reputation but a lower inspection grade. The programme talks to Sonia Exley, an associate professor at the London School of Economics, Professor Christian Bokhove at the University of Southampton, Natalie Perera, chief executive of the Education Policy Institute, Andreas Schleicher, Director of Education and Skills at the OECD, George Leckie, Professor of Social Statistics at the University of Bristol,Dr Ellen Gleaves, a postdoctoral researcher.
Presenter: Branwen Jeffreys Producer: Bob Howard Editor: Clare Fordham
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.4 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable |
| 0:14.3 | experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC |
| 0:20.4 | makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | BBC Sounds. |
| 0:38.0 | BBC Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts. |
| 0:41.0 | Thanks for downloading the podcast. |
| 0:43.0 | I'm Brahmin Jeffries, the BBC's education editor. |
| 0:47.0 | And in this edition of analysis, we're trying to get to the bottom of what makes a good school. |
| 0:52.0 | If you're a parent trying to make the decision right now. of what should you look at and how much weight should you put on |
| 0:58.8 | offstead report school league tables and the other evidence available. You might find some of the findings |
| 1:05.3 | really surprising. |
| 1:08.6 | It's open evening at St Joseph's Catholic Academy in South Tineside. The parents are queuing up and already |
| 1:16.5 | there's about 50 or 60 people lining up outside to come in. They can choose to either go on a school tour with pupils |
| 1:25.0 | who are waiting in their best uniforms in little huddles looking slightly nervous, |
| 1:29.4 | or they can wait to have a presentation from the head teacher. |
| 1:34.0 | Open evenings like this help shape one of the biggest decisions of parent or care of faces, |
| 1:41.0 | how to choose the best school for their child. In England, parent choice |
| 1:46.7 | has been explicitly promoted by successive governments for years. It can feel like an even bigger decision for secondary school where |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.