Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80
- 99)
WEDNESDAY 15 MARCH 2000
MR CHRIS
WOODHEAD, MR
MIKE TOMLINSON
AND MR
DAVID TAYLOR
80. Is it based on class observations or observations
on individual pupils?
(Mr Tomlinson) On both.
(Mr Woodhead) Obviously in observing a class you are
going to observe the individuals in the class. Is the drift of
your question you do not think we are right?
81. The drift of my question is to find out
the evidence that supports the comments you make, which is the
duty of this Committee. We want to look at the evidence. If we
are talking of under-5s here and we want to know how they react,
and so on, what I am asking you is to give us the evidence that
supports that comment?
(Mr Woodhead) As I say, we will write to you with
that, that is no problem at all.[5]
I can tell you now, even if I cannot put a precise figure on it,
it is very substantial. This is not a judgment I feel is insecure
in the slightest.
82. How do you reconcile that with the fact
that children in reception classes are not required to do the
literacy hour?
(Mr Woodhead) They may not be required to do it but
many are.
83. I accept some are doing it, can you tell
us the percentage?
(Mr Woodhead) I can supply you with that percentage.
I am not sure what the drift of the questioning is. The substantive
issue it seems to be underlying is not so much to do with the
substantial evidence base or the insecurity of the evidence but
whether it is a good thing for young children to read in the way
that the national literacy strategy requires, and my answer to
that question is it is.
84. What we are trying to find is the evidence
for the statements you are making, I will come back to that. If
you are telling us at the moment you do not have the evidence
or that you will send us the evidence, that is the answer to my
question. We are trying to explore the evidence which supports
generalised comments in the Report.
(Mr Woodhead) Yes. May I just draw us back to the
remarks that you made at the beginning of this Committee? You
want to see us in October, or whenever it is, later in the year,
and you want that meeting to be devoted to the way that OFSTED
does its business. If the Committee has doubts about the validity
of the inspection process or the security of the evidence we will
come prepared at that meeting to answer any such questions.
Chairman
85. Fine.
(Mr Woodhead) We have come prepared and I would welcome
the time to talk about the substantive education issues.
Helen Jones
86. This is in the Annual Report and would you
not accept that the statements you make in the Annual Report and
the statements you make as Chief Inspector have to be supported
by evidence?
(Mr Woodhead) Yes, of course.
87. Can we try and examine some of the other
evidence then? Let us have a look at what you say about music
and art in paragraph 129 of the Report. You say, "The time
allocated to teach music and art is occasionally insufficient
to cover the full programmes of study." Can you tell us in
that case what proportion of schools you are referring to there?
(Mr Woodhead) No, I cannot and I will write to you
with the evidence and the statistics you want.[6]
Valerie Davey
88. Your Report is an annual report, it is not
an encyclopedic discourse of that whole year in education, we
all accept that and I think it is very readable and very useful.
NAHT, as you are well aware, are concerned about some of the general
statements. What they and the Committee would like to know is
that behind the Report there is this encyclopedic material so
if we refer to a specific you have—and this is not asking
you at the moment for any particular area—that detailed
material which backs it up. It is just a reassurance to NAHT and
to the Committee that this has behind it the encyclopedic volumes
of which this represents the summary.
(Mr Woodhead) The answer is, yes, there is evidence
to back up what we say.
(Mr Taylor) Can I just say, the specialist advisers
for all subjects submit an analysis in the summer which gives
great detail on exactly the proportion of lessons, the time allocation
for each subject, and that is the backcloth of the short subject
summaries in the Annual Report here. If I had the music report
in front of me, I could say what the detail was of inadequate
allowances of time in Key Stage 3 to cover the full programme
and the study of music.
(Mr Woodhead) We cannot reasonably be expected to
have every statistic that backs up every judgment in this Report
at our fingertips now. We accept the validity of the question
and we will reply in writing.
89. I accept that and I now want to come on
to the specific, which is swimming. You know my interest in this,
we have corresponded in the past. In the Report it says, "Swimming
is well taught. Most pupils reach the national curriculum expectation
of swimming 25 metres unaided." I did research in this particular
area for an adjournment debate. As you well know my response from
the DfEE was they do not currently keep details in this area.
I wrote to you, and nor did you. I wrote to 151 LEAs and nor do
some of them. Therefore my adjournment debate highlighted the
need for specific evidence in this area. What I am hoping is that
you are now going to tell me that, in fact, that evidence exists
and you can let me have it. It will be a huge turn-around for
the very specific year in which I did my research too.
(Mr Tomlinson) As a result of your adjournment debate
and our discussions with the department, we did over last autumn
require all inspections of schools which had the older pupils
at Key Stage 2 where the 25 metre requirement is done. We enhanced
the inspections for them to pursue a number of matters about swimming,
including the proportion of children at that point in time at
the Key Stage who were meeting the requirement.
90. Excellent, so I will have that report.
(Mr Tomlinson) That is there.
(Mr Taylor) I spoke to the PE specialist adviser this
week and she showed me her draft of the report. We take this particularly
seriously, and we are hoping to share the latest findings, which
will be very detailed.
91. I am gratified because I consider this to
be a life skill very genuinely. You previously said that the pressure
in the curriculum for literacy and numeracy because of the emphasis
on other things, such as we have been mentioning, whether it is
sport in general, music or art have been pushed aside.
(Mr Woodhead) We have not said that.
92. That is what you did say. What I am going
on to say is, you now have concluded that in this particular year
we are talking about, 1998/99, most schools are able to provide
that broader curriculum.
(Mr Woodhead) What statement are you referring to?
Chairman: Mr Woodhead wants to know the basis
of your statement.
Valerie Davey
93. This was one of your earlier reports and
the earlier conversations on it where you were concerned, as we
were, that the pressure we were putting on schools was naturally
giving them a new focus and that the other things were not perhaps
as in focus as we would have liked them to be.
(Mr Woodhead) I do not think that that is right. I
do not remember the conversation with you or this Committee—I
have said on public platforms that as teachers have tried to get
their heads around literacy and numeracy strategies it has been
difficult.
94. I am not being critical.
(Mr Woodhead) I would not want this to be misinterpreted.
I did not think in the past, and I do not think now, that the
national literacy and the industry strategies have seen restriction
in any real way of the breadth of the curriculum provision.
95. I have to say that the emphasis on the comments
coming back to me have been that. I wanted to go on to the positive
things you are now saying in this Report, that is what I want
to focus on. Let us focus on the positives of this Report that
things are now improving. We have this broader provision. Really
I wanted to come back to what the evidence is for that. I share
that belief with you.
(Mr Tomlinson) Each school that is inspected is asked
for a curriculum breakdown for the time spent on each and every
subject and we have that data on hand. It is not always easy for
primary schools to provide this because of the way in which they
deliver the curriculum. Each schools provides that, it is a prerequisite
to the inspection.
Chairman: I want to cover one more subject,
local education authorities.
Mr St Aubyn
96. Chief Inspector, Surrey County Council covers
my area, it was one of the nine LEAs you inspected where you found
they were giving effective support to their schools, that was
out of forty-one, and you said that overall the situation was
very bleak. Do you think of that forty-one local education authorities
that group was representative of LEAs as a whole? Do you think
that the intervention which the Secretary of State has caused
in four of them is the right way to solve their problems?
(Mr Woodhead) We have tended to focus the inspection
resource on authorities where we suspect there may be problems
in order to bring those problems out into the open and try and
get solutions to them. As the programme rolls on the sample becomes
ever more representative. The figures are we have now inspected
fifty-three and twenty-nine of them we are worrying about. If
anything, I think the sample is confirming the earlier evidence,
although the earlier evidence was not in itself representative.
With regard to the second part of your question, yes, I think
the Secretary of State's intervention is the right thing to do.
If local education authorities have failed to deliver adequate
support to their schools—as Hackney and Islington have failed—and
if the Inspector's judgment is that there is not going to be a
quick enough turn-around and there cannot be such a turn-around,
what option do we have but to contemplate other ways of delivering
the support?
97. I agree with that. Do you think the way
that it is being done—the private sector felt they had been
through an endurance test—and the structure of their involvement
is likely to succeed?
(Mr Woodhead) Yes. I think there is lessons to be
learned from the way in which the initial contracts have been
let. A lot of the contractors and potential contractors have said
to me that it has been expensive, time consuming, bureaucratic,
and so on and so forth. I know the Secretary of State is looking
at that and looking at it hard, and rightly. It has to be as efficient
a process as possible because the market needs to be encouraged
so that the possibility of alternative provisions are there.
Chairman
98. Mr Woodhead, I think it is sometimes easy
for any of us interested in education to talk about bureaucracy,
every one is in favour of getting rid of it or cutting down and
making it more efficient. It is a fact that many education authorities
have many devoted, highly qualified and highly trained professional
people working within them that have spent and devoted a large
part of their professional life to education. Sometimes just like
teachers do not like being slagged off by the pundits, we talk
about bureaucrats and we really do mean a lot of good human beings
doing a very good job in education. Sometimes bureaucracy can
be a faceless description.
(Mr Woodhead) It can be a grim insult, I agree with
you. I do think that the chapter and verse of the evidence that
was gathered in some of these LEA inspections does reveal a devastating
waste of taxpayers' money and an abysmal failure to support teachers
in schools in very, very difficult circumstances. I do not blame
the individuals, no. You are right, of course, there are many
dedicated and professional and able people. If the structures
within which those people are working are the wrong structures,
then the people are never going to be able to deliver a service
that is right.
99. Did you find it difficult refining your
methodology, indeed your personnel, in switching from investigations
and inspections of schools through to LEAs, was that a difficult
transition?
(Mr Woodhead) It was quite a challenge, yes. We spent
a lot of time and talked to people outside about the methodology
we adopted. In terms of the inspector's competence to do the job,
I think that the skills, the forensic skills of Her Majesty's
inspectorate are applicable in a range of educational contexts.
I do not think that it is that different asking incisive questions
about what is happening in the local authority than it is about
schools or looking at the paperwork or the development plans that
the authorities produce. You can read such things with a careful
eye and the sillinesses emerge quite quickly.
5 Supplementary memorandum p 16. Back
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Supplementary memorandum p 16. Back
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