Industry News
Unions criticise Ofsted targets
Posted on 30th April 2008
Teaching unions have criticised the Department for Children, Schools and Families's (DCSF's) plan to reward schools for children's wellbeing, the Guardian has reported.
Released in 2007, the Children's Plan aimed to make British education the best in the world, as well as setting ambitious targets to reduce anti-social behaviour, improve wellbeing and eradicate child poverty in the next 13 years.
Now, aside from educational performance, data must be collected by schools for 18 other measures for Ofsted to judge their performance.
According to the Guardian, unions say the education system is already overburdened with government targets, testing and assessments and that it is questionable how responsible schools should be for some measures, including a child's wellbeing.
For example, one government target is to get the number of teenage pregnancies down but, aside from education, unions say teachers cannot "be reasonably expected to stop them getting pregnant".
They have also questioned "whether it is fair" for them to be expected to meet targets designed to reduce the number of children living in abusive homes.