Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
MR DAVID
BELL, MRS
MIRIAM ROSEN,
MR ROBERT
GREEN, MR
MAURICE SMITH
AND MS
9 NOVEMBER 2005
Q20 Mr Marsden: If you have said
good things about it as part of your list of things in Ofsted,
would that not improve the process as well?
Mr Bell: This is interesting.
Love us or loathe us, Ofsted is often seen as a policy lever.
You are absolutely right; if Ofsted said that certain things are
going to be inspected, that could act to galvanise the system
on the grounds that what is inspected tends to get done. We have
tried, under this new system of school inspection, really to strip
out some of that specific detail but encourage schools to make
the case strongly. My answer to your question, Mr Marsden, would
be: if a school believes that outdoor education, field trips,
visits to galleries and so on are making a difference to young
people's education and enhancing what they are learning, that
is something they have got to say. I have read a number of school
inspection reports, not all 900 that have been published since
September. Many of these reports comment very positively on the
activities that the school has organised to take children or young
people out. I do not think we can say enough about the value of
children learning outside the school in this context.
Q21 Mr Marsden: Finally, can I bring
you back to another aspect of the curriculum on which you have
commented, not specifically in the Annual Report as far as I am
aware but in a recent lecture that you gave to Liverpool John
Moores University, and that is on the citizenship side. You may
be aware that this Committee is already looking at that. We had
a very useful session with them the other week. In the lecture
you gave you said, and I am quoting again from the report, that
citizenship is marginalised in the curriculum in one-fifth of
schools; it is less well established than other subjects and it
is less well taught. You argued quite specifically a case for
linking that with the teaching of history and I think geography
as well. Do you think, not least given what has been happening
in this country since July this year, that we need to give greater
priority to citizenship teaching and that Ofsted needs to look
perhaps more at that in its next Annual Report?
Mr Bell: You are absolutely right
that we have expressed concerns about it. Part of that is to do
with the introduction of the subject. It is relatively recent,
is it not, by way of introduction? I think my colleague Scott
Harrison, who gave evidence to the Committee recently, was keen
to make that point. I was trying to argue a number of things in
the Roscoe Lecture at John Moores University: yes, citizenship
is important and has to find a place in the curriculum, but I
was not unmindful of the demands that teachers already face in
what can be perceived as a crowded curriculum. That is why I gave
some quite good examples of what schools were doing already to
link other subjects of the curriculum and to be very explicit
about what young people did. To answer your question directly
"can we report on it?" we are very keen to report not
just, as it were, on the teaching of citizenship as an academic
subject, if you can put it that way, but also on the opportunities
that young people have to behave as active citizens. Are there
opportunities on school councils and the like? What opportunities
do the children have to participate in activities like the Duke
of Edinburgh Award or whatever? All those sorts of things are
terribly important in generating a sense of becoming and active
and participating citizen. We will look at it but not necessarily
school by school, subject by subject, because of the new situation.
This would be typical of Ofsted: where something is relatively
new, we will say a bit more about it and hence the reason for
taking the opportunity to use the public platform to try to generate
a debate. I should say that I have been very encouraged by the
reaction I have received on the back of that speech from quite
a lot of head teachers who have said: "We do believe this
is terribly important and we are pleased to hear you advocate
strongly the role of citizenship". Not all head teachers
share that view yet, but I hope they will see it as a central
part of the curriculum.
Q22 Chairman: Is it not the case
that a school has to have the right leadership and the right team?
I think we did a rather good report on the value of out of school
education which came out earlier this year. I think the combination
of your report, our report and Lord Adonis's reaction to that
have all been very good, but we have to keep the pressure on.
It is interesting that if you go to a well-known school, you will
find that, despite the curriculum, they can deliver on good out
of school education and good civic education. I know we have such
talent here particularly in Robert Green. If you read his CV,
you will notice his fingerprints are all over the curriculum.
When the curriculum was introduced in 1988, he was the civil servant
in charge. I wonder if we could ask him how he views developments
in the curriculum since the time that he worked on it. Is it a
barrier? There is a division in every school I go to with some
saying that it stops them doing what they really want to do, and
that is to teach, while others bound over it. What is your judgment,
Robert?
Mr Green: I remember 1987 as though
it was yesterday, Chairman.
Q23 Chairman: Remind us which Secretary
of State that was?
Mr Green: It was, as he now is,
Lord Baker. I well remember the debate at the time and some members
of both Houses were putting the point that the curriculum being
set up then was not hugely different from the curriculum they
remembered in their youth in perhaps the 1920s. There were a lot
of issues, even in those early days, about the flexibility that
existed in the curriculum. The thing that struck me, to fast-forward
to Ofsted, is the way in which my colleagues find schools that
are doing precisely what you and other Members of the Committee
have said, Chairman; they are working within the National Curriculum
but in ways that produce the right results across a much wider
breadth than you would believe possible. I remember two or three
years ago there was a report on the primary curriculum which demonstrated
just that in relation to, as they then were, the national literacy
and numeracy strategies. There were schools where this was not
cramping the ability to cover whatever subjects. There is a bit
of me that says, given the right leadership, the right understanding
of what can be done and the right approach among the teachers,
actually almost whatever the framework is, that the breadth of
the curriculum can be delivered. I am going to duck much more
detail on that. I feel quite encouraged that the National Curriculum
has, from my perspective over that time, provided more clarity,
more certainty, on all those issues. If you moved from one part
of the country to the other you had no idea what you were going
to get. That is a debate of the past.
Q24 Chairman: How do you react to
a comment from my youngest daughter, who has just graduated from
Edinburgh University? The big difference between her experience
at school and mine is that she says she never learnt any English
history. She is really now as a graduate beginning to read English
history because the curriculum never allowed her to read and learn
about it. It seems an amazing comment that you can go through
the curriculum in an English comprehensive school and come out
feeling, although you have achieved in many ways, that you have
never learnt about the history of your country.
Mr Green: I would agree. I would
also say, if we are going to be anecdotal, that I went to a very
good grammar school and my knowledge of history from the school
stopped with the industrial revolution. I observe my own children.
I would say it is not true to say that they do not learn anything
of English history by any means, but what is learnt is selective.
I am not an expert.
Mr Bell: From where did you say
your daughter graduated?
Q25 Chairman: She graduated from
Edinburgh University.
Mr Bell: I shall resist the temptation
to make a comment about that institution.
Q26 Chairman: I have two other children
who graduated from Cambridge and Bristol, but never mind.
Mr Bell: These are top grade universities
compared to Glasgow, but that is another matter! In terms of English
history, it is very interesting you raise that because I had a
group of colleagues from within Ofsted who are history specialists
just last Friday discussing the nature of the history curriculum.
It is terribly important that children understand about the past
in their own country. It is also important that children understand
their own place. That is why children's understanding of geography,
where they live and not just locally and how that fits in nationally
and internationally is terribly important. Here I think you have
an interesting tension. On the one hand, you are saying there
should be greater flexibility within the curriculum, yet on the
other hand we have to ensure there are some non-negotiables and
that children must have those. That is right. There are some areas,
for example in English history, where you would say we want to
ensure that the school-based experience for children covers the
following areas, but we give schools a lot of flexibility about
quite how they do that. I will make one other observation. We
talked about chronology. People often say that children have no
understanding of chronology. I wonder how many adults have a good
grasp of the chronology of history. It is quite an advanced and
sophisticated concept to understand what happened when, what came
after and what came before, but we need to do more to give children
a better sense of what happened a very long time ago, what happened
quite a long time ago, and what is much more contemporaneous or
recent. That is a good debate.
Chairman: I always recommend starting
with 1066 and All That.
Q27 Mrs Dorries: One of my daughters
went through the comprehensive system and one went at a later
stage to an independent school and is actually studying history
at university at the moment. The daughter who was in the comprehensive
school has never done anything pre-Second World War. My elder
daughter says that that is a real handicap if you want to go on
and study history when you go to university. I do not know any
comprehensive school that teaches pre-Second World War history,
and yet the independent sector does. Why cannot the state sector
in the comprehensives do what the independent sector is doing?
They have the same hours in the day.
Mr Bell: The National Curriculum
requirement is that Key Stage 3 children, 11-14-year-olds, cover
English history as well as other aspects of European history.
That obviously develops as children grow towards 16. It is interesting,
however, that part of the debate on the history curriculum has
been about the so-called Hitlerisation of the curriculum where
you just seem to study European dictators endlessly. There is
an issue about getting the balance right. If you go to primary
schools, children often will be doing some very interesting work;
for example, children at the upper end of the primary stage will
often look at the Victorians and gain a very interesting insight
into the life and times of Victorian England. I think there is
recognition that it is terribly important that children understand
more about the key events and pressures in our history. I would
have to take issue with you if you say that no comprehensive schools
do it because the national curriculum does require youngsters
to study aspects of English history. The more interesting issue
perhaps around this is that if history is not compulsory, as it
is not post-14, what happens if children then drop history and
say, "I am not interested in it; it does not matter to me"?
Think of all the debates that we are having as a nation at the
moment; they are all informed by our history. Very topical debates
go all the way back to the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights
and all those sorts of things through our history. It is terribly
important that children do history but if it is not compulsory
after the age of 14, then you can identify precisely the problem
that you have described.
Q28 Mrs Dorries: Even post-14, there
is Hitlerisation in the curriculum. If they are studying at GCSE,
it is still the Second World War and Hitler. There is not much
of an incentive when they have done it all the way through to
carry on doing it yet further.
Mr Bell: Certainly, and attention
is being given to that, particularly if you go on to do A-level
history, because then, in a sense, you can do it again. Attention
is being given to the content of the curriculum. Nobody would
argue that we should not look at the impact of the European dictators
on our history. That is absolutely central to our understanding
of the twentieth century, not least our understanding of our own
nation in the twentieth century. The danger is it that just becomes
content that is done time and time again and it just does not
motivate youngsters to do it time and time again.
Q29 Dr Blackman-Woods: I have a couple
of questions about further education. I note that you conclude
in your report that the overall quality of provision is notably
better this year than last. However, when you actually read the
report, a number of problems are identified: too many students
failing to complete courses, particularly in key skills; cramped
conditions; problems about the 16-19 curriculum specifically;
and problems with recruiting staff with the correct skills and
recent commercial and industrial experience. I suppose my questions
to you are: how worried should we be about FE? Is there really
improvement? Can you convince us of that?
Mr Bell: In some ways I am pleased
you put the question that way. Although we have commented on improvements
that we have seen, you are absolutely right to highlight some
of those more structural and longstanding issues around further
education. In headline terms, the number of inadequate colleges
has dropped. It is important to make the point, and I do not want
to underestimate it, that the final year of the inspection programme
did tend to look more at stronger colleges because they had been
pushed to the end of the inspection cycle. It is important to
say that, and that is not to underestimate the improvements. The
sorts of issues that you describe are very real and relevant.
Coming back to the discussion, because it is fresh in my mind,
with the business community on Monday, I was quite struck by national
organisations in the private sector saying that they found the
pattern of provision very uneven. In one area they were making
tremendously good relationships with the local college, which
was very flexible in offering the right curriculum to serve the
employers' needs, and in other parts of the country the same employer,
because of its national business, was finding that the college
was not doing that, right the way through to one employer saying,
"We now do much of that training in-house because we cannot
rely on uniformly good quality from the further education sector".
I think it is a real concern if there is such unevenness in the
quality of further education. National employers are not going
to be very interested in a sector that cannot guarantee them the
quality of skills for training that their employees need. That
is important. You highlighted another important issue in relation
to attracting suitably qualified staff. We mention in the report
that construction, for example is one of the weaker curriculum
areas. I do not think that is unrelated to some strength in the
economy. People who have those sorts of skills can make a very
good living doing the job. Therefore, coming in to be a further
education lecturer is not always a particularly attractive proposition.
I know that some further education colleges are looking for people
who are perhaps a bit older and who may not want to do the front-line
work, as it were, in bricklaying or painting and decorating; they
are trying to encourage that cohort of people to come to work
in the further education sector. That remains a major concern.
I cannot help thinking that if you do not get the right quality
of staff with the right level of skill to teach the students that
will undermine confidence in the further education sector. We
know from our evidence that that has a direct impact on the quality
of teaching. Significant issues remain in further education. Of
course, we await the review being carried out by Sir Andrew Foster.
It will be very interesting to see what direction he charts for
this sector. That is terribly important. I made some comments
last year which quite a lot of people took exception to that the
percentage of failing colleges is a national disgrace. I did not
say that because I hate the sector. I just see the sector as so
important that we cannot afford to have a further education system
that is not firing on all cylinders. That will help not just our
economy but, as we know, many adults to get a second chance where
the compulsory education system has failed them first time round.
Q30 Dr Blackman-Woods: I absolutely
agree with you about the importance of the sector. In fact, the
Prime Minster opened a new FE college in my constituency last
week. That is critical to delivery of the Government's skills
agenda and the 14-19 curriculum. From the comments that you have
made, how can we be sure that these colleges are going to continue
to improve and that that new college is going to deliver on its
curriculum? There is another point I want to pick up from your
report. You hint particularly at the curriculum not engaging the
16-19-year-olds. That is the group we absolutely have to engage.
What can the colleges do to improve?
Mr Bell: The Chairman made the
point earlier about leadership in management in the schools sector
and that leadership being able to make things happen quickly.
The same would be true in further education colleges. You can
visit, as I do, further education colleges up and down the country
and meet principals and senior staff who just are so attuned to
the needs of the local economy that they can turn things round
really fast. If a new employer comes into the area, all of a sudden,
something happens. There are good jobs for young people in car
manufacturing in the East Midlands and the further education colleges
are very much up there with their mission in making sure that
the young people come through with the right sorts of skills.
This shows something about the quality of leadership in management
and responsiveness to the system. There is something too, is there
not, about the sorts of qualifications that young people get.
We have about one quarter of a million young people doing apprenticeships.
It seems to me that that is an area which is ripe for further
expansion. I visited an aerospace manufacturing company in East
Anglia recently and talked to some of the apprentices. I got a
real sense of craftsmen and crafts-women taking enormous pride
in learning a skill, going through an apprenticeship and coming
out at the other end. We would not want to point the finger at
the colleges and say that they just need to raise their game.
We need to ensure that the infrastructure of qualifications and
courses is relevant and appealing to young people. There is some
encouraging evidence that that is where we are going as, for example,
in the proposals in the White Paper on 14-19 education on developing
specialised diplomas. I am finding employers are very positive
about that. They see that as a positive development; they will
have a lot of influence in constructing those diplomas and making
sure the content is right. They believe that this is a way to
engage quite a lot of young people. We have talked at this Committee
before about the middle group, not those in the most difficult
circumstances, not those in the A-level stream but the middle
group of youngsters. Traditionally our education system has not
always done a good job for them and they are precisely the sorts
of youngsters that I think could benefit substantially from specialist
diplomas. I am quite hopeful that we are going in the right direction
in terms of the further education strategy as well as in further
education colleges.
Q31 Dr Blackman-Woods: I am wondering
if the problem we are having, in a sense, is about rediscovering
and rebuilding vocational education. You comment that about one-third
of work-based learning is unsatisfactory. Clearly that too is
very important if we are going to skill the workforce. I wondered
if you could comment on that.
Mr Bell: Perhaps collectively
as a nation we took our eye off the ball there. It is easy to
criticise the education system and ask why it stopped doing one
thing or the other. A lot of employers probably did not pay enough
attention to work-based learning. Everyone is on the ball now.
I am struck by the extent to which employers are talking very
positively about investing in training and development opportunities
for employees and working with their skills. We have to keep the
school/employer dialogue going. At our business breakfast the
other day one head teacher of a secondary school—
Q32 Chairman: You are obviously very
impressed by these business breakfasts you have?
Mr Bell: I was not sitting at
their feet worshipping. It was good that there was not that old,
dare I say it, rather stereotypical, "Well, you are all to
blame for this. We are perfect in the private sector. Why can
you lot not get your act together?" It was a very intelligent
discussion about how together we need to make a difference. Employers
have a responsibility. It is all very well pointing the finger
at the schools system and saying that it should do this, that
and the other, but employers, surely, for their competitiveness,
need to be investing heavily in training and development. They
will want the most highly skilled workforce to be able to lead
successful companies in the future.
Q33 Jeff Ennis: On the issue of FE,
how big a problem do you think the current funding gap between
schools sixth forms and FE colleges is impacting on the malaise
in FE at the present time?
Mr Bell: Generally speaking, school
sixth forms, as you know, do a very different job. In the main,
and particularly sixth-form colleges, schools sixth forms to a
large extent will tend to focus their attention on the level 3
students; in other words, those students going the A-level route
usually into higher education; further education does a different
job. It is always difficult to get into these conversations about
funding gaps. We are about to announce in December the outstanding
further education colleges that do a cracking job with the resources
they have and get on with it. School sixth forms do not always
do a universally brilliant job, even with the money they have.
Although the money is important, going back to leadership in management,
we know that is often what makes a difference. This is going to
become a more acute issue if we look at a greater movement of
students between schools and colleges. We know there are quite
a few young people who are going into college-based courses 14
plus, 14-16, and there is good encouragement for that as an opportunity.
If we are going to meet the ambitions of the Government's White
Paper on 14-19s and all those specialised diplomas and we are
going to ensure that youngsters get the right training and development
in education, no individual secondary school on its own is going
to be able to provide all that is needed across 14 specialised
diplomas. You are going to get into sharper partnership with further
education. How that is going to play out in the funding system,
Mr Ennis, I am not sure yet.
Q34 Jeff Ennis: You seem quite relaxed
about it.
Mr Bell: I am not relaxed about
it in that sense because I think it will become a more acute problem.
The challenge may be for the Learning and Skills Council in how
it funds that collaboration. You may have heard in evidence put
to you previously that in the main most secondary schools and
most further education colleges want to collaborate for the sake
of the education training on offer to the youngsters, but they
will often say that sometimes there are practical difficulties
in doing it. One of the tasks under the 14-19 reform is to find
funding mechanisms that will drive collaboration. The Government's
ambitions for 14-19 education will not be met by institutions
working isolated one from another. You cannot do that and so we
need to look at the funding system, which naturally tends to focus
on individual institution funding. We need to find ways of making
sure there is collaboration in the system.
Q35 Mr Chaytor: Chief Inspector,
last year you were inspected in a fashion by the Institute of
Education. The report you jointly published listed 18 issues for
consideration. They were not exactly recommendations but issues
for consideration. How many of those 18 have you considered and
what is the result of your consideration?
Mr Bell: I cannot tell you offhand.
We have certainly considered them all because that report was
very important to us. I can give you one or two practical examples
of things that we have done. For example, that report concluded
that we should have a much more risk-based approach and that we
should use the evidence from data to drive our inspection programmes
more intelligently. Since September 2005, we have had a much lighter
touch inspection system. The data that we are using is driving
what we inspect and how we inspect. Our risk-based approach to
inspection is not just around schools. We are doing it in early
years, in teacher education and so on. For me the most striking
recommendation was to make better use of the intelligence that
we have gathered. That was one of the key recommendations we have
dealt with. One or two comments were made at the beginning. It
is really important for Ofsted not to be seen as complacent. If
we are asking everyone else to keep their work under review, we
do must do that too. We are doing it. Perhaps I could write to
you afterwards and tell you specifically what we have done under
each of the recommendations. I can assure you, Mr Chaytor, that
we have acted on all of those recommendations. We were not going
to commission that work and then not deal with the recommendations.[1]
Q36 Mr Chaytor: Could we ask you specifically
about the recommendation that suggested you should be linking
inspection more closely with the promotion of improvement. In
your annual report I do not see any reference at all to the school
improvement partners that the Government is introducing as the
criteria for school improvement?
Mr Bell: I think it is very important
to repeat the point I made. We have tried very much to address
in a thoughtful way in this report the contribution that Ofsted
makes to improvement, and one of the criticisms that we received
after the publication of the report that you described was that
people were saying, "That was Ofsted doing it to itself."
You know, "This is all a bit cosy." We are now working
jointly with the National Audit Office to bring, in a sense, that
independent edge to our work, and we are actually at the moment
looking with the NAO at a project so we can more properly and
accurately measure the improvement effect within Ofsted. I would
want to always add the cautionary comment that I added in response
to one of my answers to the Chairman: we do not cause improvement
directly. Others who are working in schools, colleges, day-care
centres and the like bring about improvement. We need to be clear
about the improvement effect, and that is why we think it is important
that we draw upon the expertise, and I think everyone would expect
that the National Audit Office would have no axe to grind on this;
they would want to look very carefully. I would say, however,
if you look at reports published by the National Audit Office—I
think they are due to publish one on schools in difficulty—if
you look at the one on secondary education, if you look at the
one on child-care, the National Audit Office is often very complimentary
of the contribution that Ofsted makes to drive improvement in
the system. We believe that we are on the right lines, but we
want to utilise the rigor of the NAO to help us answer that question
more sharply. Are we doing all we can to bite on improvement?
Schools improvement partners—that is a Department for Education
and Skills initiative—we are talking very much with the
Department about how we can compliment the work. For example,
the White Paper flags the possibility of a lighter touch, an even
lighter touch in the best performing schools in the inspection
system. A great idea; absolutely right. That would, I think, allow
us to free up inspection resource and probably the Department
to free up the work of improvement partners to concentrate their
activities in the schools that most require improvement. That
seems to be an intelligent use of inspection data and judgments
to drive the work of the school improvement partner. I can assure
you that we are working very closely with the team responsible
for school improvement partners to make sure that we compliment
each others' work. In the end, we are all interested in driving
forward improvement in the system. I think we have all got different
roles to play in making that happen.
Q37 Mr Chaytor: Could I ask one final
point linked to that, because to me the most interesting line
in the report is the one that said: "In the majority of schools
pupils do not have a good understanding of how they can improve
their work", and you identify assessment as a general . .
. To what extent do you think that the weakness of assessment
for learning is the result of our national obsession with a centralised
curriculum, a prescriptive curriculum, a huge amount of testing
and the focus on assessment of them?
Mr Bell: I must admit, Chairman,
I have never made that direct connection.
Q38 Mr Chaytor: Fifteen years after
the launch of the National Curriculum pupils do not have a good
understanding of how to improve. That must say something?
Mr Bell: We have commented . .
. .
Q39 Chairman: Perhaps Miriam wants
to come in on this, because she is very experienced in this area,
is she not?
Mr Bell: Chairman, I will defer
immediately to my colleague.
Mrs Rosen: First of all, I would
like to say that, although assessment remains the weakest area
of teaching, it has nevertheless improved, and we have charted
that improvement over the years. However, yes, it is the weakest
part of teaching still and it is, as you say, assessment for learning
which is the weaker element, because that is how teachers help
pupils to identify what it is that they need to do to bring about
improvement; so it is crucial. It could be that the understandable
focus on assessment for learning has distracted from the need
to improve assessment for learning. We have produced good practice
in this area, it is something we comment on in individual school
reports, it is something we comment on on survey reports, so we
have produced a lot on which schools can draw, and so have strategies.
The national strategies have put a big focus on this, and we put
a focus on it when we are inspecting.
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