Examination of Witnesses (Questions 460-479)
MR MAURICE
SMITH, MS
PENNY SILVESTER,
MR DAVID
SHERLOCK CBE AND
MR JOHN
LANDERYOU
16 JANUARY 2006
Q460 Mr Marsden: Is that something
that could be reflected more prominently? I am not saying this
as a criticism of what you have done previously; I am merely saying
that we recognise it. Could those two areas be more prominently
recognised in your inspection processes?
Mr Sherlock: I do not think it
would make any difference in inspection process terms but I think
there are two pieces of infrastructure missing there which we
have drawn attention to repeatedly in the past and which I think
are still gaps.
Q461 Mr Wilson: Mr Sherlock, you
were pretty opposed to the merger with Ofsted when you came before
this Committee before. If I remember rightly you were pretty trenchantly
opposed to it; it was not just a case of shades, it was pretty
much black and white at the time and it was certainly a lot more
than knocking off a few rough edges which is how you described
it to the Chairman earlier on. Is what has changed that you have
lost the argument and now you are left to make the best of a bad
job? What has really happened is a takeover by Ofsted.
Mr Sherlock: I think Maurice probably
needs to come in on some of this but yes we were opposed to it.
My board was opposed to it. Yes, we have lost the argument but
I think there have been some modifications in the proposition
in the course of that debate. I think the interesting thing is
that if you look at the Government's response to the consultation
what they say, if I am right, is that there was a majority of
employers, work-based training providers, adult providers who
were against the proposition. In other words, there was a majority
in further education who were for it. I have yet to see the actual
responses to the consultation but what that means I think is that
there are a group of people out there who perhaps feel they have
been overlooked at this stage. In the process of developing the
new organisation, we have to recover their confidence and their
belief that they are being properly served. We have the will to
do that, that is for sure. I think it cannot be done by a takeover
of ALI and CSCI by Ofsted; I think we need something which is
much richer than that and that is what we are committed to try
to produce. It is going to be an interesting 15 months. We met
for the first time last week and the signs at the moment are very
good; that we will have real professional cooperation in doing
what we recognise is a complex job but a necessary job. The argument
is over. What we have to produce is something which properly serves
all our customers.
Q462 Mr Wilson: In essence you are
making the best of a bad job because it is a takeover.
Mr Sherlock: I think it is an
interesting argument.
Q463 Mr Wilson: What is the size
of Ofsted?
Mr Sherlock: Ofsted is considerably
bigger than ALI.
Q464 Mr Wilson: Who is going to be
chief inspector for the organisation?
Mr Sherlock: I guess it will be
appointed by the new organisation.
Q465 Mr Wilson: It is likely to be
someone from Ofsted, is it not?
Mr Sherlock: Not necessarily.
I would have thought that the whole child protection area is equally
strong. If you are looking at relative sizes I think Ofsted's
turnover is about £200 million at the moment; ALI is £25
million; the 18% of the Commission for Social Care Inspection
that is going in is about £20 million in value. There is
no doubt that the combined ALI and CSCI is about a quarter of
the size that Ofsted is at the moment. I do not think that that
necessarily means that the constituencies that we serve are unimportant
or will be overlooked. If you take a long view of this—my
first inspection job was with the Further Education Funding Council
in 1993—an FEFC inspectorate was set up when the original
HMI for Schools was broken up and the schools bit went in the
direction of Ofsted and the further education bit went to FEFC
and the higher education bit went to what eventually became QAA.
What you could say is that that is actually being joined back
together again and what I would hope would happen is that in joining
it back together again we would take advantage of all the things
that we have learned while we have been separated in the ensuing
12 or 13 years. I think if we do that we will get something which
is very rich and very interesting.
Q466 Mr Wilson: To what extent do
you think all those fears you had that you expressed to the Committee
have been allayed?
Mr Sherlock: I think they have
been to some extent allayed by the Government's response to the
consultation.
Q467 Mr Wilson: What fears have not
been?
Mr Sherlock: I think we have a
number of guarantees, as I say, about building on the best; facing
our different constituencies. We will look at branding sensitively
to ensure there is some reassurance to our various different customer
groups. I think we have a measure of reassurance about those mechanical
things. The trick is going to be building a culture which is capable
of addressing in a sensitive kind of way this very wide constituency
of different customer groups. I think we have a nervousness about
becoming part of the Civil Service, I am bound to say; I have
never been a Civil Servant before.
Q468 Mr Wilson: Surely that is not
the only thing.
Mr Sherlock: No, but I think the
cultural issues that go with that are the things that worry us.
The comments from people like the Institute of Directors and the
CBI were very much about engagement with the interests of employers
and maintaining that edgy, difficult relationship between the
public and the private sector. We need to carry on doing that
and move probably a little bit further towards the private sector
within an organisation which has got very, very substantial regulatory
duties in child care and other areas.
Q469 Mr Wilson: So you are worried
that a new organisation may not be able to continue that fine
balance with the private sector.
Mr Sherlock: I think it is bound
to be a worry but we are committed to trying to resolve that worry.
Q470 Mr Wilson: Moving on to the
split between your responsibilities and the Quality Improvement
Agency, do you have any concerns about splitting those responsibilities?
Mr Sherlock: Yes. Again one of
the things that was won was agreement that Excalibur would become
part of the new inspectorate. Maurice's briefing paper to the
Committee suggests that he sees a role much more widely for Excalibur
in terms of developing good practice for the whole of the remit
and I think that is a very exciting prospect. There is very little
that we have to hand over to QIA. The direct service in terms
of serving individual companies that we carry out and which we
are being asked to stop carrying out is carried out by serving
inspectors on secondment. They will come to the new inspectorate;
they will not go to QIA. There may be a problem of a whole range
of services which simply stop happening.
Q471 Mr Wilson: You argued once again
in the consultation period that it was unwise to split those responsibilities.
Do you still feel it is unwise to do that?
Mr Sherlock: Yes, I do. I think
this is a fear. I can understand the fear about confusion between
the different roles and so forth; I think that is a perfectly
reasonable one and it has been, for example, in financial regulation,
one that has been fulfilled in practice where consultancy firms
which were also auditors really did get their functions overlapping
in an unhelpful way. In our particular area and with the kind
of safeguards that we applied I think it was an unjustified fear.
There is a huge amount to be gained in our particular area where
very often there is no choice but to contract with particular
providers. If one finds shortcomings you have to try to rectify
them. There is a limit to how much an inspectorate should be involved
in that; it should not be taking over from the consultancy industry.
Nevertheless, it has a duty to put people on the right lines before
leaving them.
Q472 Mr Wilson: Bearing all that
in mind, how would you intend to work with the Quality Improvement
Agency? What are the things you can do to make sure you have a
very close relationship?
Mr Sherlock: I think it is very
difficult to say until QIA is more tangible. At the moment we
are giving about a day a week of director time to working with
the QIA in terms of developing its own mission and approach. Until
we actually see what it looks like in action it is difficult to
answer that one.
The Committee suspended from 4.38 pm to
4.49 pm for a division in the House
Q473 Mr Wilson: Foster argues that inspection
should be increasingly aimed at self-assessment. You are presumably
aware of that. Does that sound the death knell for the inspectorate's
work in further education?
Mr Landeryou: I think Foster also
says that this is in the medium term; he is talking about five
or 10 years minimum in terms of his timescales. The question is
what does self-regulation actually mean and it is something that
is much trumpeted but very seldom explained in a degree of detail.
Even in Foster the main American example that is quoted comes
from higher education rather than further education. I think it
is a concept that needs a great deal of thinking through before
we start to get too excited about it.
Q474 Mr Wilson: What do you think
it means?
Mr Landeryou: I think it basically
means, in the light of some views in colleges, "leave us
alone to get on with it; we will tell the rest of you what is
good and what is not". A more sophisticated view is slightly
different to that. The approach that we have taken across the
two inspectorates is probably some sort of middle ground whereby
even in the cycle of inspections that we are running at the moment
the colleges that have demonstrated themselves to be the very
best over the last cycle of inspections and who have maintained
student success rates after that period as well have a very, very
light inspection indeed, sometimes without a substantial on-site
visit at all; purely an annual one day monitoring visit. That
is probably getting closer to what a more sophisticated view of
what self-regulation actually means with some sort of minimum
outside moderation. Self-regulation is difficult in some senses
because according to most of the indicators the colleges that
are good at the moment are not the ones who have always been good.
That is true in terms of both inspection results and success rates
in terms of achievement as well. It is difficult to predict who
will stay good.
Q475 Mr Wilson: Should you be helping
them to improve their self-analysis over the next five to 10 years,
did you say?
Mr Landeryou: I did not say anything;
five to 10 years is what Foster quoted. We are already doing that.
The current round of inspections places far more emphasis on a
college's ability to self-assess accurately. It also calls on
us to make a judgment about the ways in which the college has
demonstrated its capacity to improve, in other words its ability
to self-generate improvement.
Mr Sherlock: Colleges have been
self-assessing annually since 1994 so they have had a time to
get better. I think 121 colleges were classified as good in the
first FEFC cycle, 1993-97; only 28 of those were still good in
our last inspection cycle. There is a very substantial turnover
of about 40% from cycle to cycle.
Q476 Mr Wilson: You said it was Foster's
five to 10 years; is that a reasonable period?
Mr Landeryou: I think it depends
what you mean by self-regulation.
Q477 Mr Chaytor: I would like to
ask Ms Silvester about the workforce in FE and in particular how
would you characterise the FE workforce as against the workforce
in primary schools or secondary schools?
Ms Silvester: It is more varied
picture. There are recruitment issues in some particular subject
areas in the same way that there are in schools and certainly
a survey by Ofsted a few years ago of teacher training showed
that the quality of the initial teacher training was not as good
as it could be, particularly in teaching new teachers how to teach
their specialist subjects. Also, looking at the differentiated
model for the range of teachers that are coming into FE who have
different skills and the qualifications and training they were
receiving was not matching it. Therefore the workforce is varied.
There are certain curriculum areas where we know that teaching
and learning is weaker, for example construction engineering and
foundation studies where they do worse than other areas in the
curriculum. In terms of the teachers I would say there are some
outstanding teachers in FE; the preparation and the teacher training
is getting better but it needs to focus on special studies.
Q478 Mr Chaytor: In terms of a workforce
development strategy on which Foster plies a lot of emphasis,
what should the priorities be?
Ms Silvester: It should be around
helping those teachers who need to have extra development, particularly
in those subject areas that I mentioned to give them more intervention,
more structured support in order to improve those skills. The
DfES Standards Unit have developed teaching materials and are
focussing in on those areas at the moment to actually enable them
to develop and improve skills in those areas.
Q479 Mr Chaytor: Do you think there
ought to be a greater emphasis on initial teacher training qualifications
for staff in FE?
Ms Silvester: All teachers in
FE should have a teaching qualification.
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