Memorandum submitted by the General Teaching
Council (GTC) (OFS 10)
SUMMARY
— The General Teaching Council for
England (GTC) has generally welcomed the thrust of Ofsted's proposals
for a more streamlined inspection system with shorter, more focused,
external reviews within the context of a more developed model
of self-assessment and Ofsted's upgrading of the role of school
self-assessment.
— The GTC welcomes Ofsted's acknowledgement
of the need for an increased "intelligent accountability".
— The GTC believes that SSE is as much
about the need for schools to learn and develop professionally
as the need for public accountability.
— Schools and teachers will need to
develop trust in the new Ofsted role as more of a school development
partner.
— Teachers and headteachers must play
a greater role in the inspection arrangements if the self-evaluation
and external validation processes are to engage teachers more
fully and professional learning and development is to take place.
— The GTC welcomes Ofsted's emphasis
on reports being brief and rooted in the context of the school's
self-evaluation (SSE) and that the concluding summary should include
"the overall contribution that services provided by the school
make to the wider community".
— Shorter, more focused inspections
will result in greater reliance on the school's own evaluation
of the effectiveness of its teaching and less dependence upon
direct teacher observation. Greater responsibility for performance
management in schools also has implications for teacher time and
funding which need to be taken into account.
SOURCE MATERIAL
This memorandum draws on the following sources:
— GTC Response to the Consultation
Paper Ofsted: The Future of Inspection, April 2004.
— Accountability and School Self-Evaluation:
Advice to the Secretary of State and Others, GTC, July 2004.
— Evidence from the GTC's Collaborative
Forum on Future Accountability and School Self-Evaluation Issues.
A summary of the findings of the Forum is attached at Appendix
2.
INTRODUCTION
1. The General Teaching Council for England
(GTC) is the independent professional body for the teaching profession.
Its main duties are to regulate the teaching profession and to
advise the Secretary of State on a range of issues that concern
teaching and learning. The Council acts in the public interest
to contribute to raising the standards of teaching and learning.
2. Through its responsibilities for safeguarding
professional competence and conduct the GTC is itself a key player
in the accountability framework. This, coupled with the GTC's
continuing work with Ofsted and other education stakeholders,
makes the Council well positioned to comment on the work of Ofsted
via this memorandum, which we hope will be of assistance to the
Committee. The GTC would be pleased to supplement this memorandum
with oral evidence to the Committee should this be required.
BACKGROUND
3. The GTC responded to the Ofsted consultation
on the future of inspection in April 2004. The GTC's response
generally welcomed the thrust of Ofsted's proposals for a more
streamlined inspection system with shorter, more focused external
reviews within the context of a more developed model of self-assessment.
The GTC has also made it clear in its response to the Ofsted consultation
and its advice to the Secretary of State that the Council was
interested in developing and promoting the teaching profession's
capacity for self-evaluation and improvement, which will raise
standards and raise the status of the profession.
OVERVIEW
4. GTC's starting point is its commitment
to a three-stage model of school self-evaluation (SSE) involving:
— rigorous internal self-assessment
involving all stakeholders;
— monitoring of and support for the
processes of self-review by external advisers;
— external audit and quality assurance.
5. The GTC has welcomed Ofsted's upgrading
of the role of school self-assessment. In particular, the GTC
commended the references in the consultation document to inspection
needing to complement school improvement planning and self-assessment
and Ofsted's wish "explicitly to share the responsibility
for improving all educational settings in a way we have not done
up to now." If this intention is carried through it will
do much to build bridges with schools, which have often criticised
Ofsted for not supporting them sufficiently in addressing the
improvements that inspection had identified as necessary.
6. The GTC welcomes Ofsted's acknowledgement
of the need for an increased "intelligent accountability",
a phrase also used by David Miliband in his North of England speech
in 8 January 2004 which, as Ofsted expresses it, would "trust
schools more and . . . draw on the professionalism of teachers."
7. The New Relationship with Schools (NRwS),
with the new Ofsted model it proposes, is significant as it has
stepped much nearer the situation where the school's self-evaluation
is the basis of its external evaluation, with accountability drivers
represented by the "Single Conversation", the new SSE
form and the School Profile. The GTC suggests that the Select
Committee seek more detail on how Ofsted intends to move forward
on this change of role. For instance, the emphasis on the new
SSE form being developed to replace the S4 through Ofsted pilots
gives the impression of the form's externally driving the evaluation
processes rather than being a useful summative outcome.
8. The GTC believes that SSE is as much
about the need for schools to learn and develop professionally
as the need for public accountability. In its advice to the Secretary
of State the GTC has emphasised that the change to an enhanced
model of SSE must be supported by a Government commitment to professional
development and capacity building in schools. The need to promote
and further engage teachers' professional judgement in school
evaluation processes is a critical opportunity for Ofsted to begin
to address a situation it identified in its consultation where
some schools have not tackled specific performance weaknesses
after two inspections.
CULTURAL CHANGE
9. After a decade of "high stake"
Ofsted inspections and a legacy of the public identification of
schools' shortcomings, schools and teachers will need to develop
trust in the new Ofsted role as more of a school development partner.
The GTC welcomes Ofsted's acknowledgement of the need for an increased
"intelligent accountability", headteachers on the GTC's
Collaborative Forum and teachers on GTC's Council have voiced
concerns that the short notice proposals could result in schools'
having the sense of being on permanent standby.
10. Ofsted will need to train its new teams
to carry out their role in the context of a school's self-assessment
being their starting point. Schools and teachers will also need
considerable preparation for the proposed changes. If linking
self-assessment to inspection inhibits the honesty of the self-assessment
process it will undo the positive outcomes that professionally
conducted processes can achieve.
11. The DfES needs to address the potential
for school and teacher development which evaluative activity will
create. Evidence from the eight GTC teacher focus groups in 2003
suggests the majority had experienced no SSE related professional
development.
MEMBERSHIP OF
INSPECTION TEAMS
12. A key issue for the cultural change
needed around the role of Ofsted is the need to widen the membership
of Ofsted teams. The GTC supports greater HMI involvement in inspection
teams and the need to reconsider the lay role in school inspection.
13. The GTC believes teachers and headteachers
must play a greater role in the inspection arrangements if the
self-evaluation and external validation processes are to engage
teachers more fully, and professional learning and development
is to take place. The GTC supports teacher involvement in Ofsted
inspections on a secondment basis to avoid the practical problems
of teacher supply and has called on Ofsted to work with the GTC,
the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) and other key
partners to promote the involvement of teachers in inspection
teams. This professional experience, where teachers engage in
the process of the external evaluation of the self-evaluation
carried out by another institution and its staff, should be fully
recognised and accredited.
14. The GTC also believes there should be
a greater degree of specialism among members of the inspection
teams to accommodate the approach to working recommended by Every
Child Matters and enacted by the Children Bill.
IMPLICATIONS FOR
SCHOOL SELF-EVALUATION
15. While the full implications for the
kind of SSE to be carried out in the context of a changed Ofsted
role are not yet clear and will need further development, one
obvious implication concerns schools' performance management processes.
16. Shorter, more focused inspections will
result in greater reliance on the school's own evaluation of the
effectiveness of its teaching and less dependence upon direct
teacher observation. Greater responsibility for performance management
in schools also has implications for teacher time and funding
which need to be taken into account. There needs to be greater
clarity on which criteria will be used to select a sample of teaching.
17. It is the GTC's firm belief that the
observation of teaching and learning is a vital component of professional
and peer learning and enquiry and is not merely a mechanism to
serve the accountability process.
18. Another implication is the importance
of stakeholder evidence, as shorter inspections allow less time
for direct contact of the team with parents and governors, both
of whom have distinct perspectives to contribute to the way that
the school is working and ways in which improvements can be made.
The GTC supports the idea that the strength of a stakeholder model
is its recognition that "different people think different
things are important to evaluate" (Saunders 1999).
19. The GTC is also committed to the role
of pupils as stakeholders. Schools' management of stakeholder
perspectives is a crucial aspect of self-evaluation and of a sense
of ownership in the school that is broader than that belonging
to professionals.
20. The GTC, in its advice on Accountability
and School Self-Evaluation to the Secretary of State, recommended
that the Government use the NRwS agenda to promote new opportunities
to develop a dynamic accountability relationship with their stakeholders,
particularly pupils and parents.
REPORTS
21. The GTC welcomes Ofsted's emphasis on
reports being brief and rooted in the context of the school's
self-evaluation and that the concluding summary should include
"the overall contribution that services provided by the school
make to the wider community". The GTC believes that Ofsted
should consult on a revised appeals system for schools to challenge
the judgement of inspection teams if they do disagree with them.
22. The GTC, in its advice to the Secretary
of State, welcomed the DfES's efforts to provide a series of national
frameworks to ensure that data is available and collected in a
simple and more streamlined way. The GTC recommended that the
experience of data management in the NRwS/LEAs should be widely
disseminated and should provide the evidence for the kind of professional
development that schools will need to ensure that they use data
to support the achievement of all their pupils.
23. The GTC agrees with the findings of
the House of Commons Public Administration Committee report On
Target that the DfES should review the information available
on schools and pupils for parents and the wider public including
the role of performance tables.
COORDINATED APPROACH
TO INSPECTION
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24. The GTC welcomes Ofsted's commitment
to an integrated approach to inspection across different services
and to working with other inspectorates. In its response to Every
Child Matters, the GTC particularly focused on the inspection
of Children's Trusts, the need to ensure that respective inspection
agendas are in alignment and that a common language is developed
across different professions in order to promote a seamless service
for children.
25. The GTC's collaborative forum took evidence
from the New Learning Conversation (NLC) Programme and the DfES
Innovation Unit concerning the potential for self-evaluation through
cross-institutional collaborations and networks. Those schools
already working collaboratively are well positioned to share and
develop evaluative practice within the new children's services
agenda.
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