Memorandum submitted by Royal Society
of Chemistry
SUMMARY
— Current subject reports are extremely
helpful.
— The new inspection regime will provide
much less rich data.
— Other organisations contribute data
but comparison is difficult.
— The provisions for subject inspection
need to be reviewed.
EVIDENCE
1. This evidence is provided by the Royal
Society of Chemistry with support from the learned societies,
academies, and subject associations who work closely together
in the field of school science education (the Association for
Science Education, Institute of Biology, Institute of Physics,
and Royal Society of Chemistry).
2. The above organisations support the role
of Ofsted as helpful guardians of standards in schools. However,
while we recognise the importance of school inspections to support
institutional improvement, and thus strongly commend plans under
the New Relationship with Schools to reduce unnecessary burdens
of the current regime, we are extremely concerned about the future
of subject inspection.
3. We find current reports such as Science
in Primary Schools, HMI 2345, and Science in Secondary Schools,
HMI 2332, reporting on the state of science education, to be extremely
valuable. We agree that sections such as "standards in national
tests and public examinations" could in the future still
be counted on as authoritative. It is our contention however,
that the proposals from September 2005 for a minimum of 30 visits
per phase per subject of the National Curriculum are unsatisfactory.
This is particularly true for National Curriculum Science at Key
Stage 4 where there are clear differences in the supply of appropriately
qualified biology, chemistry and physics specialists. We consider
it would be most unwise to make robust generalisations on a visit
to a sample of schools, possibly as small as 30 in number, given
the diversity of provision across England.
4. As we understand it DfES have in the
past considered a sample of 100 schools to be the minimum required
for even a narrow study to be considered reliable.
5. From September 2005, since when inspections
will be very much shorter than they are at the moment, there is
not be time for inspectors to evaluate individual subjects in
detail, except in the case of some college inspections. This means
that Ofsted has to find other ways to fulfil its statutory duty
to give advice to the Secretary of State on subjects and other
aspects of education. It proposes to do this through additional
visits to schools and colleges, focusing on subjects and curriculum
areas, from the Foundation Stage right through to post-16. It
is envisaged that the visits will:
— feed into the Chief Inspector's Annual
Report to give a national picture of strengths and areas for development;
— provide the basis for Ofsted to disseminate
findings, including good practice, through its website, conferences,
talks and articles;
— give institutions detailed feedback
to help them improve; and
— support institutions' self-evaluation.
So far it is unclear how this process is working.
6. It is our contention that changes to
the inspection of schools and subjects will alter considerably
the quantity and nature of data available to Ofsted, should the
programme go on as proposed. This, despite the comment by HM Chief
Inspector of Schools in his commentary to the Annual Report 2004-05
that, "Never before have we had such a wealth of data at
our disposal". Such a "wealth of data" will clearly
not be available in the future under the new regime.
7. It may be helpful to compare the data
available per year up to 1 September 2005 and afterwards.
8. Pre-1/9/2005 numerical data are available
from a statistically representative sample of around 600 secondary
and 400 primary schools by key stage. Each subject has 43 judgements
made about it. Thus "how effective are teaching and learning"
has 20 indicators including teaching, learning, assessment, challenge,
use of time, homework etc. This plethora of data allows year on
year comparison of judgements on science, allowing an exploration
of the impact of initiatives.
9. Post-1/9/2005 numerical data will be
available from a non-nationally representative sample of 30 secondary
schools and 30 primary schools. Only four judgement grades on
"Standards", "Progress", "Teaching",
and "Overall Quality of the lesson" will be available.
We believe it will not be possible to compare these kinds of data
in any meaningful way to the present data sets.
10. Ofsted could work with other government
organisations to gather subject information and data and could
allocate appropriate subject HMI to the organisation to do this.
We believe, however, that the data produced by these organisations
may not be as helpful as that currently available.
For example:
— DfES gathers data but few data sets
relate to specific subjects and they are collected principally
by questionnaire and not by direct observation.
— QCA routinely evaluates curriculum
matters by questionnaire followed by some school visits. However
classes are not directly observed and no data are derived from
first hand observation.
11. Other bodies, such as the learned societies,
gather data where it is unavailable from Ofsted or Government.
Recent examples includes "Laboratories, Resources and Budgets"
from the Royal Society of Chemistry on the state and number of
school science laboratories, and the Institute of Physics' report
on girls and physics.
12. It is our contention that the details
of "Subject and Survey Inspection" HMI 2489 July 2005
should be reviewed in the light of our comments above, to provide
a reliable and statistically significant review of subjects, providing
data that can be compared to that obtained pre-1/9/2005.
March 2006
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