Parents, pupils and their Catholic schools: evidence from school inspections in England 2000–2005

Abstract

The Education (Schools) Act 1992 established a new body, the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), with responsibility regularly to inspect and report upon the standards, effectiveness and efficiency of all schools in England and Wales. The first cycle of inspections of secondary schools began in September 1993 and was extended to all other state-funded schools the following year.Also in 1992 the then government Department for Education and Skills (DfES; since relabelled as the Department for Children, Schools and Families [DCSF]) began to publish national data about schools' performance. It was one element in a strategy designed to improve their effectiveness as institutions for teaching and learning and to raise the general standard of pupils' educational attainment. This initiative, encouraging greater scrutiny and accountability through the publication of test and examination results and also of school inspections, has proved to be valuable to researchers providing both the quantitative (test and examination scores) and qualitative (inspection reports) sources to generate data sets for the purpose of school comparisons.

Some social benefits of English Catholic schools

“…Indeed, analysis of Ofsted inspection data strongly suggests that the overall quality of leadership in Catholic schools differs very little from national norms (Morris 2010a; National College for School Leadership 2011). On the other hand, there is some limited evidence that headteachers of Catholic schools exhibit different approaches and attitudes towards their roles from colleagues in as much as they place greater emphasis on working in partnership with parents and local community and enjoy better home-school relationships (Johnson and Castelli 2000;Johnson 2002;Morris 2010b).…”