Conclusions and recommendations
1. In consultation with parents and schools,
the Department should consider the best ways to make information
on the performance of secondary schools available to parents.
Not all parents will be aware of the full range of different sources
of information on the performance of schools, and many parents
will not have ready access to the Department's and Ofsted's web-sites.
Parents need to know what information is available, how it can
help them, and how to get the information they decide they want.
2. Information available for parents should
include measures of the performance of secondary schools that
take account of the influence of important external factors.
Adjusting academic achievement for the influence of external factors
can have a substantial effect on reported school performance.
When this was done, some schools moved from the bottom to the
top 20%. The Department should further develop the work carried
out by the National Audit Office, and make publicly available
the results for all schools for the 2004-05 academic year.
3. The Department should identify which external
factors have a substantial effect on academic achievement, and
take them into account when assessing and reporting school performance.
The Department is already reporting indicators that adjust academic
achievement for pupils' prior academic achievement. It should
analyse which other external factors have a substantial influence
and consider whether or not they should also be taken into account
and the relevant data collected.
4. Social and economic deprivation should
be taken into account in assessing the performance of schools.
Eligibility for free school meals can
be shown to be strongly correlated with educational disadvantage.
But it is only a partial measure of economic and social deprivation.
The Department should examine how further indicators might be
developed, for example using data on families in receipt of Income
Support or the Working Families Tax Credit.
5. Performance measures adjusted for external
factors, as well as measures of raw academic achievement, can
assist in developing and evaluating policies for secondary education.
Performance measures adjusted for external factors are useful
in judging the impact of educational policies and initiatives
on school performance, because they exclude the factors outside
the control of schools. Identifying key sources of educational
disadvantage can also help policy-makers find solutions for issues
that schools themselves cannot be expected to solve.
6. Adjusted performance measures also show
that specialist schools, faith schools, beacon schools and single
sex schools do better than average. The
strengths of these schools, such as a strong set of values and
ethos, should be identified by the Department and promoted across
the school sector.
7. Ofsted should set out in inspection reports
where a school ranks in terms of academic achievement before and
after taking account of the influence of external factors.
Ofsted's inspections reports are an important source of information
for parents and schools, and including this data would give a
more rounded view of the quality of education provided.
8. Ofsted should use the adjusted information
to help underpin its advice to schools on how their approach to
education can be best matched to pupils from different backgrounds.
The adjusted data enable those schools
that are raising the achievements of the more educationally disadvantaged
pupils to be readily identified. Through its inspections, Ofsted
is well placed to look behind the data to explore the reasons
for good performance, and to advise schools with pupils from similar
backgrounds that, according to the adjusted data, are not doing
so well.
9. Ofsted has been inspecting schools for
10 years, during which more than 1000 schools have been put in
special measures. But over this period
the characteristics of a good school have become increasingly
well understood. The Department should review why a significant
number of schools are nevertheless not up to an acceptable level
of performance.
10. The Department or Ofsted should identify
and disseminate widely good practice on how the transition from
primary to secondary education can be smoothly achieved without
detriment to pupils' education. Secondary
schools seek to smooth the transition from primary to secondary
schooling, for example by developing links with feeder primary
schools, and there is a role for the Department or Ofsted to identify
and disseminate good practice.
11. The Department should make the funding
arrangements for schools simpler, fairer and more transparent.
The number and complexity of funding streams
for schools is unacceptably high and a recipe for confusion. Funding
of schools for the 2003-04 academic year is also likely to have
an adverse impact on the performance of an unknown number of schools.
There has also been much complaint regarding the lack of certainty
about funds from one year to the next, and whether resources have
been distributed according to need.
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