Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
MR DAVID
BELL, MRS
MIRIAM ROSEN,
MR ROBERT
GREEN, MR
MAURICE SMITH
AND MR
JONATHAN THOMPSON
16 MARCH 2005
Q20 Helen Jones: There are, but you said,
for instance, with schools in special measures, 60% of those turn
around within two years, and I have seen in my own constituency
a school with a very good head and a lot of local authority support
that was turned around and became an excellent school, I have
to say. That means that 40% are not. What is going wrong? If we
learn what is going wrong in those 40% it might give some guidance
as to how we can work on making all schools improve?
Mr Bell: I think the kind of two-year
window, if I can put it that way, is an important driver: because
if you assume that a school has gone into special measures because
it has been failing to offer an acceptable standard of education,
it seems to me entirely appropriate to say there should be at
least a review point after a couple of years. The reality is,
of course—I am sure you would accept this—that in
the main primary schools would tend to come out of special measures
more quickly than secondary schools. Secondary schools often would
be more complex institutions. I would want to see all schools
improving rapidly and coming out of special measures as soon as
possible. I am not sure that the fact that some do not come out
as soon as others is simply a function of the quality of the self-evaluation.
Often it can be a function of the problems they have faced. I
think that does beg the question, and I have made this point before,
Chairman, 12 years into the Ofsted inspection system, even though
we have the numbers very small in special measures, it is still
rather disconcerting to go to some schools and find them in a
pretty dire state, because it does beg the question what has happened
and what has been happening? I think one of the other drivers
on the back of the new inspection system is to ensure that at
least the gap between the inspection is not as long as it has
been previously.
Q21 Helen Jones: One final question.
Is there not a tension between the Government's attempts to give
more freedom to individual schools and making sure that schools
take the kind of actions that we would all want to see where they
are failing to bring them up to scratch?
Mr Bell: Yes.
Q22 Helen Jones: I think one of the things
that concerns this Committee is what will happen to the role of
local authorities in this: because they have been, in many areas,
major forces in helping to turn schools around when they are in
special measures or helping schools that were not in special measures
but needed to improve. Are you confident that the two things can
fit together, that you can get that improvement with the extra
attendance?
Mr Bell: It is very interesting.
We have already talked about the 1988 Act, and, of course, one
of the great benefits of the 1988 Education Reform Act was giving
a much higher degree of autonomy to individual schools. When we
look back now it is rather curious to think that all these decisions,
including the colour of the window frames, was determined at the
Town Hall. It does seem right that schools should in the main
have responsibility for leading and managing themselves and bringing
about improvement. The best schools, of course, interestingly,
often are schools that do not work in isolation, because they
are often very open to all kinds of influences, not just from
LEAs, it has to be said, and sometimes very often not from LEAs,
but from a variety of places they are open to influences. I think,
and this is the evidence, is it not, the vast majority of schools
in the main get by largely by using their own capacity to improve
drawing upon expertise as they require it from outside, and we
are talking about a relatively small minority that do not have
that capacity to do so. I think the constant challenge is to find
ways to intervene in those schools early enough so that we do
not get to a position where Ofsted is coming in and saying, "This
school is now failing to provide an acceptable standard of education."
I think it is fair to say from the back of our early inspection
evidence that this is an area in which in the main local authorities
do well, the identification of schools in different categories,
supporting schools in advance of inspection and, where they go
into special measures, providing solid support. I think this is
done usually pretty well. As I say, I would not pretend always.
Sometimes I get in front of me papers about schools—as I
do with all schools that go into special measures—and I
do think, "Oh my goodness, how has it got to this stage before
it is Ofsted that has picked it up?"
Q23 Chairman: Chief Inspector, only in
answer to that very last question did you say something positive
about the local education authority role. If you remember the
last time you were in front of this Committee, we said how do
you look at systemic failure in a local education authority area
when reports from Ofsted go back to the school and the governors
but do not go to the local education authority, so the LEA has
quite a lot of difficulty facing up when you get systemic failure
across a number of schools. Early on you did say it rests with
the school itself to sort itself out, in answer to Paul Holmes.
I wonder, how do you view—. We had the informal meeting
with the LGA (Local Government Association) who said there are
no longer any local education authorities with the Children Act
and direct funding of schools. There are local authorities with
responsibilities for children, but there is no local education
authority. Does that change your relationship now? You are charged
with inspecting local education authorities. If they do not exist,
what are you going to be inspecting?
Mr Bell: It is a very interesting
point. We were here in November, I think, talking about the inspection
of children's services, and we made the point that the all encompassing
LEA inspection that we have all known and loved, as it were, is
not going to be there in the future, but again I think it is a
natural evolution. I am not sure actually about reporting on the
quality of grounds maintenance and those sorts of things needs
to be done at a national level the way it was the first time,
because there were clearly some failures in the services provided
by authorities to schools, but, of course, the schools have got
greater and greater autonomy to choose whether to purchase those
services. In one sense it is a bit of an irrelevance finding out
about those services through a national inspection system. The
Children's Services Inspection, however, does and will continue
to focus on these crucial elements of educational performance,
which includes, of course, the performance of schools and the
work that local authorities do to support schools. I think, at
the same time as local authorities (and I use the terminology
advisedly, as you are, Chairman) are changing their role, I think
it is only right that the inspection system changes accordingly.
As far as the more general point is concerned about "It is
the first time you have mentioned LEAs", we have had this
debate around this table before, have we not, that LEAs have this
at times rather uneasy role in the system, and that is a fact.
They have an uneasy position in the system, but they have certain
statutory responsibilities in relation to improvement. At the
same time the vast majority of the decisions are made at the local
level, and probably the best of the local authorities now are
those that are using the power of influence, rather than the influence
of power, as it were, but actually the powers left to local authorities
are relatively limited so they have to then use their influence
to have impact on schools; but we should not be ashamed, and we
should not be afraid to say that the majority of schools can do
this for themselves. Surely that is a great thing to say. The
majority of local schools get on with the job of improvement,
they draw upon support as they need it. They do not need somebody
from above, as it were, holding their hands.
Q24 Chairman: Chief Inspector, I have
visited a lot of schools, most of this Committee visit a lot of
schools, and consistently you hear that when a school has problems
they look to the advisory service at their local education authority
for substantial help to get that improvement. Are you saying that
is now going to disappear and you want more than that disappearance?
Mr Bell: No, I am not. I am saying
precisely in a sense what you are saying. Where that help is required
that should be available, and in the vast majority of local authorities
it is available. What I would not mean—I am not sure it
is there to mean—is a huge infrastructure which suggests
that somehow the expertise about all aspects of school leadership
and management resides elsewhere other than the school. I think
that is quite inappropriate, but I do think there needs to be
a mechanism elsewhere in the system to help where there are difficulties.
Again, for a lot of the local authorities we are looking at, that
is not proving to be a problem. They will, however, say to you
the danger can be that you end up only dealing with the failure
and you do not get a chance, as it were, to influence the broader
range of schools; but again the best authorities we see tap into
that expertise in the best of schools and make sure that it is
available, not just to them and the local authority officers and
members but also to other schools in their area.
Q25 Helen Jones: If there is a school
which a local authority sees as being in difficulties or heading
for difficulties, shall we say, and the school does not want that
intervention, there is no way of influencing it in the new system
really until it has failed. Is that not too late? We want to stop
them failing the first place, do we not?
Mr Bell: I think the reality is
in a very small number of cases exactly as you describe. Some
schools are highly resistant, even though from outside it looks
as if they are going downhill. Often, interestingly, parents feel
that same sense of frustration and often will write to me about
that. Yes, there are occasion when that happens, there is no doubt
there are occasions when that happens, but I would be very nervous
to have a hugely disproportionate system established just for
the very small number of schools where that applies. I think,
again, without in a sense putting all the eggs into the Ofsted
basket, which I would not want to do at all, greater frequency
of inspection may allow us to get to that, and of course the Chief
Inspector does have the power to inspect any school at any time
without being invited, if I can put it in that way, and just occasionally
we do that, reflecting local concerns and I think you have to
have that, but I would not want to change the whole system just
because of a very small number of schools that are resistant to
efforts to improve them from outside.
Chairman: That has been a very interesting
section, but we must move on and talk about some of the aspects
of Early Years education. Nick.
Q26 Mr Gibb: Thank you, Chairman. Just
before that, I wanted to ask you something about the Education
Bill. How long will the inspections be under the new regime?
Mr Bell: Do you mean in terms
of any single inspection?
Q27 Mr Gibb: Yes.
Mr Bell: Two days.
Q28 Mr Gibb: How long are they at the
moment?
Mr Bell: Four and a half days.
Q29 Mr Gibb: Do you think you can really
do enough? Will you be examining the quality of teaching in those
two days, going into classrooms?
Mr Bell: Yes.
Q30 Mr Gibb: At the same time having
all these discussions with senior management?
Mr Bell: Yes.
Q31 Mr Gibb: How many classes do you
think will be examined during the two days?
Mr Bell: It will vary from school
to school. In primary schools you might observe, say, 15, 20 lessons,
in a secondary school it might be 20, 25 or 30. What we have said
is that we are not going to visit all classrooms under this. Can
I just explain why. One of the arguments that has been put up,
"If you do not do all this classroom observation, you are
not going to know what the school is like." We are going
to do classroom observation, but we are not going to do as much
as we have done previously. I think there is a slight danger of
over-emphasising the classroom observation, particularly in the
system we have at the moment with a long lead in. As said in a
speech last week actually, launching the new relationship with
schools just occasionally you think that inspectors are observing
a performance rather than a lesson. If you have much shorter notice
and you draw upon the other evidence about the school—and
there is huge evidence about the school from its test results,
examination results, value added data, what the school said about
itself—you have got quite a lot to go on. So we will continue
to observe teachers at work, but you must never build an inspection
system that only relies on classroom observation and does not
take account of the continuity of education over the months and
years since the last inspection. Can I ask Miriam if she might
come in—in fact you were on one last week, one of the pilot
inspections—just to give you a flavour of how it is operating?
Mrs Rosen: Yes, the inspection
I was on last week was looking at lessons, but what the inspectors
were doing was looking to see where the school had evaluated its
teaching as good and where there were problems, and it was partly
doing some checking out of that, but it was also looking at continuity
over time to see what the results of the children's experience
had been, so actually there was less of a snapshot flavour there.
With access to all the school's records, actually the inspectors
did have access to a greater range of lesson observations than
the ones they were carrying out themselves; so that was an important
point. Overall we feel confident that we are able to get quite
a good picture of what the school is doing without necessarily
going into quite so many lessons as we had done previously.
Q32 Mr Gibb: Most of that data is already
published. I am trying to work out what it is that is new that
you bring to the party. Why not have the short notice and continue
the same level of inspections and the same level of classroom
examinations? Is it a cost issue?
Mr Bell: I think it is partly
a cost issue, because obviously, as I said before, the problem
is there are efficiency targets for Ofsted and other government
departments to meet, but there is also a wider philosophical point
about the burden of inspection and regulation. We have done two
full cycles of inspection under the current systems. A number
of schools have now been inspected for the third time under the
system that we have, and I think you have to ask yourself: are
you getting something of a diminishing law of returns on the back
of that? I think perhaps going into the third cycle that was the
case. Therefore what we are doing is continuing to inspect schools
against the national frame work—in a sense that is what
we bring to the party. This is not going in and saying to the
school, "How are you doing? That looks nice." This is
saying here is a national framework that looks at quality standards,
etc, and judging the school against that national framework. At
the same time it is recognising that there is much more evidence
available than there was. I think one of the reasons why the system
was set up—it was one of the reasons why the system was
set up in the way it was in 1992—but one crucial reason
why the inspection system had to be set up the way it was in 1992
was because there was not any other data much available. Twelve,
15 years on the education system is probably about the most data-rich
of all the public services, and we have got that, so we can build
on that, but we do not just inspect uncritically. I can think
of examples during the pilot inspections under the new system
where the data has been there in a school's self-evaluation and
the school's analysis of it is divorced from reality. It is the
same data, but our interpretation of it has led us in very different
directions. I think you bring our interpretation against the national
framework, you bring our observations of classrooms, you bring
our discussions with teachers, and so on. I think it is the right
direction. I just think it is the right direction to go.
Q33 Valerie Davey: I want to turn to
the document which, I think, had most acclaim, certainly from
teachers in my area, namely Excellence and Enjoyment. I
am surprised, therefore, to see your comment that very few schools
have made any substantial changes. I would have thought, first
of all, it is a fairly short time-frame, but I am more concerned
about your comment on the teachers, that you are saying that there
is neither sufficient enthusiasm nor the robust subject knowledge
required to implement a more creative approach. I wish all of
you on Sunday evening had been with me in the Colston Hall in
Bristol and seen the performance of dance from schools throughout
Bristol, the culmination of a year's work in dance, where 1,500
children have taken part and we had the most superb performance
from primary and secondary schools. If you had commented that
any of the teachers involved in that lacked either enthusiasm
or a robust subject knowledge, you would have been drummed out,
and I mean literally drummed out creatively, because you could
not. My concern is that that was organised by the LEA, the actual
structure of that goes through the LEA. You would not have inspected
that as you looked at each individual school; so on what basis
are you actually saying that teachers cannot implement excellence
and enjoyment, which is the fundamental statement from your report?
Mr Bell: If I can just make one
or two observations on that, we produced a report a couple of
years ago ahead of Excellence and Enjoyment, and which
Excellence and Enjoyment makes quite a lot of reference
to, which is an interesting issue about advising the shape of
government policy, called The Curriculum in Successful Primary
Schools. We demonstrated very strongly, and I am sure it will
be the Committee's experience as well, that very good schools
can ensure a proper focus on literacy and numeracy at the same
time as offering youngsters a very broad, balanced and creative
curriculum. What we report on in the annual report is an uncertainty
in quite a lot of schools, one, about how you just go about doing
that, and two, the expertise available. The expertise available
need not just be in the staff that have to work in that school.
In fact, one of the interesting things that we are seeing, of
course, is increasing use of non-teaching staff and other specialists.
I absolutely agree that it is important to build that expertise
and knowledge amongst teachers, but it need not necessarily need
to be the teachers themselves. I will give you two examples. We
reported last year on the Government's use of the Standards Fund
to promote music education in local authorities and schools. It
is a very positive report on the very substantial impact that
the LEA music services were having, not just from afar but actually
influencing the quality of practice in individual schools. The
second example I would give you is in relation to the Primary
French Initiative. We have done a brief evaluation of the early
stages of the Primary French Initiative. There is very, very interesting
and impressive work going on there, where it is a combination
sometimes of external support, and if I might just give you a
very specific example of that, I was in a school in Northamptonshire
a couple of weeks ago where they are moving forward great guns
on primary French, but they are working together with other primary
schools in the area with a secondary school to ensure that the
specialist knowledge about teaching modern languages is made available.
So they are actually going to put together a small sum of money
in each school to get more of that available. I think what we
are saying in our report is that there is a bit of uncertainty
about how you go about accessing expertise to offer that rich
and varied curriculum, and we would say that the best schools
offer literacy and numeracy, focus rigorously on it, but also
do what you describe.
Q34 Valerie Davey: Then why are you not
highlighting good practice? I mentioned Bristol. You could go
to other cities and find celebration either of language or of
music in just this way, and it just seems a pity that, having
got this, I think, one of the best reports out, you are not encouraging
that, especially given the new non-contact time. So that is a
creative opportunity to bring in, exactly as you say, specialists
in these different areas to work in the schools. Why not highlight
that, instead of have this damning statement about teachers having
neither this, that or the other? It does not help, surely, to
be creative.
Mr Bell: Yes. Appropriately, blowing
our own trumpet when it comes to the music report, the music report
actually was on a DVD, and the DVD contained a whole set of examples
of classroom practice, of how teachers and others were helping
to improve music education, and actually we got a very warm response
to that, because people said, "You have reported on the facts
as you found them, but actually, here's a whole set of examples
very practically of what you are doing." That was also accompanied
by some advice about questions you might ask in relation to setting
up music arrangements, who you might contact. It is probably inappropriate,
if I can put it that way, for the annual report to do that kind
of thing, because we have to report on the facts as we find them,
but do not see Ofsted as a one-trick pony in that respect. We
have a whole range of other reports and ways of reporting that
actually do highlight excellent practice. I can think of another
example recently over physical education, outdoor education, which
you asked me about the last time I was here, Chairman.
Q35 Chairman: You published a report.
Mr Bell: More than that, that
report contained a whole set of case studies about what particular
schools and other organisations were doing, and I just hope it
would reassure you that increasingly our reports do include case
studies, checklists, ideas to consider. So we are trying different
ways to get that evidence out.
Q36 Valerie Davey: I suppose my underlying
concern is that you are somehow again polarising these two aspects,
the core and the creative. As far as I am concerned, for every
single individual teacher in school, they go together. There is
no splitting them apart. You and I know that many youngsters—and
those youngsters I saw on the stage at Colston Hall last Saturday—will
gain enormously from that experience and their core subjects will
improve as a result. So the two things go together. Just as the
title of Excellence and Enjoyment hangs them together,
how is your report perhaps going to bring those together instead
of trying to polarise them and look at them as two different aspects?
Mr Bell: I think actually Ofsted
and HMI over many years have a long and distinguished tradition
of not polarising them, and actually saying that the breadth and
balance in the curriculum is crucial. I do think there is a moment
in time here as well, is there not? You will know I said before
that the introduction of the national literacy and numeracy strategies
was a thoroughly good thing for the education system, because
it helped to consolidate knowledge and expertise in teachers,
it helped them to teach better, but that obviously requires schools
to give quite a lot of focus to bringing that about. I think what
we are beginning to see now is schools getting more confidence
in using the knowledge and expertise, but now thinking, "What
do we do for the rest of the curriculum?" That is what we
are highlighting. We would be the last people that would want
to polarise the debate, for the reasons of breadth and balance
we talked about at the very beginning, but I think we are highlighting
the facts on the basis of evidence. Quite a lot of schools are
still struggling to get this balance right, and partly they are
struggling because they do not think that expertise is always
accessible. What you cited, of course, could be replicated up
and down the country where schools come together to offer students
tremendously exciting opportunities.
Q37 Valerie Davey: Through the medium
of the LEA.
Mr Bell: Absolutely. The music
report made that point. It was about Standards Fund-funded, LEA
music initiatives that were having a direct impact on the experience
of children in classrooms.
Q38 Mr Gibb: You said recently that half
of all boys cannot write properly when they go on to secondary
school. Is there a link between that statistic and the fact that
half of all 16 year olds are failing to achieve five or more good
GSCEs?
Mr Bell: Yes, is the answer to
that, because if you do not leave primary school with the appropriate
skills in literacy, you are much less likely to do well in secondary
education.
Q39 Mr Gibb: Why are we performing so
badly with writing?
Mr Bell: This is a difficult one.
Partly, it is about those technical skills that youngsters need
to be able to write effectively, which includes their capacity
to spell correctly, their capacity to actually do the physical
mechanics of writing, although within the National Literacy Strategy
there is a lot of emphasis given to writing. Sometimes—and
I think this would reflect what we have said this year gone by—quite
a lot of schools are still uncertain about what this means in
terms of classroom practice: what do you start doing, what do
you do next, what do you do next? Although there is quite a lot
of debate about the particular approaches taken, the point I would
highlight, that we highlighted in our report before Christmas,
is the quality of the leadership being crucial. If school leaders,
head teachers, do not know what is going on in their own classrooms
and are not systematic about the teaching of different elements
of literacy, then you are not likely to see children achieve as
well as they might.
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