Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
MR DAVID
BELL, MRS
MIRIAM ROSEN,
MR ROBERT
GREEN, MR
MAURICE SMITH
AND MS
9 NOVEMBER 2005
Q40 Mr Chaytor: All I would say is,
15 years of Ofsted, 15 years of the National Curriculum, 15 years
of national testing and the majority of people still do not understand
how they can improve their work?
Mr Bell: If I may supplement that,
Chairman. It is not that children do not understand their work.
Q41 Mr Chaytor: It is how they can
improve their work. We are talking about school improvement?
Mr Bell: That is exactly right,
and, if you put it this way, assessing how well a child is doing
is not merely about the tick beside the answer or the cross when
it is wrong, it is about using that assessment information to
help the youngster know what to do next. You are absolutely right,
many youngsters will get that feedback and say, "Now what?"
I think that is where the whole assessment for learning movement
is terribly important to help teachers know how best to help pupils
understand what they need to learn.
Q42 Chairman: The Government PR machine
suggests that the new generation of teachers that have come in
in the last few years are of a much higher calibre. They should
be better at this sort of thing. Are they?
Mr Bell: The Government often
uses that, quite properly, from our inspection evidence on teacher
education, Chairman.
Q43 Chairman: Indeed, it is an incestuous
relationship.
Mr Bell: Certainly not, Chairman.
It is interesting. We would comment that more attention needs
to be given in teacher education to precisely this point.
Q44 Chairman: We are going to come
on to teaching.
Mr Bell: Okay, but I just make
this comment. It is an interesting thread to pursue that it is
one of the weaker elements of teacher education and becomes one
of the weaker elements of teaching. I think there is an issue
about the early professional development of teachers all the way
from the training through.
Q45 Mr Chaytor: This is really passing
the buck back to the training institutions. Is there not an issue
about the relationship between inspection and the process of improvement?
This is still the position 15 years on.
Mr Bell: Chairman, we have been
very clear in this report, and this brings me to precisely the
point that Mr Chaytor has made, not just on assessment but on
other areas. We say at the end on the section on impact, "Some
aspects of the education system have not improved as much as they
might, despite all the money, effort and time spent on national
strategies, school inspection and the like." I think what
that leads you to, however, is how do you focus your attention
better? I think there is one really important development on this
as well. School self-evaluation, which we touched on in an earlier
answer, is sharply focused now on the progress that pupils are
making; it is absolutely central to how well a school is doing.
You do not know how well pupils are progressing really unless
you assess for learning, and I think it may be just one of those
interesting by-products of the change in the inspection system
that schools themselves will drill more and more into this issue,
but I am absolutely not complacent. Where there are things that
have not improved in the education system, inspection in one sense
holds its hands up as well in not driving forward improvement
in the same way.
Chairman: We have to move on. We want
to look now at the proposed single inspectorate for children and
learners. Stephen is going to guide us through this.
Q46 Stephen Williams: Yes, Chairman,
but as a history graduate I want to briefly go backwhere
you did not let me in and I am not going to let it goto
a comment that Nadine made. One of my close friends is the head
of history in a Bristol comprehensive school. There are no doubts
on the curriculum in his school. Is it not the choice of heads
of department what they teach at GSCE and A-level? In this particular
school it is certainly Tudors and Stuarts rather than Hitler and
Mussolini.
Mr Bell: Absolutely. There is
a high degree of flexibility but there is a lot of time that can
be devoted to the European dictators; and I think that has been
a generally accepted point that the balance, particularly in examination
syllabus, can be too heavily weighted towards European dictators,
but, you are right, nobody is forced to teach Hitler and Stalin
endlessly, but there are a lot of incentives in the system to
cover a lot.
Q47 Stephen Williams: I have one
final comment about history. As a Welshman who grew up in South
Wales, we were taught more about the British Empire and the industrial
revolution could not have happened without Welsh steel and Welsh
coal, but it is not perhaps wise to say that to a Glaswegian.
Mr Bell: Or Scottish brain-power!
Chairman: I have to say, sometimes I
would like to talk to my local people to really understand what
Ned Lud was about. Luddite is used as a term of abuse. He came
from Huddersfield and he was not just a destroyer of machinery.
So the regions have a claim after all. Stephen, please move on.
Q48 Stephen Williams: Moving on from
Luddites, because I knew what you were talking about, in the Chairman's
introductory questions he referred to the Chancellor's objectives
of reducing the number of inspectorates down from 11 to four and
implied it was effectively driven by economics rather than by
education. You did not demur from that. If the Chancellor was
not putting this through, would it be something you would have
lobbied for?
Mr Bell: I think it would not
have been appropriate. I am not in a sense standing on my dignity
on this one, but I do not think it would be appropriate for the
Chief Inspector to lobby for the expansion of Ofsted. The Early
Years expansion was not something that was lobbied for by the
then Chief Inspector. It was a matter of government policy to
bring that forward. So I would have lobbied for it, but now that
it is there as a proposal, I am very strongly supportive of it,
and I think that is an important distinction to draw.
Q49 Stephen Williams: There are four
organisations that are going to be merged together: your own and
the Adult Learning Inspectorate, the Commission for Social Care
Inspectorate also and part of the court series, CAFCASS, which
has not been referred to so far. What is the combined budget for
all of those four organisations?
Mr Bell: The combined budgets
. . . . I can do a quick bit of mental arithmetic in my head.
Ofsted's budget is around £220 million this year, CSCI's
budget related to their children's work is £28 million and
ALI's budget is about £23 million. The element to do with
the courts inspector, I think, is about half a million, so it
is a very small percentage. Our best estimates are that we will
be able to save between £7.1 and £9.7 million with this
expansion of Ofsted's remit. That is between about 14 and 18%
of the current running costs of the other inspectorates. It is
really important to make the point that there are transition costs,
we would estimate, of about somewhere between £9.5 and £11
million, but, because of those annual running cost savings, we
believe the pay-back period is within two years; so the argument
that somehow this will be paid off forever is just not true. I
should make the point, Chairmanagain I think it is important
and proper that I make this pointthe regulatory impact
assessment which, as you know, the departments have to produce
if they are making major policy changes, is the responsibility
of the DfES, and will be their responsibility in coming to a final
decision. The figures that I have given you are the figures that
we have supplied to the Department, but we think they stack up,
having done a pretty decent analysis of all the numbers.
Q50 Chairman: Chief Inspector, you
are not a financial man, are you? Can we bring in Vanessa Howlison?
You are the one organisation that keeps coming to see us that
does not say, "Look, we have not got enough money to run."
Perhaps you have got too much money. Are there some problems here
of managing this much bigger empire which is more complex. Is
Vanessa confident from the financial point of view?
Mr Bell: Can I just make one observation.
It is not my job, and it is quite inappropriate for me to sit
and whinge about how much we have got. Ofsted has what it has
got and it delivers what it delivers on the basis of what it has
got. That has always been our philosophy, and it will be our philosophy
if this expansion is agreed upon.
Ms Howlison: I have only been
working for Ofsted for a couple of months, but the thing that
has really struck me is that Ofsted has a real focus on financial
issues as well as on delivery, and I think that is clear from
the challenging efficiency programme it set itself, pulling out
20% of its budget£42 million is a major undertakingand
it has also struck me that Ofsted really focused on finding mechanisms
to deliver that rather than simply sitting back and saying, "We
have got to save money." Therefore, in terms of Ofsted's
ability to run a larger organisation from a financial perspective,
I have absolutely no doubt.
Q51 Stephen Williams: Coming back
to the detail, you said, Chief Inspector, roughly £17 million
in savings. Maybe Vanessa will want to take this up. Looking at
the four figures you gave for the different budgets, they imply
that the biggest scope of savings is within Ofsted's current structure?
Mr Bell: Which is precisely the
£42 million that we are making under the Gershon efficiency
programme. It is a really important point to make. These are real
savings that we have made. We have cut £15 million off the
cost of inspection, and that has been important. The administered
saving, the process changes that we have made are generating the
same again, and we are making a whole range of other savings;
so this is not about Ofsted, as it were, inheriting lots of money
from elsewhere and in a sense being able to do whatever it wants.
We have had to undertake our own efficiency reductions. To be
fair to CSCI and ALI, they have also had to do that as part of
the efficiency programme, but the Chancellor is arguing, and it
seems to be an absolutely logical argument, if you are going to
reduce the number of inspectorates you can make further savings
because you will have fewer overhead costs, and inevitably that
will be the case, and that is what we have been basing our analysis
of the data on, that by having one organisation instead of four,
to cite the four that you have described, there are savings that
can be generated and we believe that those numbers stack up.
Q52 Stephen Williams: In the private
sector I have been through a merger in the past and it was a pretty
miserable experience, I can tell you, from the staff's perspective.
Is this a merger or is it a takeover: because the scale of your
current organisation dwarfs the others, does it not?
Mr Bell: The Government's consultation
paper does talk very clearly about the expansion of Ofsted. It
is very clear that the functions of children's social services
will come from the two organisations to Ofsted and the consultation
about the Adult Learning Inspectorate being abolished and its
functions coming to Ofsted. This is, as the Government has laid
out the programme, about the expansion of Ofsted. I think you
might also say, given the size of the budgets, precisely the point
that you have made, there is a degree of inevitability about that.
If one of the organisations is £220 million and the other
two of the three combined budgets are less than £50 million,
there is something logical about that.
Q53 Chairman: All the best brains
are in the smaller organisation.
Mr Bell: We might consider ourselves
pretty small as well, Chairman. I think it is an important point,
a serious point to make, however, that this is not about Ofsted
saying, "There is no expertise for us to draw upon in these
other organisations." The inspectors, the people who are
doing the business for CSCI and ALI, will come over to Ofsted,
they will work alongside colleagues in Ofsted, who already have
a lot of that expertise but not in sufficient numbers to do the
work in the expanded remit; so there is a sense in which, Chairman,
we will draw together the best of the brains of the different
organisations to deliver against that expanded menu.
Q54 Chairman: We are not going to
see a new Chief Inspector?
Mr Bell: The Chief Inspector's
life is finite, as you well know.
Q55 Stephen Williams: To look at
some of the concerns of your new partner organisations (if the
consultation actually leads to that) in its consultation at the
moment have raised, we had the Adult Learning Inspectorate in
last week and they quite clearly had reservations. It did seem
to me, though, that the nature of their work is quite different
to Ofsted's at the moment. One of the things that was in the report
they gave to us was their work with the welfare of soldiers at
Deep Cut Barracks?
Mr Bell: Yes.
Q56 Stephen Williams: That is a world
away from evaluating a history lesson in a Bristol school, is
it not? Are there not quite different organisations with quite
different remits?
Mr Bell: I noticed the Chief Inspector's
evidence, I read it very carefully, and I noted that point. I
think it is an important point to make right away that we have
been working very closely with the Adult Learning Inspectorate
for the past four years in the inspection of colleges, which,
of course, do include both 16-19-year-old students and adults.
Together we often draw upon the same inspectors, the part-time
inspectors. We have a common core of people that we draw upon.
There are people within Ofsted that have experience of work-based
learning as you describe. I just reiterate the point: nobody is
suggesting that all of that expertise and all of that experience
that the ALI has built up would be lost and we would not use it.
Nobody is suggesting that at all. The very same people that carried
out that work in work-based learning providers, including the
MoD, would be folk who would come over and work for Ofsted. I
would do that work with the people in Ofsted that already have
that expertise. This is not in any sense about just getting rid
of all that expertise that the ALI has, but, to be fair, I would
not overstate that difference about the culture between the ALI
and Ofsted, because we have been working really closely in the
inspection of FE colleges and not once has it ever been put to
us by either a college or the ALI that there is some incompatibility
in cultures between the two organisations.
Q57 Stephen Williams: Finally, the
Commission for Social Care did an inspection as well and they
have given us a report which we have only just had this morning,
so I have only glanced at it while listening to your earlier answersit
is over 100 paragraphs longbut there seems to be a different
ethos as well between the two organisations. One of the reports
that they have given us is called "Sorting out inspection
for the use of children and young people". I just picked
out this particular entry, that they took some children out for
a pizza evening in Newcastle, they took some others to a zoo in
the Cotswold Wildlife Park, and they asked the children to fill
in questionnaires about what they thought about their experiences.
Correct me if I am wrong, I do not think Ofsted does anything
like this with children in the classroom?
Mr Bell: Chairman, I would be
all for taking people out to pizza restaurants in Newcastle, particularly
in Newcastle, it has to be said. We use young people already in
inspection, or we have used them in the Connexion service inspections.
We draw very heavily on what young people think in youth service
inspections and we actually are debating at the moment the role
of young people in the inspection of children's services. We do,
as you know, draw upon the views of children and young people.
In fact, the report that Mr Chaytor described earlier in looking
at our effectiveness drew very heavily on interviews with young
people. I think there is a case to be made there, particularly
when you look at some of what the CSCI does. If you are inspecting
children's homes, you need to understand what the children think
about the quality of their experience. Absolutely right.
Q58 Chairman: But it is not just
that. The point that Stephen is making is the point that ALI made
to us, that your role has always been going in, inspecting, making
your report and walking away. ALI clearly said they stay on and
try and help the college or the institution improve. That has
never been your role, in fact you have defended not having that
role, and Stephen is making the point with these children's services
it is a much more, not just an inspectorate role but a supporting
role as well. You do not do that that. That is not your expertise.
Mr Bell: Chairman, on ALI's own
website talking about this work it says the following: "The
ALI maintains a clear separation between inspection and support
activities, thus avoiding any conflict of interest. The improvement
work of ALI cannot guarantee satisfactory grades at re-inspection,
nor can it predict the grades a provider will achieve." Actually
that would seem to me to be precisely the position that Ofsted
takes, that inspection contributes to improvement by all the sorts
of mechanisms I have described earlier, but the actual process
of improvement is separate from inspection, and I continue to
defend that line quite vigorously. We want the people who run
institutions and organisations to be clear that the responsibility
for driving improvement is theirs. If you mix up the role of the
inspector with the management and leadership in an institution,
actually you do not leave it clear about where responsibility
lies. I think there is a danger of overstating the bit about what
other inspectorates do as opposed to what Ofsted does. I think
all the inspectorates recognise that they need to do more to help
to contribute to improvement, but the notion that somehow Ofsted
inspects, walks away, whereas all those other nice, cuddly inspectorates
stay around and help institutions to improve day by day, it is
just not the case.
Q59 Chairman: It is easy to stereotype
it by saying "nice, cuddly", but it is supportive, it
is a different job, and it is a different role.
Mr Bell: Support to an institution
is a different role to inspecting an institution. I think the
ALI's own data makes that point.
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