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www.ofsted.gov.uk
22 March 2013
All Chairs of Governors
Sir Michael Wilshaw
Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector
Dear Chair of Governors
Good governance makes a profound difference to schools and their pupils. In a world
of school freedom and autonomy, you are more important now than you have ever
been. As Chief Inspector, I want to support you to use your powers to drive up
standards. This is why I recently launched the new Data Dashboard for schools.
Good governance focuses on the big issues: the quality of teaching, the progress and
achievement of the pupils, and the culture of the school. The best governing boards
get the balance right between support and challenge. They ask the right questions,
and hold the school’s leadership team to account effectively. To do this requires a
good understanding of the performance of the school and the outcomes for its
pupils.
The School Data Dashboard is a new online tool that provides a high-level summary
of this performance data for each school. The Dashboards are presented in a clear,
accessible way, allowing for comparison with other similar schools. The dashboards
are publicly available online at
www.dashboard.ofsted.gov.uk and also on the
individual inspection report pages for each school.
We have now launched School Data Dashboards
for Key Stages 1, 2 and 4. There
will be separate dashboards for Key Stage 5, special schools and colleges later in the
year. I have enclosed the dashboards for your school. These will be updated online
on a regular basis. The website also includes answers to many frequently asked
questions.
The dashboard is not a change to the school inspection framework, but it does raise
the stakes. Every school inspection report now comments specifically on governance.
Inspectors will take into account the dashboard data as part of their preparation for
inspection and will expect governors to be familiar with the information presented.
Ofsted is proud to use recycled paper
You may well already be going far beyond the headline data in the dashboard. It is
intended to be a way into the data about each school, and certainly not the final
word. We will develop and improve the dashboard over time, and will take account
of feedback as we do this. However, I am committed to the principle of all governors
having access to clear, summary information about their school and its performance
compared with similar schools.
I hope you find the new School Data Dashboards useful.
Yours sincerely
Sir Michael Wilshaw