A New Web Based Project

I’ve been thinking recently about two things concerned with OFTSED (the UK’s office for educational standards) that concern both teachers and parents.

Firstly, as a parent, you often consider how good a school is before you send your child there. There aren’t many good measures of that and to be honest, an OFSTED rating isn’t the greatest or most reliable, but it does factor into your decisions. This is particularly important if you live outside of the borough and are thinking of moving to the area. In this case, what most people would prefer is a recent report; how a school performs can change radically, quite quickly!

The second is if you are looking for a (teaching) job. It is rare for a teacher to want to parachute into a school that is due a visit from OFSTED because often, the lead up to them visiting can be really stressful, amongst other things.

But, is there an easy way to find out, borough wide, when OFSTED last visited an institution and consequently, give you an idea of when they might come? I don’t think so - at least not that I have found!

So, my plan is to write one and in the process learn a little more about HTML, CSS and Javascript. Overall, the aims for this project are then:

  • Keep it simple
    • I want it to load fairly quickly
    • For a first version, I want to only have the bare functionality; I want to complete this!
  • Be visual
    • It needs to be really easy to see where the ‘hotspots’ are at a quick glance.
  • A learning opportunity
    • I want to improve my understanding of web technologies, and this seems an excellent way to do it, whilst also providing something useful to others.

As I work through this, I will update this blog with my progress, so keep checking back.


Hi! Did you find this useful or interesting? I have an email list coming soon, but in the meantime, if you ready anything you fancy chatting about, I would love to hear from you. You can contact me here or at stephen ‘at’ logicalmoon.com