Annex
EXCERPTS FROM LEA INSPECTION REPORTS
HACKNEY (AUTUMN
1997)
Para 12. Overall there are too many plans, for
too many purposes. Statements about the Authority's aims for schools
and pupils are over-laid with objectives concerned with its own
internal functioning. It is impossible to be certain what weight
is to be given to these different sets of priorities.
Para 13. To this confusion of purposes is added
a complex of services, initiative and facilities, any one of which,
or all of which, may assist school improvement, or be desirable
for general reasons. Many initiatives result from the LEA making
successful bids for government or other funding. Each bid has
its own specific objectives, and too little account has been taken
of the relationship of these objectives to the overall planning
of the LEA. The LEA has not succeeded in conveying, with full
clarity, what it intends to achieve in respect of school improvement
or what the contribution of each service, project and facility
is intended to be. To take one important example: there are at
least five projects aimed at raising levels of literacy, but no
overall strategy, and no obvious links to the work of the Inspector
for English, the various teams with a responsibility for behaviour
support or the special educational needs teams.
Para 20. The LEA is currently trying to do too
much. It should seek to do less, better. Much of its provision
constitutes a futile attempt to compensate for failures that should
be addressed in the schools . . . In order to avoid this in future,
members should establish clear priorities in consultation with
schools and the community, and eliminate or reduce activities
which do not demonstrably lead to improvement, particularly in
the areas of literacy, numeracy, SEN and behaviour.
Para 95. In addition, the ELS maintains a range
of other facilities with an educational function: libraries, archives,
the museum, sports and leisure and water sports centres, Hackney
School Study Collection and the Kench Hill Study Centre.
Para 96. This is a bewildering array of services,
initiatives and facilities, any one of which, or all of which,
may assist school improvement, or be desirable for general reasons.
However, the LEA's planning does not define the contribution of
each of these to raising standards, there are no obvious means
of co-ordination and a self-evident risk of this small LEA taking
on too much and dissipating its efforts across a plethora of not
necessarily compatible purposes. The LEA has not succeeded in
conveying, with full clarity, what it intends to achieve in respect
of school improvement or what the contribution of each service,
project and facility is intended to be.
BIRMINGHAM (AUTUMN
1997)
Para 15. There is, first, the question of whether
there are too many initiatives. There is certainly a large number.
One index of this is the so called "Climate Calendar".
Each year the LEA focuses on a particular educational issue. 1994
was the Year of Primary Education; 1995 the Year of Reading; 1996
the Year of Information Technology; 1997 the Year of Numeracy.
1998 is to be the Year of Arts; 1999 the Year of Science and Technology;
and 2000 the Year of the Environment. Given that standards in
literacy and numeracy were very low and remain low, it might have
been wiser, in the primary phase at least, to have continued to
focus energy on raising standards in these basic skills, which
is what the great majority of primary schools visited have in
fact done.
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