Examination of Witnesses (Questions 101-119)
MR MAURICE
SMITH, MRS
MIRIAM ROSEN,
MR ANDREW
WHITE, MR
DORIAN BRADLEY
AND MR
JONATHAN THOMPSON
8 MAY 2006
Q101 Chairman: Can I welcome Maurice
Smith and the team: Andrew White, Miriam Rosen, Dorian Bradley
and Jonathan Thompson. You do look a formidable team. Apart from
Miriam there is a good front row here! Can I apologise—it
was not your fault but ours—that we had to postpone the
last meeting due to the programme that we had involved with the
White Paper and the new Bill. Sorry we were thrown a little off
course by that. Now we are back on course and we do feel that,
yes, we have had you come to us on particular inquiries like the
Special Educational Needs Inquiry, but not on the full remit of
Ofsted. Today we want to get to grips with a number of topics.
You have got the whole team to answer the relevant questions.
Maurice, do you want to say anything to open up this session?
We usually give you a chance to get us going.
Mr Smith: I have some short opening
remarks, Chairman, if you will bear with me for a side of A4.
It is my pleasure to appear in front of the Committee again and
I welcome the opportunity to account for the work of Ofsted. I
would like to introduce two or three of the key issues that we
feel we face. First, we have implemented significant changes to
our programmes and frameworks of inspection over the last two
terms, or the last year in the case of early years. In September
2005 we introduced a new lighter touch school inspection framework
and we are pleased to say we have received very positive feedback
from schools and other stakeholders. Many believe it has reduced
the costs, the stress and the bureaucracy associated with inspection.
Despite the shorter notice and the lighter touch, there is no
doubt that the process and judgments made are just as rigorous.
By the end of March 2006, that was the first two terms, 3,700
school inspections had been completed and nearly 60% of schools
were judged good or better. We are not complacent. We are constantly
reflecting as an organisation and looking at new ways to continue
to lighten the weight of inspection. In this term we have been
developing and piloting a proportionate school inspection model
which will provide an even lighter touch to the best schools and
target resources where they are most needed. In relation to our
work in early years, we welcome the proposed changes to the way
that we regulate and inspect childcare and early years education
and the development of the early years foundation stage outlined
in the current Childcare Bill. We have recently reviewed our processes
for determining the suitability of individuals working with children.
We remain confident that our verification and decision-making
processes mean that no person who is unsuitable to provide childcare
can be registered with Ofsted. Secondly, and briefly, we have
concluded our Improving Ofsted programme. We have reduced our
estate, our premises, from 12 offices to four. We have created
a national business unit and contact centre in our Manchester
office for the more efficient handling of customer contact and
the early years' regulation processes. In doing so, we have reduced
our staffing from our agreed 2004-05 baseline by approximately
20%. We have made almost 400 staff redundant but we have worked
hard to offer displaced staff alternatives either elsewhere within
Ofsted or redeployment to the Civil Service or other parts of
the public sector. These fundamental changes to inspection regulation
and to the structure of Ofsted will deliver savings to the public
purse of £42 million a year from April 2007, 20% of the total
running cost of Ofsted. On that date, subject to the passage of
legislation, there will be the creation of the Office for Standards
in Education, Children's Services and Skills, still to be known
as Ofsted. Currently we are discussing whether any further efficiency
savings will be required by the Better Regulation Executive's
influence. Obviously this will continue to bring challenges but
I am confident that Ofsted will deliver. Chairman, my colleagues
and I take very seriously the comments and suggestions of your
Committee and the importance of our own self-evaluation. We look
forward to this afternoon's session contributing to that self-evaluative
process.
Q102 Chairman: Maurice, thank you
very much for that. It was remiss of me not to have mentioned
that, young as you appear to Members of this Committee, we hear
on the grapevine that you are going to be retiring at the end
of this year as Chief Inspector, is that correct?
Mr Smith: That is the proposed
course of personal action.
Q103 Chairman: Okay. We will be very
sorry to see you go. John Thompson is moving across to the Eden
Project with all the trees and the glass across the way to DfES.
Mr Thompson: I am. Tomorrow I
will be the Director General of Finance at the DfES.
Q104 Chairman: From tomorrow?
Mr Thompson: From tomorrow. No
doubt I will see you in that new role.
Q105 Chairman: I am sure we will
be seeing you in that role. That will be a reunion for you, will
it not?
Mr Thompson: Yes.
Q106 Chairman: Andrew, this is your
first performance in front of the Committee, is it not?
Mr White: It is, Chairman, yes.
Q107 Chairman: Welcome to you. Dorian,
you have been hiding from us since 2000.
Mr Bradley: It's been far too
long.
Q108 Chairman: Welcome back.
Mr Bradley: Thank you.
Q109 Chairman: Let us get started.
Maurice, when you talk about the lighter touch of Ofsted, it is
not light enough for some people, is it? Some people would like
it to be no touch at all and rather than having Ofsted, which
even slimmed down is still a pretty big bureaucracy and takes
a lot of taxpayers' money, even some of your greatest friends
would say you have done the job, there has been intense inspection,
a good regime, there has been a great deal of improvement, and
some people would say there has been an improvement but it has
not been up to Ofsted, there is a view that Ofsted should gently
fade away now and the money put into school improvement directly.
What do you say to those critics?
Mr Smith: I think one of my teaching
trade union colleagues suggested that Ofsted should do itself
out of business and, indeed, if it was not for the—
Q110 Chairman: They said that about
the National Health Service. In 1948 they confidently believed
that the NHS would eradicate illness and there would be no need
for it any longer.
Mr Smith: Thereby lies the point,
does it not? Our view is that Ofsted has a broad portfolio of
work. We have lightened our touch in terms of school inspection
and we are proposing, if we can, to lighten it further, but that
does not mean to say all aspects of our portfolio are subject
to that lightness of touch. Indeed, the new functions that are
to be placed with us may require much more weighty consideration.
I do not think Ofsted as an organisation is going to go away.
The second point I would make is I do believe however light or
heavy our programme is, or however proportionate, parents of children
in school in this country still wish to have a degree of external
scrutiny of the school process and it is Ofsted's role to provide
that external scrutiny, as was its role when it was established
in 1992. I do not think that has gone away. That is something
that the public and parents expect and deserve and it is something
we still wish to provide whilst the statute enables us to do so.
Q111 Chairman: Do you have any evidence
to base that last remark on in terms of 360 degree consultation
with all of your stakeholders, including parents and teachers?
Is it not a fact that all good and efficient organisations do
consult regularly on how people evaluate them? Do you do that?
Have you done it recently?
Mr Smith: Yes. We do it almost
all the time, I might say.
Q112 Chairman: What are the teachers
and parents telling us?
Mr Smith: The head teachers are
telling us that they appreciate the new school inspection programme
and benefit from it more so than the previous programme. Parents
tell us that they like to receive their school inspection report
and they also tell us in the early years field, for example, that
they are appreciative of having those reports in the public domain.
Q113 Chairman: Is that an overwhelming
view or is it 52/48?
Mr Smith: I think we were 75 on
the headteachers' side in terms of schools.
Q114 Chairman: What about parents?
Mr Smith: I would have to dig
out the parent figure for you, if you do not mind me saying.[1]
We also get some response from our website which is one of the
most popular websites; more popular than Manchester United we
are told. It is hit, which is the expression I believe, many times
by parents trying to find out about the provision that they wish
to send their children to.
Q115 Chairman: So they value it as a
source of knowledge?
Mr Smith: Yes. We do some other
work on what parents use to choose whatever provision they are
looking for, whether they are choosing provision from primary
to secondary, or entry to primary school, or entry into the childcare
market. All of our market research suggests that the Ofsted report
is a key component of that decision making.
Q116 Chairman: Can I ask your colleagues,
when you think about the job, and some of you have been in place
for quite some time, do you still have the same degree of confidence
that Ofsted is improving standards, improving what happens in
schools, as when you started? How do you feel about that?
Mrs Rosen: Yes, absolutely. If
you are thinking about the impact of Ofsted, over the years we
have had a significant impact in terms of improving schools that
have gone into special measures, improving the quality of initial
teacher training, improving the quality of local authorities and
of colleges through our inspection programmes. I completely accept
the point that Ofsted is not the only contributor to improvement
but surely the inspection regime has had a lot to do with that.
We are now thinking about making our inspections even more effective
by making them more proportionate to risk so that we can target
what are really quite scarce inspection resources at those providers
which need the most. That is in terms of schools where we are
hoping to move towards a lighter touch for the best schools, but
to continue the frequent monitoring for the schools which need
us most which are in special measures or have a notice to improve.
For colleges as well we want to move to a lighter touch for the
best. In fact, we moved to a differentiated system this autumn
thereby providing better value for money. The same is true in
initial teacher training where we have already moved to a differentiated
training programme. The best providers get a lighter touch and
we are still looking in more detail at those that have more problems.
Throughout our inspection systems we are looking to provide better
value for money but still stimulate improvement where it is needed.
Q117 Chairman: John, how confident
are you? Are you going to slip over to the Department tomorrow
and whisper into David Bell's ear, "We could save a lot of
money if we got rid of that bunch I have just been working for"?
Mr Thompson: I am afraid I would
not, Chairman. I am fairly convinced that we are adding some significant
value to the system. I have personally been on several inspections
and when you are out there working with professionals in the system
you can see the value that is added. I would also say from personal
experience that my son's secondary school has just been inspected
and he had a letter from the inspectors which he thought was excellent
because it gave him some views, as a consumer of education, about
his school. He thought that was valuable and if we had not been
there then possibly he would not have got that.
Mr Smith: We did some work in
the early years sector on stakeholder views of our inspection
programme as recently as February 2006, so perhaps Dorian would
like to mention that.
Mr Bradley: We surveyed about
1,200 providers in February this year. Those providers were inspected
last November and we asked them what they thought of our inspection
work. 96% of them stated that our report made clear any actions
or recommendations that were needed to improve the quality of
childcare. The interesting thing is to see what they do. I do
not want to drown the Committee in data but if I can give you
one or two figures that point towards the positive impact that
Ofsted has. Of the providers we graded unsatisfactory in the last
inspection programme, about a quarter of them in the new inspection
programme are being graded as good or better. Of the ones we graded
satisfactory, about 37% of day care providers and over 50% of
child minders have moved from satisfactory to good. I think those
are clear indications that Ofsted's work is being picked up by
providers and the local authorities and other agencies that work
with them to improve the life chances for children in Ofsted registered
childcare.
Q118 Chairman: As the new person
on the block, Andrew, how long have you worked for Ofsted?
Mr White: I have worked for Ofsted
for nine years, Chairman, so I have got a view of Ofsted's history.
One of the strengths of the organisation is that it is self-critical.
The inspection process we had in schools nine years ago would
not be right for now, it would be too heavyweight for today. One
of the strengths of the organisation is we are extremely self-critical
because that is our role that we offer externally. Currently we
are looking across our range of inspection regimes to see where
next and it is a question you would rightly demand of us.
Q119 Chairman: If you are all doing
such a good job, Maurice, if there are deficiencies in our educational
system, what are the main reasons? Who is holding up further progress?
What frustrates you about the system that seems to be stopping
the rise in standards across the piece even in the more difficult
schools?
Mr Smith: I think it is important
to state that there has been a rise in standards although that
rise occasionally plateaus across the piece. If you just deal
with schools alone from Key Stage 1 to Key Stage 4, over a period—I
have been engaged with Ofsted for 10 years, Miriam for 13 years
and Andrew for nine—we have seen a rise in educational standards.
What frustrates me, and I am sure it frustrates my colleagues,
is what might be described as a longish tail to educational progress.
What frustrates me—I do not want to characterise it too
generally—is 13-year-old boys and above in difficult schools
who seem to lose any track or ownership of the educational process
and vote with their feet.
1 Data not available. Back
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