Select Committee on Education and Skills Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 107-119)

WEDNESDAY 27 NOVEMBER 2002

MR DAVID TAYLOR, MISS KATH CROSS, MR TIM KEY AND MR MIKE RALEIGH

Chairman

  107. Can I welcome Tim Key, David Taylor, Mike Raleigh and Kath Cross from Ofsted and say that we are always pleased to see Ofsted. We are, as you know, having quite an intense look at secondary education in a four part inquiry and this is the first part in terms of diversity of provision. There is no secret about the fact that we are trying to examine as closely as we can the relationship between the current interests and passion for diversity and whether that is linked and whether it is right that that is linked to improvement of achievement in schools. So, there is no mystery as to what we are up to here. We heard a number of eminent professors of education last Wednesday, this time last week, who rather poured some cold water on the belief that there is a relationship between specialism, diversity and improving achievement. So, one of the things we will be after today is really finding out, both in terms of Ofsted and also we will be asking two other eminent academics, their view on this. Do Ofsted want to say anything to open the proceedings or do you want to go straight into questions?

  (Mr Taylor) We are happy for you to ask questions.

  108. Tell us what you think about this kind of debate. You must read all the literature. You know that there is some real difference between academics on the quality of the data. Do Specialist Schools Add Value?, which is the title of a paper by Ian Schagen and Harvey Goldstein. I know that we are to have evidence later but there is no doubt that academics, in their very polite way, are having quite a bitter discussion about the meaning of the statistics and the interpretation of the statistics. What is your take on this, Mr Taylor?
  (Mr Taylor) Our take is essentially that inspection data provides something different to put alongside this much contested performance data and are not subject to the same interpretative difficulties, though they may have other interpretative difficulties. So what we tried to do in the papers which very late last night we managed to get across to you after short notice was to explore how different ways of categorising schools can be sorted in terms of the key indices that inspectors use in reaching overall judgments about the quality of information. We think it is important to put these into the frame alongside the performance data, not least because of the interpretative difficulties to which you and I have referred. We think that often these focus on key aspects of the quality of schools and whether improvement is happening and how it is happening, which are not necessarily shown by the performance data, so that we focus, for example, on what inspectors as a professional judgment say about the quality of leadership and management which we have argued consistently is one of the principal leaders of change and if we find that, in some kind of schools, the data from all the thousands of inspections we do each year suggest that certain types of school overall are doing slightly better on some of these categories, we think those are important pieces of information to bring to your attention.

  109. When you did your last report on specialist schools, it was quite early days but one could say that your report was reasonably positive. Has that continued in the same vein?
  (Mr Taylor) I would like to ask Mr Raleigh to update us quickly. As you say, the report is now over a year ago and, since that, we have analysed the data. This is a change of landscape. It is often said that inspectors have a snapshot view but, on this, we are very much taking a longitudinal view on ever changing landscapes. I think it is important that Mr Raleigh sketches in some of the ways in which the data have or have not been done since our working task group.
  (Mr Raleigh) Looking at inspection data on specialist schools that have had that status for at least two years—and that is quite important—in our previous report, we did the same thing: we looked at those that had been established for some time to see what effects the programme was having on their provision generally and on achievement in schools. So, looking again at the specialist schools that have had that status for at least a couple of years, the inspection evidence for the last two years indicates that the proportion of teaching judged to be good or very good has grown for schools in the specialist category, although it is not the same across the different types of specialism, and that is another important point. This is not a homogeneous group. The technology colleges and the languages colleges tended to have a higher proportion of good or very good teaching than the arts or sports colleges. Among the other features that come out from the inspection data are the high proportion of schools where the quality and range of learning opportunities were good. The proportion of schools where management was judged to be good or very good was also a distinguishing factor. Generally, those specialist schools looked at over the last couple of years have shown greater improvement since their previous inspection. That is the case for the schools overall, although it is also a matter of concern that a number of schools have not made any improvement nor in fact have deteriorated. In looking at particular features of what schools are doing now compared to those we looked at a couple of years back, we are seeing some positive signs including more widespread and more pertinent use of target setting, the specialist subjects—and this is a particular issue in the specialist schools—being used more widely to improve teaching and achievement across the range of subjects. We have seen the development of a more systematic approach to school self-evaluation and we have seen more purposeful work in those specialist schools with their primary partners. So, there are improvements in relation to the recommendations that were made in our report in 2001 although one would have to say that all of those or virtually all of those are features of school improvement which you would expect to find in any school which is improving. We also looked at the GCSE results in 2002, if you would like me to go on to that subject, again for those schools that have had the status for at least two years and, that shows that with the exception of sports colleges —

  110. How many have had it for two years?
  (Mr Raleigh) These are 521 schools. There are some 900 operating now, so obviously the numbers have gone up considerably. With the exception of sports colleges, the other categories of specialist schools achieved higher GCSE average point scores than schools nationally, with language colleges having the highest proportion of five or more A to C GCSE grades. The trend of improvement—and I think this is an important fact—since 1997 for those schools is broadly similar to the national picture, although we should say that not all the schools in that 521 have been specialist schools since 1997. Quite a lot of them have but not all. So, while they have been getting better, we are not talking about dramatic transformation. Their trend of improvement is about the same as nationally. It is also perhaps worth pointing out that technology colleges, which form easily the biggest group of specialist schools, have shown a slight fall in their improvement trend since the analysis we undertook in 2001. I hope that is a picture which updates our report on 2001.

  Chairman: That gives us a good background.

Jeff Ennis

  111. A recent LGA report suggested that specialist schools were having a slightly negative impact on neighbouring schools. Do you have any evidence about that statement or any views on that particular aspect?
  (Mr Raleigh) This programme is of course a school improvement programme, it is designed to improve schools. I think it is fair to say that unless improvement programmes are universal and unless they are universally well implemented, then they will have the effect of leading to greater improvement in those schools than others, all other things being equal. At the expense of others could be—and I imagine it is—interpreted as those schools becoming more popular because they are specialist schools. When we did our detailed visits of 56 schools that we included in our 2001 report, we were keen to try and get to the bottom of that. It is actually extremely difficult to dissociate the contribution that specialism may make to the expression of preferences by parents. When pressed, the heads of about one-third of the schools thought that there was a significant contribution at some level but largely people, including the parents that we talked to and pupils, were pointing to other factors. These were after all schools that had been enabled to become specialist schools because their track record was good. They had purposeful plans for improving work in the specialist subjects and so on. So, they were schools which were on the up. The reasons people were giving for increased popularity—and it was the case that these schools were all more popular than they had been some years back—were wide, varied but common to the preferences that, generally speaking, parents have expressed. So, whether that means "at the expense of other schools" is actually a rather tricky question. You could apply exactly the same question to Excellence in Cities as an initiative where secondary schools in that initiative have been improving at a faster rate than others. Not all schools are in the programme. There are schools in neighbouring authorities which are not. You could argue that because that programme is specifically targeted on need, that it is leading to greater improvement and, in a fashion, one could say, though I think it is a long stretch, that that is at the expense of other schools.

  112. Presumably you will be monitoring the situation on that.
  (Mr Raleigh) Yes. It is not at all easy as I am sure you have gathered from the research material and the academics to whom you have spoken.

  113. One of the main barriers that I see for schools getting specialist school status in deprived areas such as my own—my constituency has the lowest level of GDP of any constituency in the country—is the £50,000 contribution that they are supposed to get from the private sector and industry. I know that a head teacher in one of my local schools spent numerous personnel hours on this raising a grant of £7,000 and yet, in some school areas, they just pick up a phone to the multinational industry next door and ask, "Can you give me £50,000, please?" and the answer is, "Yes, you can have it tomorrow." Do you think that there ought to be some flexibility in terms of trying to involve local businesses into the specialist school sector and do we need to have some sort of tier structure to achieve that goal?
  (Mr Raleigh) I believe that, in 1999, the Department did introduce somewhat greater flexibility and indeed reduced the level at which matched funding was needed.

  114. It is still not getting through to our schools.
  (Mr Raleigh) One of the issues here is whether we are talking about local business, which is generally what the case was with the early schools in the programme, or business more generally and indeed a wider range of organisations. So, greater flexibility has been introduced. It is still the case, as I know from visits to schools, that raising that sum is a significant issue. The Department, were it here, might say that that is a good test of the school's determination and persistence and a good test of its enthusiasm to connect with business.

  115. My concern is not whether it is a good test or not, it is whether it is a fair test. Given that the Government are pursuing the agenda of specialist school status, do you think that a good model to bring in the status of all schools would be to try and get a more collegiate approach between schools, both specialist schools and also the non-specialist schools? The evidence we are getting is that the more we build up the collegiate approach between schools, the more that raises standards in general.
  (Mr Raleigh) The programme has changed over time and it is changing now. For this current round, the criteria have been broadened to deliberately look to applications from a group of schools or from pairs of schools. It is also focused more generally on the community role of specialist schools, what they will do for and with other schools and for the wider community. Local education authorities are being encouraged to produce a strategic plan within which new bids can be set. So, I think that development is very much in train.

Paul Holmes

  116. In the 2001 report on specialist schools, you said that the majority of specialist schools are making good use of the advantages that the programme brings. What do you think are the key advantages that the specialist programme brings? Is it that they become specialist in a particular subject or is it that they go off through a management process to win the bid or is it that they get £0.5 million extra?
  (Mr Raleigh) All three! They are good components of an answer! The fact that schools are encouraged/prompted to build on strength is an important issue; the connection with business and more generally looking outwards; to have a deliberate management plan which is focusing on improvement not only in that specialist subject but how that subject is going to contribute to improvement across the board; having such a plan and having targets; an expectation that that plan is reviewed rigorously; and an expectation that practice is spread deliberately. All that is extremely helpful and is a prompt for school improvement and you can see elements of those characteristics of improvement programme in other activities that the Government have promoted. So, it is a combination of those elements. There is no question but that the funding is helpful, although it is a complicated picture when you take into account the basic funding in schools, so it is not always, so to speak, as much as it looks. If the school's basic funding is pretty low, then what it can do with the additional £123 per pupil is a little more restrictive than elsewhere and that is an important feature. The range of basic funding of the total funding that we looked at among the 56 schools went from £2,000 per pupil to £3,300, which is a big gap. So, the money is important but it plays in within a more complicated picture.

  117. If the specialist programme in its various forms is such an advantage, would you not say, from an Ofsted's point of view, that it is unfair therefore to restrict those advantages to a limited number of schools? There are quite a large number of schools that are turned down for specialist status each year but then perhaps get it a year or two later, and one reason that they are turned down is that there is a limited pot of money. Why not give those advantages to all the schools that could benefit rather than just to a cash limited arrangement?
  (Mr Taylor) That would seem to be a good question to put to the Government.

  Paul Holmes: I have done!

Chairman

  118. Mr Taylor, I do not know if that is not really a cop-out.
  (Mr Taylor) It was a polite way of reminding you of the difficulty.

  119. What are you saying to the Government on that point?
  (Mr Taylor) We have not been asked to give an opinion on whether there should be a universal allocation.


 
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