The real issue here is what are high standards .... are they about box-ticking, or about the rounded development of each child?
I am a school governor - as long as you have a Head who can tick all the boxes, then you will get outstanding. The boxes that need ticking have nothing to do with your child's well-being - they are just statistics that the government can use to say that they are doing something about education.
There is general agreement in education circles that OfSted has been getting it wrong and quite simply looking at the wrong things.
For the sake of OfSted, teachers are burdened with unnecessary box ticking and target setting, much of which repeats itself. Clearly some of it is necessary, but teachers know which of their pupils are shining, which are struggling and which are just ticking along OK. And they adjust their teaching accordingly.
Schools with tiny classes in rural areas are in a farcical situation - 2 children with special needs in a year of 6 pupils .... the stats reveal that one third of the children are not up to "expectations" - surprise surprise!
It is important that schools are kept up to scratch with safeguarding and buildings safety. No-one has any argument with that. The problem lies in the over-emphasis on the collection of statistics - it truly is totally out of hand, to the detriment of both staff and pupils.
Time was when there where school inspectors who also had the role of advisors (and had resources to back this up) so were there to help schools when they had problems - they had a positive role as well as a judging role.
I have been through 2 OfSteds and they were so stressful for everyone - teachers, governors, pupils. And we had to argue ourselves blue in the face about the irrelevance of the statistics to a rural school with so few pupils, and with a very high level of special needs pupils. Were they remotely interested in the massive and broad curriculum enrichment programme, the wonderful pastoral care, the individual attention that made sure that every child of whatever ability had their own programme that meets their needs, the opportunities that every child had (academically, socially - as part of the local community - musically, sports - just everything). As an example, how many tiny primary schools are there where every child in every class, from pre-school up, plays music for at least 15 minutes at the start, where they all learn to read music, where they all learn an instrument? - and the sport is at a same level.
I am told that OfSted are now changing their criteria - I have yet to be part of an inspection under the new rules and hope very much that some common sense will have been injected into the process - how anyone could possibly have thought that the system that has been present over the last years made any sense at all is beyond me and many others. Maybe it made sense to Michael Gove - but what does he know about education?
I hope the new rules are an improvement, because up till now the things that OfSted concerned themselves with are not the things that parents are looking for in a school.
Try looking up a thread about this on Mumsnet and you will hear what parents think. Basically they ignore the OfSted report and go to the school and find out for themselves about the things that really matter,