Memorandum submitted by the General Teaching
Council (GTC)
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 GTC well positioned to comment on the work of Ofsted
via this memorandum which we hope is of assistance to the Education
and Skills Select Committee (ESSC).
BACKGROUND
3. In its memorandum to the ESSC on the
work of Ofsted in October 2004, the GTC generally welcomed the
proposals for a more streamlined inspection system with shorter,
more focused external reviews within the context of a more developed
model of self-evaluation. This system became operational at the
beginning of the current academic year so the opportunity for
its evaluation lies in the future. This memorandum focuses therefore
on issues concerning teaching and learning as schools and school
staff adjust to the new inspection system and their enhanced role
within it. Specifically this memorandum considers:
— continuing professional development
(CPD)
— the new role of inspectors as development
partners
— the enhanced role of school self-evaluation
— school-led teacher observation
CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL
DEVELOPMENT (CPD)
4. HMCI reports significant improvements
in the consistency of the quality of teaching and a consequent
rise in standards. The GTC has consistently emphasised the link
between raising standards of teaching and learning and teachers'
access to, and participation in, high quality CPD, a correlation
also embraced by the Government in its Five-Year Plan.
This is particularly important as 20% of teachers responding to
the GTC's 2005 annual survey said that their CPD needs were not
met at all in the last year. The GTC believes that 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.
5. It would be helpful to learn if the Chief
Inspector considers whether the current inspection framework is
constructed to provide sufficient data on the coherence and quality
of CPD available to teachers.
INSPECTORS AS
SCHOOL DEVELOPMENT
PARTNERS
6. Ofsted's move, from September 2005, to
a more streamlined inspection system with an accompanying upgrading
of the role of school self-evaluation (SSE) is significant. It
has resulted in the role of the school inspector moving to one
of assessing schools on the basis of their internal improvement
priorities rather than as external observer/judge of school performance.
7. The development of trust by schools and
teachers is critical to the success of Ofsted's changed role.
The Chief Inspector has acknowledged the challenge of supporting
"coasting" schools to move from "nothing better
than mediocrity" towards excellence. Ofsted's new developmental
role, alongside the "intelligent accountability" expressed
by the New Relationship with Schools (NRwS) are key drivers of
improvement and it would be helpful to learn what steps the Chief
Inspector considers are required to progress along the route towards
excellence, particularly for coasting schools.
8. A small-scale study by the GTC[3]
indicated that the shorter, sharper inspections and the use of
Ofsted's School Evaluation Form (SEF) in schools piloting the
new model have resulted in perceptions of reduced workload and
impact on schools. This could be partly due to the shorter inspections
being more heavily focused on the Senior Management Team roles,
with teachers having less awareness of their impact.
SCHOOL SELF-EVALUATION
9. The GTC believes that SSE is as much
about the need for schools to learn and develop professionally
as the need for public accountability. The GTC is keen that mechanisms
exist to ensure that schools' self-evaluation processes are sufficiently
robust to form a solid base for inspection and particularly that
they involve the whole school staff including teachers holding
qualified teacher status (QTS) and others. A GTC study[4]
found that harnessing pupil and parent voices in the SSE was rarely
done explicitly, although schools had many strategies to engage
pupils and parents.
10. SSE sits alongside performance management
systems and teachers' CPD in schools and the GTC believes it would
be beneficial to seek to ensure all three elements are integrated
into the source material used for inspections. Greater responsibility
for performance management in schools also has implications for
teachers' time and funding which need to be taken into account.
11. The GTC study[5]
showed that schools felt that the Ofsted SEF was a useful and
powerful document, helping focus SSE more on the schools needs.
However, longer term, the Council believes it is important that
the SEF is used as a summative reflection of the school's evaluative
processes as a starting point for inspection rather than as an
accountability driver in relation to school self-evaluation.
TEACHER OBSERVATION
12. Evidence from the GTC's work with local
authorities on CPD shows that peer observation and observation
as part of mentoring are valued highly by teachers as important
elements of school-based CPD. This is confirmed in the 2005 GTC
Annual Survey of Teachers,[6]
which found that 87% of teachers felt that observing colleagues
was a valuable form of CPD and 76% agreed that being observed
was valuable. They also form an integral part of the process for
gaining public and professional recognition for teachers' learning,
development and improvement work in the GTC Teacher Learning Academy.
13. School-led observation of teachers and
teaching as part of the inspection process and to inform the School
Improvement Plan (SIP) will need to be positioned in a structure
to ensure robustness and allow an aggregated picture of the quality
of teaching to be created. Traditionally, Ofsted provided that
structure and it may be that training, advice and development
need to be put in place to enable schools to take up this new
role.
CHILDREN'S
SERVICES
14. The success of an integrated Ofsted
inspection framework to inspect Children's Trusts requires collaborative
working and joint training. Measures should be put in place to
ensure a continuing shared agenda for inspection to promote a
seamless service for children. The inspection of Children's Trusts
should evaluate the service delivered to the major stakeholders
and the young people themselves. This consolidation and alignment
of inspection frameworks would build upon the educational inspectorate
and provide Trusts with a powerful means of addressing some of
the issues of the Government's social inclusion agenda. The GTC
is keen to ensure inspections of Children's Trusts include consultation
with young people themselves. This will allow the Trusts to identify
good provision and improve the practice of children's services
by the users themselves.
October 2005
3 The GTC has conducted a series of visits to schools
and local authorities (LAs) to build a sense of the impact of
the New Relationship with Schools (NRwS). The visits were carried
out in West Sussex, Lincolnshire and Newham. Local Authority staff
connected with the NRwS pilots and heads and senior management
staff at secondary and primary schools in each of these LAs were
interviewed in a semi-structured way. Back
4
Ibid Back
5
Ibid Back
6
Second National Annual Survey of Teacher Attitudes, GTC July
2005. Back
| 
