Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
5 NOVEMBER 2003
MR DAVID
BELL, MR
DAVID TAYLOR,
MR ROBERT
GREEN AND
MR MAURICE
SMITH
Q20 Jonathan Shaw: I would like to
perhaps come to that later. School inspection.
Mr Bell: I have a couple of points
to make. The first thing to say is that inspection, as driven
by legislation, does not just look at the standards attained by
pupils. There are four things that we have to look at in inspection
and this is in legislation: (1) is the standards; (2) is the quality
of education; (3) is the leadership and management; and finally
(4) is the ethos of the school. I think inspection gives you that
rounded picture. Now, as we have said in the strategic plan, there
is a debate to be had in what we are describing as the future
of inspection about how you go about carrying out inspection in
the future because the world is different to the world that first
came into being in 1992 and those are the sorts of questions that
I am sure we would want to look at. I do go back to the point
that I made earlier however and that is that, in the end, inspection
is about holding the education system/the care system to account.
That seems to me to be, as it were, non-negotiable within what
Parliament has asked us to do. Beyond that, how we go about doing
it, what evidence we draw upon, how we deploy our inspections,
when we inspect and how we inspect, all of that seems to me to
be quite properly a matter for attention and I will be talking
much more about that in the consultation paper referred to in
the strategic plan.
Q21 Jonathan Shaw: Can you envisage
a time where there will be a criteria to inspect or not? If we
have so much information available to us about the school's success
or not and then you can use your resources to inspect those schools
that are struggling, those schools that are in serious weakness
and those schools that are in special measures.
Mr Bell: I would make the obvious
but I think important point that that would be for Parliament
to determine. At the moment, that is what Parliament is determined.
Q22 Jonathan Shaw: Mr Bell, I appreciate
that you are playing a straight ball, as you do, but you said
earlier on that you comment on government policy and you say what
works or does not and I am asking you to comment on government
policy in looking to the future.
Mr Bell: I think it could be superficially
attractive to say that all you should ever inspect is where there
is a weakness. One would obviously have to work out how you would
identify that in the first place, but let us assume that you could
identify that. I think personally that that would be a great disservice
to parents and children in all schools because it seems to me
that, for parents in any school, what an Ofsted report provides
is an independent evaluation of how that school is doing. So,
directly to answer your question, I think that inspection and
reporting should stay and I think that is value for money. The
big questions and legitimate questions in the future are, how
do you do it and can you do it differently?
Q23 Mr Chaytor: If I could just follow
on this point about identifying the weaknesses of schools, in
an interview, I think it was responding to the Newcastle University
research, you defended the role of inspection by saying that Ofsted,
over the 10-11 year period, had identified I think it was 1,000
schools in serious weaknesses. My question is, do you not think
that these schools were not known as schools that were struggling?
Was this a great scandal only discovered by Ofsted or had you
asked local education authorities previously, would they not have
produced more or less the same list of 1,000 schools?
Mr Bell: The question is not whether
they were known, the question is what was being done about them.
I think that, in the vast majority of cases, probably local authorities
would have accepted that those schools were struggling and knew
that they were struggling. The reality is that until we had national
inspections from 1992 onwards, there was, I think, a lack of will
to deal with such schools and it seems to me that what the inspection
arrangements did was provide a mechanism to identify those schools
and, alongside the identification, to put into place procedures
that would help those schools to improve.
Mr Taylor: Could I just add that
we do not just inspect schools, we inspect local education authorities.
That programme shone a very fierce spotlight on local authorities
that did not know or were doing nothing about their weak schools.
Since that, the improvement of local authorities has been one
of the major findings of Ofsted inspection. Indeed, I would argue
that, in looking for the things which Ofsted has contributed to
improvement, making LEAs more able to concentrate their support
and challenge role in relation to struggling schools has been
one of our major achievements. The recent round of LEA inspections
has shown that most LEAs are now performing at least satisfactorily,
to go back to our word, and often well in relation to functions
which previously they were failing to deliver. So, I think that
we do have evidence not only that there was a considerable amount
of under-recognition of the extent of the problem at the local
level but also of a failure to tackle it with the resolution which
is now being shown.
Q24 Mr Chaytor: In the last 12 months,
there has been a 35% increase in schools in special measures and
a 30% increase in schools in serious weaknesses. Earlier you said
that even if school performance was declining, Ofsted could be
succeeding. Does it equally follow that, if there is an increase
in schools in special measures and an increase in schools in serious
weaknesses, Ofsted is succeeding?
Mr Bell: We are still talking
about a relatively small percentage of schools overall but I think
that there are one or two issues that we should be concerned about.
For example, the number of schools that have previously been in
serious weaknesses and then have slipped into special measures.
Of course, there was a trend emerging and of course Ofsted was
given new responsibilities to visit all serious weaknesses schools
within about eight months of being so declared to make an initial
judgment about how they were doing. I think that may be one factor
that has contributed to a rise that we have seen. So, there may
be specific factors at play there. I think we would still all
want to express concern however that, even after ten years of
inspection, there are schools that still do slip into special
measures and serious weaknesses and I have to say that there are
times when I look at the paperwork, as I do for all schools in
such a situation, where I do wonder how the school has got into
the state that has been described because you would ask how after
ten years of inspection, after more rigorous managing and after
better identification, this is still happening? I think that remains
a serious question to ask even though it is still a relatively
small percentage of schools overall.
Valerie Davey: I am aware that
this whole area we have started with is crucially important but
there are other specific things that we want to come on to fairly
soon.
Q25 Mr Pollard: All other government
departments are required by the Treasury to include at least one
target for a 2% efficiency improvement each year. You escaped
that net. Do you have efficiency targets and what are they?
Mr Green: We do not escape that
net because we do not negotiate directly with the Treasury, we
negotiate with the DfES. So, our negotiations in that context
are with the Department and, as David said earlier, we are still
in the throes of that process at the moment. Referring back to
the question that was asked earlier about efficiency, the Department
is expecting us to make efficiency savings of at least that order
throughout. We are arguing that there are special factors in some
areas that apply to Ofsted, but that is very much the territory
that we are in. We currently, as the Committee will know, have
a service delivery agreement which does not get into that sort
of detail. We are proposing with the Treasury's and the Department's
agreement that the strategic plan now becomes the place in which
we set out the targets that we should be setting and again, if
there are areas that we need to look at in future versions, then
we can do that.
Q26 Mr Pollard: Looking at the number
of staff, you have 2,520, the Audit Commission is the next highest,
2,437 and everybody else much less than that. You mentioned earlier
that you have benchmarking exercises with other inspectorates
but you did not give any details of that and what the outcome
of the benchmarking was.
Mr Green: We are going to do some
benchmarking insofar as we can. Of course, when you get close
to other inspectorates, everybody is operating in different ways.
The reason for our very large number of staff again, as the Committee
will know, is that it grew essentially from 500 or thereabouts
to 2,500 or a few more absolutely and precisely because of the
link with the Early Years work where we were taking on functions
which local authorities no longer carry on. So, in terms of the
share of the public budget that has gone, it is a transfer to
Ofsted rather than an addition. With that—and other colleagues
will be able to speak more directly about that—we now have
100,000 providers of childcare to inspect with that additional
staffing.
Q27 Mr Pollard: Is it your view that
there has been some benefit from economies of scale of being one
part of one inspectorate now rather than every LEA having their
own?
Mr Smith: There are benefits—
Q28 Mr Pollard: Just an objective
view.
Mr Smith: You asked about the
benefits in terms of economies of scale and there are some benefits
in terms of economy of scale in terms of the services that Robert's
division, the corporate services, if you like, personnel, finance,
IT etc, deliver to the organisation because, with the addition
of the Early Years Directorate, there are broad economies of scale
in terms of those corporate-type services. There are some probably
relatively minor economies of scale in terms of the use of buildings
and premises etc. So, for example, we have eight regional centres
for the Early Years setup which can be used by HMI colleagues
etc, etc. There are probably economies of scale at the senior
management-type level where we have one Director of Strategy and
Resources for the whole of Ofsted and we do not have a sub-director
for Early Years so to speak, whereas if it had been a separate
organisation you would have had a separate person on that salary.
So there are some economies of scale by the Early Years work coming
into Ofsted. What is perhaps even more important is the benefits
in terms of joined-up work as it moves into the more qualitative
area. For example, we are doing a number of projects driven by
the Department in relation to things like the foundation stage
and Birth to Three Matters where we have an economy of skills
because we can draw on different skills within the organisation
which we would not have been able to do before and in some ways
that is perhaps even more important.
Q29 Mr Turner: I have just two questions.
Firstly, merely looking at the number of people you employ is
highly misleading, is it not, because you use a lot of contractors?
What is the full-time equivalent change over the period between
1992 and when you took on Early Years? Secondly, have you looked
at the effectiveness of employing contractors as against directly
employed staff in Early Years, and are you considering perhaps
going over to more direct employment or, alternatively, going
over to more employment of contractors in the Early Years area?
Mr Bell: To take the first question,
we moved pretty well from stable staffing of around 500 really
from the beginning of Ofsted through the 1990s to 2,600 full-time
equivalents now and about 1,800 of those 2,600 are employed on
the Early Years side, so in a sense the major movement was in
Early Years.
Q30 Mr Turner: I am sorry, maybe
I did not make myself clear. You were retaining lots of contractors
who were doing lots of work.
Mr Bell: Indeed, and the pool
of people that were on the roll to carry out inspections under
Section 10 in schools was around 7,000 but now it is about 5,000.
So that is 5,000 separate individuals who are on the inspection
roll to carry out school inspections.
Q31 Mr Turner: Could you say how
many man days, for example, they were working? I am just trying
to contrast the 1,800 employed staff who are presumably working
1,800 years altogether in each year with a rather amorphous number
of contractors, 7,000, who may be doing one day a week or maybe
seven days a week.
Mr Bell: That is the big problem.
Mr Green: I do not know the precise
answer. The number of person days or person years the contracted
inspectors will be working will be a function of the cycle of
school inspections. In the Early Years it was a four year cycle
and now it is a six year cycle, so that will have caused a reduction
in person years. The other factor—and David Taylor will
correct me if there are other factors I am forgetting—will
be the nature of the inspection process. Has that caused more
or less intensive use of inspectors? I am not sure about that,
although I think it has reduced in recent years. So my expectation
would be—and we can certainly do some work on this and let
the Committee have the figures as best we can estimate them—that
the number of person years of contracted inspectors has declined.
Mr Taylor: And if you turn that
into a cash equivalent the obvious third factor is the effect
of a competitive market on pricing. For much of that decade we
watched that unit cost of an inspection reduce as a result of
fierce bidding pressure and competition. That is not something
which we can absolutely control. Nonetheless, if you map that
decade in terms of the total costs of the contracted inspector
system against, say, an inflation index over the same period then
the costs of contracted inspections have actually fallen relative
to what they were in 2003 and we have figures that we could produce
on that.
Mr Bell: The second part of your
question goes to the heart of what we say in the Strategic Plan
under the "Future of Inspection" because I think we
say quite explicitly we want to look at the total inspection resource
available to Ofsted, that is a full-time HMIs, it is the additional
inspectors that we have in occasionally to carry out exercises
or to do inspections in areas like colleges and initial teacher
training, it includes our Section 10 contracted inspectors and
of course it also includes our substantial body of staff in Early
Years. The straight answer to your question is we have not yet
considered in any great detail how we might reconfigure the use
of those different elements of inspection resource, but that is
precisely what we are going to be looking at in the next document
I have referred to because I think it is a really important question
to ask, could you get a different sort of mix, could it become
better value for money if you did it this way, what are the benefits
of having more people in-house, what are the benefits of having
less people in-house and so on. That is absolutely central to
what we are going to be reporting on in the spring.
Q32 Paul Holmes: Just looking at
one particular aspect of Ofsted inspections in terms of taking
account of pupils' special needs and disabilities, the NASUWT
have written to the Committee and said that they are a little
concerned at the emphasis, for example, on you having a role to
play in race equality and inspections and how looking at that
sort of issue might overshadow other issues such as disability
or special needs or gender equality and so forth. Have you any
general comments to make on that?
Mr Bell: Yes, I have. I think
Ofsted led the way amongst inspectorates by putting inclusion
right at the heart of the work that we do. A couple of years ago
we required all inspectors as a condition of continuing registration
to undergo our training on inspecting education inclusion. I think
we did something very important through that exercise and we continue
to do it through inspection and that is we do not say to inspectors
as an add-on to write something about inclusion. What we actually
say to inspectors is that that perspective on inclusion should
go right through the whole of the inspection activity. So I think
it is very important that we do that. The second point I would
make is that the new framework in particular really requires inspectors
to look at what one might describe as the differential performance
of different groups of youngsters. That might be youngsters with
particular disabilities, it might be youngsters from particular
ethnic minority groups, it might be youngsters who for one reason
or another are performing very well or performing poorly. So there
is even greater attention now being given to that in the new inspection
arrangements. On the specific point of race equality, again I
think it is fair to say—and I am sure the CRE would confirm
this—that we were fairly quick off the mark on this in terms
of ensuring that the new inspection framework took account of
the Race Relations Amendment Act, as we were required to do, and
that is a very specific and explicit requirement on inspectors
when they are inspecting to look at racial equality issues.
Mr Taylor: It is important to
focus on the totality of Ofsted's output and not only the school
inspection reports because HMI surveys have probed questions such
as the underachievement of boys. When I first became an HMI 25
years ago one of our most influential reports was on girls in
science and I think it is a long HMI tradition to look at those
questions of inclusion and entitlement for gender, for particular
disabilities and so on and the surveys which we produced on the
achievement of different ethnic groups have been well documented
in this Committee over the years. I think it is therefore a recommendation
of our broad approach that we should combine the sweep of the
Section 10 inspections with these HMI surveys, which is really
where we can quite often get down to the level of detail we need
to analyse, along with the support we now have from the pupil
data that has been referred to in order to find out what is happening
to the groups most at risk. It is a central part of our value
to emphasise inclusions not only through our general inspections
but through reporting on specific surveys.
Q33 Paul Holmes: We had some mention
earlier on about the introduction of value added measures for
schools and David Taylor mentioned earlier that of course one
role of Ofsted is to say where government programmes are not working
or are working in the opposite way to the way in which they were
intended. One issue for people concerned about disability and
special needs is that the schools that tend to do best in league
tables—and Ofsted figures show this—tend to take well
below national averages of children with disabilities and special
needs and some form of selection covert or overt is going on.
Have you any comments to make on that? Is it something they are
going to look at in future reports?
Mr Taylor: I think it links to
the point I was just making actually, which is that increasingly
through the work of our research analysis division we can input
into the system really detailed analysis of the data on individual
pupils and then we can become more subtle and sophisticated in
how we track the progress of those pupils and hence how well schools
with different mixes of pupils are forming. Even as things are
and have been over the last few years, it has been absolutely
central to the inspection process that we contextualise the school
inspection by looking at the prior achievement of pupils, by benchmarking
against schools of a similar kind and hence we do not run the
risk of appearing to think that just because a school is in a
leafy suburb it is automatically a better school. Our lists of
good schools over the years have systematically drawn attention
to the achievement of schools in more disadvantaged areas.
Paul Holmes: I recently visited
a special school in Redruth in Cornwall, an absolutely fantastic
school. They have had two Ofsted inspections which were very good
in general, but they were very incensed about one particular aspect.
This is a school where they take their kids from the age of 4-19.
Most of these kids will never even reach Level 1 because of the
special needs they have got and yet Ofsted were criticising them
because they do not teach them Shakespeare and modern languages.
Is it always appropriate to apply these yardsticks to every school
in every situation?
Q34 Valerie Davey: I think that is
very specific.
Mr Taylor: I think we have been
very much at the vanguard of enabling inspectors to look in detail
at the performance of pupils at the bottom level of achievement
by the use of the "p scales". The training materials
we produced to encourage inspectors to be able to map and record
progress even where it is infinitesimal has been one of our really
important contributions to the evaluation of special educational
needs and I believe we should continue to push for proper and
detailed and subtle ways of evaluating the performance of those
children whose progress is most difficult to measure and recognise.
Valerie Davey: Well done!
Q35 Jonathan Shaw: I want to talk
about the new responsibilities. Mr Bell, you have referred to
the Green Paper Every Child Matters on a couple of occasions
and I will give you an opportunity to talk about that. I would
be interested to hear your thinking about the interface between
your existing inspectors, school inspections, child protection
and children in care. The Green Paper is going to change the world
as we know it at the moment as to how children's services are
delivered and it is going to be your organisation's responsibility
to make sure that that happens.
Mr Bell: There is probably hardly
an inspection system that Ofsted currently runs that will not
be affected by the inspection of children's services and that
is why it is so important this does not just become another weight
and we have to think about it. Clearly if one is going to make
a judgment about the quality of service to children in a particular
area, and that will be our aspiration in the inspection report,
we will want to know what is happening for the very youngest children
so it will impact on our Early Years responsibilities. We currently
carry out inspections of the Connexions service and youth services,
that is going to be encompassed in this and there is a big discussion
to be had about the future of local education authority inspection
because clearly we cannot just continue to do that as though nothing
has changed. Things will change, not least the new requirement
in the Green Paper that local authorities reconfigure their own
delivery of services, so all of that has got to happen and, of
course, school inspection has to be considered. I cannot say to
you we have got it all cracked. We are actually working very hard
on it at the moment and we are working very well with a range
of other inspectorates and there are quite a number of other inspectorates
involved. We are all very mindful of the fact that we need to
get to the judgment about the quality of children's services at
the same time and not just saying let us keep on doing what we
have always done before. There is a tension there because it may
be that in focusing on children's services and in wanting to get
a proper analysis of what is going on there and at the same time
reduce the weight of inspection there may be things that all inspectorates
have done previously that they determine they will no longer do
and that is an important challenge for inspectorates, not just
to add to the weight.
Q36 Jonathan Shaw: Might that be
using the rich data that we have where you can reasonably predict
the outcome of schools' performance and the level that it is teaching
the kids etcetera and you will be focusing on where the need is
greatest, whether that is children living in poverty, whether
it is children at risk, in need, in care and those who we can
reasonably predict are at greatest risk. So you will be doing
a super inspection of a whole LEA area, looking at those particular
points, at the interface between the health visitors, the social
workers and where these kids fall between the gap. Do you think
that will be the future for Ofsted rather than school inspection,
school inspection, school inspection on an individual basis?
Mr Bell: The commission that Ofsted
has been given to develop the inspection arrangements has asked
us to look at universal provision and specialist and targeted
provision. I think that is quite an important point because if
you say let us just focus on the most vulnerable children, the
children who are at risk, you may fail to see the extent to which
universal services are meeting the needs of those children. Also,
I think if one says you could imagine school or individual institutional
inspections just evolving or perhaps disappearing because what
you would be looking at is the interface, again I would ask the
question how will we know what some of those individual institutions
are doing, whether they are children's homes or schools or day
care providers? If we do not know what each of those are doing
can we really then say with absolute certainty that we know what
children's services are like in an area? Going back to your opening
comment, we will make very substantial use of the data we already
have and I think that will certainly help us in terms of looking
at where we focus our effort. I can imagine, for example, going
to an area, carrying out a children's services inspection, doing
the universal bit, if I can put it that way, knowing from the
data you have in advance that there is a huge issue in relation
to children in care or there is a huge issue about the number
of children who appear not to be getting special services. The
only other point I would make is do not forget that children's
services is not simply a matter of services delivered by local
government. That is going to be one of the interesting issues
for us. Health, the justice system, the private sector, it will
be interesting to see how we track our way through all of that.
Q37 Jonathan Shaw: I know local authorities
are meeting up and down the country to look at how they are going
to shape their services and announcements from you as to how you
are going to inspect them will certainly influence what framework
is set up. You are in a very influential position. Not only is
the empire growing but its influence is becoming even more dominant.
Mr Bell: I am very aware of that
and we are working to a timetable to try to have our first consultation
papers out probably in the spring of next year. We are working
to quite a tight deadline. If we are looking at the new financial
year beginning April 2005, there is a lot to do to get all of
this into place because at the same time as we are being asked
to provide a new integrated framework for children's services
we have also been asked to ensure that there is still the capacity
to make what one would describe as single service judgments about
local authority services. So the assumption will be that we make
a judgement about children's services but continue to make a separate
judgment about education services, etcetera.
Valerie Davey: The other aspect
that I was pleased to see you make some reference to recently
is out of school children, that is those children who still fall
between all these stools. I think we need to move on. I think
I would like to come to Helen now who wants to talk about the
burden of inspection in a different context.
Q38 Helen Jones: I want to talk about
the mechanics of inspection as well as the burden of it. We have
heard representations continually on this Committee from teachers
who believe that the inspection process itself puts an additional
burden on them. I know that Ofsted has said quite frequently they
need not do more than the normal level of preparation. I want
to ask you two things about that. Firstly, what are you doing
as an organisation in regard to the notice you give of inspections?
Would it not minimise the impact on some teachers with heads who
want to rewrite all their policies the week before if you gave
even less notice of an inspection or even did unannounced inspections
as well as helping you to get a better snapshot of what is going
on in the school? What training are your inspectors given on looking
at the policies in place in the school when they do inspect and
working out how long they have actually been in place and been
running?
Mr Bell: At the moment the notice
period is somewhere between 6 and 10 weeks and that is constrained
by the requirement for contracting and principally for consultation
in advance with both parents and governors. Those are statutory
requirements on us at the moment. I think a number of people made
the point would it not be better to have a shorter period of notice
and that may be something that we could look at as part of our
consultation paper in the autumn. There is an argument that says
that if the notice period was much shorter there would be much
less incentive to go through a whole lot of elaborate preparation.
We will continue to express some frustration at that elaborate
preparation despite all the signals being given to schools about
not preparing in advance and the actual list of documents we ask
for in advance. I think it is about half a dozen things we ask
for and one of those things is a timetable and another is a map
of the school. We really do not overburden people in advance.
I have always said to head teachers that there is a shared responsibility
for this. There is a responsibility on Ofsted to make sure that
it minimises the burdens in advance and tries to minimise the
burdensome nature of the process, but I do think there is a responsibility
on school leaders as well. It is their responsibility in a sense
not to charge around and get everyone to do all that additional
preparation. They have to have the confidence to stick with what
they are doing, to provide what only Ofsted requires and not get
into all kinds of elaborate preparation and I have to say that
the picture does vary from school to school. You go to some schools
and the staff will say to you, "We know the inspection is
coming, but that's fine, we've tweaked a few things," then
you go to other schools and there is a sense of panic that grips
them there.
Mr Taylor: I am sure you will
know that all our inspectors, both leading inspectors and team
members, were trained in the new inspection framework which started
in September. If you are looking at the changes which that new
framework embodies, at the heart of those are strengthening the
relationship between self-evaluation and inspection such that
inspectors go into the school with the clearest possible analysis
both of the context and history of the school from the head teacher's
own statement, which is the self-evaluation input into the inspection.
The visits to the school by the lead inspector are designed to
enable that inspector to understand and share with the rest of
the team those contextual factors about the length of time policies
have been in place, about the length of time the head has been
in post and significant changes in the catchment and the intake
and the exam results and so on. I know the question of self-evaluation
has been raised with you. We believe that we are working towards
a much more integrated and better articulated relationship between
what the schools tell the inspectors and what the inspectors tell
the schools.
Q39 Helen Jones: I want to ask you
about the make up of your inspection teams as well. Now that lay
inspectors can lead inspection teams, have you provided any extra
training for those inspectors leading the teams? Can you justify
to me a lay inspector being the lead inspector in a school inspection
whereas in a health inspection we would not adopt the same kind
of policy? I might like to inspect a brain surgeon's work but
I am probably not qualified to do so. I would be interested in
your views on that.
Mr Bell: The most important point
to make is that anyone who is going to become an inspector leading
an inspection has to undergo training. So it is not as though
the person who is an inspector can just lead an inspection, there
is a supplementary element to the training and I think that is
very important. There has been an important principle really from
the beginning of the inspection process and that is that the inspectors
bring a distinctive perspective to the work of the inspection
team, but they are there in their own right as inspectors. I think
our view was that they should also have the right to additional
training to become registered inspectors. I think to argue against
that almost is in principle to argue against the contribution
that they can make to inspection. The other point I would make
is that some lay inspectors are quite highly experienced now in
school inspection. I know that raises another set of issues about
when do you stop becoming a lay inspector if you are very experienced
in inspection. I think the very important principle and the reassuring
point is that anyone who leads school inspections has to be properly
trained for the task.
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