Select Committee on Public Accounts Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)

Mr David Normington, Mr Peter Wanless, Mr David Bell, examined.

  Q20 Chairman: Are all schools getting a fair distribution of resources in your view?

  Mr Normington: I would not dream of saying that at the moment. We are trying to make it fairer. A lot of the difficulties we got into last year were because a new formula was introduced which tried to distribute the money more fairly according to need and that change caused a lot of the problems that we got into. I would not dream of saying every school is getting its fair share.

  Q21 Mr Williams: Mr Normington, I must say I find this Report intensely depressing. If I read it correctly it means you are allocating resources according to criteria which is misleading, schools are being closed or threatened with closure that turn out to have better than average performance and careers are being destroyed all on the basis of a fallacious set of statistics. If we take paragraph 1.15—remember you signed up to this Report—"performance tables of academic achievement are of only limited use in assessing a school's performance . . ." Earlier in that paragraph it makes the point, "information in these tables is only of limited value in comparing the performance of different schools and different types of schools. This is because they take no account of factors external to a school, some of which can have a significant influence". And it then goes on to list them. As far as I gather you did not dissent from that paragraph in the Report, is that correct?

  Mr Normington: We signed up to the Report, yes.

  Q22 Mr Williams: You signed up to it, yes. Are you not almost ashamed to be sitting there defending a bunch of statistics that have been virtually discarded in one paragraph? Can we take it a stage further then, let us go and look—

  Mr Normington: For the record, I am not ashamed to be sitting here because I would like to explain what we are trying to do to improve the situation, and I will in a minute.

  Q23 Mr Williams: If we look at page 21, "Ofsted assessments of schools were more closely related to the unadjusted academic achievements of pupils than to academic achievement adjusted for the influence of external factors". That is very serious, is it not?

  Mr Normington: May I answer this, the first thing to say is that we have been trying over a number of years as a result of decisions taken by the Government in 1998 to improve the quality of information which is available to parents in the performance tables.

  Q24 Mr Williams: I understand that. With respect, you signed up to this, which indicated the inadequacy of the situation as it is represented in this Report. I know what changes you have undertaken, they are limited. In says in paragraph 2.26, "Decisions to place a school in special measures might also be influenced more by the unadjusted academic achievements of pupils rather than achievement adjusted for the influence of external schools."

  Mr Normington: Let me say two things, the comment about the limited value of previous information is a comment on the history of this and where it came from and that is why we introduced a broader range of measures of school performance, the data for which underlies this Report. It is a big improvement since 1998 and it does add some very important information to how a school is performing. Secondly, we do not judge failing schools on just one measure, we judge them on a whole range of measures, one of which is an Ofsted inspection of the school, which includes sampling the teaching in that school. Schools are not closed down on the basis of raw data.

  Q25 Mr Williams: Ofsted is a waste of the money you are spending on it. Look at the next sentence, "Of the 72 schools that were in special measures at some stage during 2001-02, 78% were ranked more highly at Key Stage 3, and 65% were ranked more highly at GCSE level, after measures of academic achievement had been adjusted". They were put under special measures. What happened? I reckon on the basis of this Report you are subject to possible legal action for what you have done to the careers of some teachers and some heads.

  Mr Normington: The decision on whether a school goes into special measures is taken by Ofsted, perhaps I can get Mr Bell to explain the basis on which that decision is taken.

  Mr Bell: It is a very important point to make that any judgment that a registered inspector makes about special measures is not simply on one measure alone. Our guidance is very clear, it actually lists a range of factors that inspectors have to consider. Obviously the standards achieved by the pupils is one factor, so is the progress made by the pupils, so is the quality of teaching, so is the quality of leadership and management, so is the quality of governance. I know because I have to effectively sign off all decisions that go into special measures. They do not go into special measures because of one single factor.

  Q26 Mr Williams: No one is saying it is one single factor.

  Mr Bell: The degree of adjustment you were describing suggested it was because of the academic achievement alone that schools were put into special measures.

  Q27 Mr Williams: I said it is because of internal factors only. Can you turn to page 19 and look at the question that might lead to the allocation of resources. Look at figure 8 on page 19, at Key Stage 3 this ranks educational authorities, and Islington is ranked 133rd in the country but when it is adjusted for external factors it becomes 9th. If you look at the GCSE ranking Islington is the 138th on academic achievement and 51st on external factors; Lambeth is 114th and it becomes 16th; Southwark 139th and it becomes 31st yet your Department has been making the allocation of resources on the basis of a record prepared by your department, has it not?

  Mr Normington: We do not allocate money mainly on the performance of an area, the allocation of money are mainly made on a range of factors in that area, including social need, including the cost of employing teachers and a number of other factors.

  Q28 Mr Williams: In that case why do you not have Education Action Zones?

  Mr Normington: Education Action Zones focus activity on and some money on areas of—

  Q29 Mr Williams: There we are.

  Mr Normington: The focus is on areas of deprivation and underperformance.

  Q30 Mr Williams: Measured by which criteria?

  Mr Normington: You are only looking here at one measure, which is the measure of how much a school or an area adds value to pupils between 11 to 14 and 14 to 16. That is not enough in terms of a judgment you should make about a school or an area. You should also make a judgment about the absolute performance that is being achieved. A school can add a lot of value but can still achieve very poor results. You have to look at both sets of measures. Some schools add a lot more value than others.

  Q31 Mr Williams: In that case if you look at selective schools in fact interestingly although they have the best academic results overall that is because they are selecting the best to begin with. In terms of additional, which you just said we have to take into account, what it says here is that post Key Stage 3 and GCSE these schools are of particular benefit to pupils who have a relatively low level of prior academic achievement. The prime achievers have already been taken, they are doing well at the intermediate level but the fact of the matter is our whole concept of an achievement hierarchy in schools and in areas in the country is absolute nonsense on the basis of this Report. On the basis of the information here schools are being damned, teachers are being damned and local education authorities are getting resources allocated.

  Mr Normington: I do not accept that. I do not accept that.

  Q32 Mr Steinberg: I want to carry on where Mr Williams left off, perhaps not as vigorous because he is a better performer, I want to make the same point, this Report substantiates what many of us have been saying for 15 years while your Department, your predecessors have totally ignored us and said that we were talking a load of rubbish. How much influence did Mr Woodhead have on the system that there is in place today?

  Mr Normington: May I just answer a little of that. Clearly I work for the Government that is in power at the time and they decide what the content of the material should be. This Government in 1998 decided that it should do this kind of analysis so that it was possible to have a more rounded view of what a school achieved. I have been a great proponent of improving the quality of the data between 1998 and 2003. I personally put a lot of effort into making sure that is better data. I think we have a much more rounded picture but you should never take one measure of performance.

  Q33 Mr Steinberg: When did league tables come into existence?

  Mr Normington: Sometime in the earlier 90s.

  Q34 Mr Steinberg: I think it was in 1988.

  Mr Normington: I do not know precisely.

  Q35 Mr Steinberg: Labour opposition at the time was vehemently opposed to it but they soon change their mind when they got into power in 1997. Do you think I was right to ask for Woodhead's resignation in 1997?

  Mr Normington: I am not going to the comment on that.

  Q36 Mr Steinberg: I think you should. You have not answered the question, what was the influence of Woodhead to the whole of Ofsted, was he a hindrance or a help as far as education standards have been concerned?

  Mr Normington: In terms of performance tables the decision about performance tables is taken by the Government not by the Chief Inspector.

  Q37 Mr Steinberg: I might disagree with you on that.

  Mr Normington: We do all of the data collection and we do all of the publication.

  Q38 Mr Steinberg: I believe that Ofsted and HMIs are the ones that made the recommendations to Government who are laymen and we look to experts such as Mr Bell to be able to give us the right data and the right information. I want to know, was Woodhead a hindrance or a help in terms of where we are today?

  Mr Bell: I do not comment on my predecessors, every chief inspector does the job they see sit fit. Although we provide advice to the Department on a whole range of issue we do not provide advice on the content of performance table because as Mr Normington said that is a matter for ministers advised by officials.

  Q39 Mr Steinberg: If I remember rightly, my recollection that was Woodhead believed there was no such thing as external factors and he destroyed some teachers because of that, schools that were in deprivation areas, where teachers had the most bloody appalling task to do, Woodhead said that had nothing to do with the results that kids were actually achieving. You still have not changed much since those days all that you do is depend upon raw scores to do your league tables? Mr Normington you said we sometime compare similar schools, what is a similar school? How do compare a similar schools, how do you compare what is a similar school and what is not a similar, every school is unique?

  Mr Normington: The performance tables that we now publish have five different measures which try to put raw scores, the absolute results of GCSEs in context and which also for the first time, because we have produced this information, enable us to look at the performance over time of the value-added by pupils from 11 to 14 and 14 to 16. That is a big step in the direction of enabling us to take a more rounded view of schools.


 
previous page contents next page

House of Commons home page Parliament home page House of Lords home page search page enquiries index

© Parliamentary copyright 2004
Prepared 5 May 2004