Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
DEPARTMENT FOR
EDUCATION AND
SKILLS AND
OFSTED
27 FEBRUARY 2006
Q20 Sarah McCarthy-Fry: Would you
say that if the teaching is good over time those levels of attainment
would increase?
Ms Rosen: In schools which have
difficulties the teaching needs to be very good to enable the
pupils to make good progress. If that is provided over time, yes,
I think the children will make the sort of progress that we want
them to.
Q21 Sarah McCarthy-Fry: The ethos
of a school, the teaching of a school, the leadership of a school,
can help to overcome the disadvantages of coming from a very deprived
background.
Ms Rosen: These are all vital
components, yes.
Q22 Sarah McCarthy-Fry: If I could
go on to Mr Bell. On pages 38 and 39, it says in the new 2005
White Paper, "new legislation will require local authorities
to consider all options for a school when it goes into Special
Measures . . . " We have heard that schools have to come
out of Special Measures within a year, and I can see the point
of that because you would not expect children and their education
to suffer, however at the moment many schools are taking two years
or more. Why do you think that is?
Mr Bell: For the sake of clarification,
the proposal is that schools must be making significant progress
after 12 months rather than actually be out of Special Measures
in 12 months, but I think the essence of the point is the same,
you have to be demonstrating that significant progress is being
made. Again, advised by colleagues from Ofsted, it would seem
from their evidence that if a school is not demonstrating significant
improvement, for example in the leadership, in the attitude of
the students, in the behaviour, in the discipline, the quality
of the teaching and the like, within 12 months then you are quite
unlikely to see it and those schools that spend a long time in
Special Measures are often those schools where they have made
virtually no progress in the first 12 months. It is very important
to see that progress. If you assume that progress has been made
in 12 months then the actual out of Special Measure times we have
talked about of 22 months for secondary and about 20 months for
primary, suggests that it is realistic in the vast majority of
cases. Where it is not happening I think it is right that more
radical choices are considered because if it is happening in the
vast majority of schools, why should the children and young people
in a school where it is not happening be left to languish in Special
Measures for a longer period.
Q23 Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I have a
school in my constituency which I think is the second fastest
school where it has come out of Special Measures. It is a primary
school. Talking to the headteacher there, he cannot understand
why other schools have not been able to come out as quickly because
from the headteacher's point of view it was recognising the problem
and putting the measures in place. Would you say that the schools
that do not come out quicker do not want to recognise there is
a problem?
Mr Bell: Perhaps I should defer
to the Chief Inspector on this one. It does make the point in
the Report that some schools are in a state of self-denial and
that is a characteristic of some schools that find it difficult
to get going. They have argued over the judgment in the first
place, they do not accept the judgment. If a school accepts the
judgment and then focuses on improvement it is more likely to
improve rapidly.
Q24 Sarah McCarthy-Fry: We have said
local authorities at the moment have a power to intervene but
in the Report it says they rarely use it. Do you think that is
because they are not aware there is a problem or they do not want
to interfere?
Mr Bell: I do not think it would
be a good excuse to say they are not aware there is a problem
because the local authority, frankly, should know there is a problem
in a school. I think in some cases, particularly of under-performance
interestingly, there has been a degree of reluctance because a
school might by some measures appear to be doing quite well but
the local authority might consider it to be under-performing against
the intake of the students and what they could achieve. That is
something that hopefully will be changed in the future to give
local authorities the power even with those schools. I do not
think it really stacks up as a particularly good excuse to say,
"We are somehow reluctant to intervene". Local authorities
have a range of measures that they can adopt and as a Department
we would expect them to intervene actively if they are there to
ensure that standards in all schools are rising.
Q25 Sarah McCarthy-Fry: Yet it does
say in the Report that at the moment they are rarely using those
powers.
Mr Bell: Indeed. Although I hope
the proposition that they will have, not a more extensive power,
I do not want to give the impression we are using this in a fashion
without thinking, but the power to act where they think it is
necessary, will encourage them to do that sensitively and sensibly.
There has been an announcement that there will be additional funding
to support local authorities in their intervention powers in schools
in difficulties. I do not think there will be any excuse for a
local authority to stand back if it is manifestly obvious that
the children and young people in a school are not getting the
education that they deserve.
Q26 Sarah McCarthy-Fry: One of the
things that came out very clearly in the Report was early intervention
is really important and self-intervention with schools regulating
themselves and checking whether they are going down that route.
There is a good deal in the Report I notice about the stigma felt
by headteachers and parents, but one of the things I noticed when
I went to visit the school that I was talking about in my constituency
that was pointed out to me was that it was the pupils who felt
it. They were not immune to the fact that their school was splashed
all over the pages of newspapers. Yet over three-quarters of headteachers
considered that being placed in a category had a beneficial effect
on the governance. How do you know you are going to get that balance
that says, "If we are put into a category that is going to
be beneficial because that makes us work but, on the other hand,
surely it would be much better if we did not get to that stage
where we had to do that in the first place"?
Mr Bell: I wonder if the Chairman
would mind if I defer to Mr Smith on that one.
Mr Smith: Schools know thyself
is the message that you are putting across to me and, indeed,
self-evaluation, common not just in schools but across business
and any organisation, is a key component of ensuring the quality
of whatever it is you are providing. If you are providing education
you need to know yourself and know how good you are at that. One
of the key indicators of failure in school is the school not knowing
it and not seeing it. David said earlier that is also a key factor
in recovery because in order for a school to recover quickly,
as the school in your constituency did, it needs to accept the
judgment and get on with its new life, in a sense. I think you
make a very powerful point about the stigma and the attachment
to the children in the school. Is it not a very difficult position
we find ourselves in? I think one of the Ofsted's wonderful strengths
is that everything is out there in the public domain. All our
Reporting is in the public domain, it is all on the website, everybody
can see it, but with that comes the downside that it can be all
over the newspapers. I have to say that on balance I would much
prefer us to be in that position than pre-1992 when reports were
made available only to governors and education was the secret
garden that your colleague referred to earlier. I think that is
hard and difficult not just for the pupils, the staff, the head
and the governors, but it is the first step on the road to recovery.
Q27 Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I have not
got time to go down the route of why your inspectors are not allowed
to give advice, but if I could maybe come back, whether it be
Ofsted or whether it be the Department, do you have any plans
for key performance indicators for benchmarks for schools to measure
themselves against so that it would help them to self-evaluate?
Mr Bell: There is a lot of data
already available to that purpose. Schools receive information
from Ofsted about their performance and that information is set
against information of all schools nationally and information
of schools that are similar to that school. There is quite a lot
of that around. Also, on financial management we are putting more
information out to schools to do exactly as you have suggested,
to benchmark their performance. It is very important that if you
are self-evaluating you do not do it in isolation, you do not
guess where you are, you have hard data. I think it is one of
the significant improvements over the past few years that no school
can say, "We do not have the data to tell us how well we
are doing" because there is a huge amount of data out there
and I think the self-assessing school, the self-evaluating school,
uses that to diagnose where it is strong, where it is not so strong,
and then to plan actions to improve.
Q28 Mr Khan: Obviously one school
that is failing is one too many. I could see how surprised you
were by the fact that 4% of our primary schools are poorly performing
and 23% of our secondary schools are poorly performing.
Mr Bell: Again, I would just enter
the caveat I entered earlier that there are different definitions
because a school where some students are under-performing may
not be poorly performing.
Q29 Mr Khan: We have all read the
paperwork.
Mr Bell: Not surprised insofar
as that data was available.
Q30 Mr Khan: Primary and secondary,
you were not surprised?
Mr Bell: Not surprised because
we know from the data I have just referred to where those schools
that are not performing well need to improve. What you do then
is what matters. It is not your reaction to the data, it is—
Q31 Mr Khan: The question is what
do we do about it. Presumably you welcome the proposals in the
White Paper as summarised on page four of the Report as dealing
with the concerns that have been raised.
Mr Bell: I think the White Paper
offers a whole range of policies that are designed to bring about
greater improvement in schools.
Q32 Mr Khan: Which you welcome?
Mr Bell: Yes, I do, everything
from ensuring that schools have the opportunity to work with other
schools to improving pupil discipline and the like. The White
Paper was entirely focused on bringing about improvement in our
schools, because this Report suggests that despite all the improvements
we have seen in recent years we cannot afford to be complacent.
Q33 Mr Khan: One of the things it
touches upon is something highlighted by the Report which is some
local authorities give insufficient support to schools which are
at risk, some local authorities do not prevent school decline.
You will be aware from paragraph 1.29 on page 27 and figure 20
of the effects of poor inspection results on local authority support
for schools. How does the White Paper address those concerns?
Mr Bell: Certainly there is a
very clear expectation that local authorities are going to become
even more the champions of standards to ensure that the right
range of schools is available, the diversity of schools is available,
right down to the very practical intervention powers that I described
earlier, that where a local authority is concerned that a school
is not performing as well as it might, it can then intervene.
We would also expect local authorities to find ways of identifying
external support for a school. That might be the local authority's
own staff coming in to support a school, it might be using school
improvement partners, which is a recent initiative, and it might
be by identifying other bodies and organisations, universities,
businesses and the like, that can support the school to improve.
Q34 Mr Khan: That brings me on to
my next point which is on page 5, paragraph 12, you will see that
there are 242 schools in Special Measures and of those schools
Outer London has the highest proportion of schools in Special
Measures and the North-East of England has the lowest. Is it speculation
or is it the case—you can tell me—that one of the
reasons why the North-East has such a large proportion of schools
which are strongly performing is because of them having very good
local authorities as opposed to the situation in Outer London?
What do you think about that?
Mr Bell: When you look at the
regional break down of the data it changes slightly over time,
so I think it is quite hard to take a snapshot that says this
tells you definitively that you have a particular set of circumstances
in one area as opposed to another. Certainly we know, for example,
in the North-East that the local authorities there have generally
been graded by Ofsted as doing a good job in relation to intervention
in schools that are in difficulty. Equally, there are local authorities
in the Outer London ring that you have described that have done
likewise. I am pretty cautious about drawing conclusions.
Q35 Mr Khan: So you dismiss that
paragraph?
Mr Bell: No, I do not dismiss
it, but what I am saying is I think it is very difficult to draw
a conclusion from a particular moment in time and say that tells
you, "All the local authorities in this area are providing
good support and those authorities are not". What I would
say is both the Ofsted arrangements previously for inspection
of local authorities as well as the new style arrangements for
inspecting local authorities does continue to put an emphasis
on the quality of support being given, so we will continue to
focus on this both at the Department and through the Ofsted inspection.
Q36 Mr Khan: One of the things that
both the Chairman and Ms McCarthy-Fry touched upon was the change
in the White Paper where if a school does not make significant
progress within 12 months it will lead to it being closed down.
The Report tells us that two-thirds of schools made at least reasonable
progress over the first 12 months and 85% of schools in Special
Measures emerged successfully, which would lead me to believe
there might be 19% of schools after 12 months who might not have
been able to show a significant improvement who were then able
to emerge successfully who may be caught by the new provisions.
Can you allay the concerns of the Committee that those will not
be caught?
Mr Bell: We would say very strongly
that if a school is not making sufficient progress within 12 months
we need to consider what possible action could be taken because
the evidence would suggest very strongly that if a school is not
improving sufficiently in 12 months, and that does not necessarily
mean its academic results because a year is a very short time
in terms of the conditions for learning in the school, the school
is likely to be in Special Measures for longer. Those are the
average times.
Q37 Mr Khan: I will give you some
stats. The stats are 66% have made "at least reasonable progress"
in the first 12 months and 85% eventually emerged successfully.
Are you saying that there is a percentage above 66 which would
show—What are you saying?
Mr Bell: I would say that all
schools should be showing significant progress in 12 months. As
we are setting a higher standard in every sense for our education
system, including what we have asked Ofsted to do through the
inspection arrangements, I think it is right that schools should
start to improve more rapidly because if they do not for that
period of time when they are not making significant progress the
students are not getting a good education. I think it is right
to say it might have been the case that schools took longer to
come out of Special Measures but now we should be saying if they
are not showing significant progress the option is at least available
to consider more radical action.
Q38 Mr Khan: Thank you. Figure 25
of the Report shows that around half of the recovered schools
benefited from strengthened links with other, I assume, good schools.
Mr Bell: Yes.
Q39 Mr Khan: How can we persuade more
good schools to help schools that need their help? How can we
incentivise them?
Mr Bell: There is a lot of activity
emerging where schools are supported in all sorts of different
ways: federations that are hard federations in the sense there
is a formal link with another school through to softer federations
where you have got particular teachers and departments helping.
I think the vast majority of schools that are in a strong position
do take their responsibilities to other schools seriously and
the local authority can often play a very helpful role here in
introducing, if I can use that word, a successful school to a
less successful school. I think there is quite a lot of strong
goodwill to sharing expertise and helping poor schools to improve.
We are starting from a strong baseline there. The arrangements
at the moment do tend to be rather ad hoc and what is proposed
in the future is the opportunity for those relationships to be
firmer, stronger and more long-term.
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