Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200
- 219)
WEDNESDAY 9 MAY 2007
MS CHRISTINE
GILBERT CBE, MS
ZENNA ATKINS,
MS MIRIAM
ROSEN, MR
DORIAN BRADLEY
AND MS
VANESSA HOWLISON
Q200 Chairman: You take as much time
as you like. It is your last performance today.
Mr Bradley: I will not indulge
you! The childcare inspectors who transferred into our Ofsted
in 2001 came from local authorities and their pay rates reflected
what the local authorities were paying for them. We have maintained
that and tried to enhance it as much as we can. A number of the
inspectors who transferred from the CSCI are better paid and HMI
are better paid again. We have the outline of an inspector ladder,
if you like, where people can see there is a progression as they
gain more experience in the work that they do, but it is true
to say that the work in the childcare sector tends to be more
straightforward, less complex, than the work HMI are paid to carry
out and therefore the pay rates reflect that.
Q201 Mr Wilson: Inspector, why was
the old heavyweight inspection style changed?
Ms Gilbert: It was changed before
I arrived but one of the first things I asked Miriam, and the
Deputy Director, was whether we changed because the budget was
being cut so drastically and we therefore had to cut our cloth
or whether we believed this was the most effective form of inspection,
and I was told very, very clearly that they thought this was the
most effective form of inspection. The framework is changed very
regularly, there are differences in style and so on. Therefore,
if I looked at the analysis of how schools have progressed over
the last 10 years, they have become much stronger. And—my
analysis is based on evidence in Ofsted reports—and they
have become much better at self-evaluation. We are now much more
data rich than we ever were before. We are able to look across
schools and up and down the country more effectively than we ever
did before. Miriam will want to add to this, I am sure, but, from
outside, I saw that the previous system, which was very intensive
and quite a drain on schools, had probably yielded as much as
it could in terms of improvement, and we were now moving on to
do something else which builds on the schools' developments over
the years and their strengths in the different areas.
Q202 Mr Wilson: Before Miriam comes
in, was the old system in any way ineffective in identifying underperforming
schools?
Ms Gilbert: From the outside,
I would not have said it was. I do not know if Miriam wants to
add to that.
Ms Rosen: I would say that the
old system was successful in identifying underperforming schools
but it was much more resource intensive. We looked at every subject
of the curriculum as well as the overall leadership and management
and effectiveness of the school. We had done that for three cycles
and we felt the system had served the country well but it was
time to move on and to move to a shorter, sharper system that
was less expensive but was also less burdensome on schools, gave
them less notice, enabled us to see them as they were, and had
an extremely sharp focus on the central nervous system and the
overall effectiveness of the school. That is the system that we
now have. We could not have done it without the focus on the school
self-evaluation, and, as Christine says, that has improved markedly
over the years and the data that we now have. We do feel it is
a very successful system and it is less burdensome. The downside
is that we are not systematically picking up subjects, in the
way we used to do, but you know that we have a complementary survey
system that looks at subjects and enables us to report on those
on a rolling programme.
Q203 Mr Wilson: Is the new light-touch
approach better at identifying weaknesses in schools?
Ms Rosen: If anything it would
be better at that because of this very sharp focus on the overall
effectiveness of the school, aided by the data and the self-evaluation.
This will enable us to look at schools whose raw results might
appear to be good but they are not doing terribly well for the
intake of the pupils they have, for the context. The contextual
value added data and the sharp focus that we now have I think
enables us to winkle out those schools in a better way.
Q204 Mr Wilson: So your answer is
yes, it is better.
Ms Rosen: Yes.
Q205 Mr Wilson: How much time in
the new light-touch inspection regime is spent by inspectors in
the classroom compared to the old regime?
Ms Rosen: Less time is spent in
the classroom.
Q206 Mr Wilson: How much less?
Ms Rosen: Taking into account
the reduced tariff inspections that we now have, the average for
lesson observation is nine lessons in a primary school and 22
in a secondary school. There is a spread around that. That is
considerably down from the lesson observations that we used to
have, but I would like to make the point, firstly, that the inspectors
have access to all the information about lessons that the school
has in its self-evaluation—because the schools also evaluate
the effectiveness of teaching—and the inspectors also have
other evidence which they seek out, such as looking at pupils'
work, discussions with pupils and teachers. All of these things
contribute to judgments on the quality of teaching and learning.
Q207 Mr Wilson: Have you identified
any correlation between a lighter-touch inspection regime and
improvements in school performance?
Ms Rosen: I am not sure I understand
your question.
Q208 Mr Wilson: You have a new inspection
regime and the end product of that should be improvements in schools.
Have you identified a correlation between the new regime and better
standards in schools as a result of those inspection regimes?
Ms Rosen: Standards have risen
gradually over the years, including since 2005 when we introduced
this new system, but I think we would be the first to admit that
all sorts of things help to bring about improvements in schools.
Firstly, the work of the teachers and the pupils and the heads
within the schools is crucial, but we do believe that Ofsted acts
as a stimulus and the report to which I alluded earlier would
confirm that.
Q209 Mr Wilson: I am not clear whether
you had identified a correlation between the light-touch and—
Ms Rosen: I think we can say there
is a correlation; we cannot say there is a direct causal effect.
Q210 Mr Wilson: How many schools
are currently in special measures?
Ms Rosen: I think our current
numbers are around 250. One point I would like to make is that
the proportion of schools inspected that go into special measures
has remained relatively constant in the last year of section 10
and in the first year of section 5 and in the autumn term, so
the proportion of schools going into special measures has remained
relatively constant. There was a bit of a fuss last term when
the overall figures went up. That was because there were fewer
coming out of special measures not because there were more going
in. We do anticipate that, overall, the numbers will start to
fall because, in fact, there are more schools coming out more
quickly.
Q211 Mr Wilson: When you announced
the number of schools in special measures, which I think was in
February this year—
Ms Rosen: Yes.
Q212 Mr Wilson: You did not name
the schools. Why was that?
Ms Rosen: As far as I understood,
we did produce a list. It is usual for us to produce a list of
the schools.
Q213 Mr Wilson: I actually wrote
to the Chief Inspector about this very point because I felt it
was very important that the names of the schools should be released
at that time. It would be interesting for the Committee to hear
your views as to why they were not.
Ms Gilbert: I am trying to recall
the letter. As far as I can recall, a number of the schools had
not received the final report. I think that is correct, is it
not? That was the response to you.
Q214 Mr Wilson: I specifically requested
details for my own constituency, because obviously it is a very
important for the parents of my constituency that they have this
sort of information, and I still have not had that information
from Ofsted.
Ms Gilbert: You should have had
it by now. I will check it as soon as I get back. You certainly
should have had it by now. As far as I had understood that particular
query, all of the schools had not received their final report
when those figures were produced. We are talking there about a
matter of days or weeks. We publish all the reports on the web,
so the individual school reports should have been on the Ofsted
website.
Q215 Mr Wilson: Could we move on
to the Education Inspections Act. Do you think the new powers
local authorities are going to have as part of that are going
to lead to fewer schools going into special measures?
Ms Gilbert: In terms of local
authorities, did you say?
Q216 Mr Wilson: Yes, because they
have these new powers about serving notices to schools, et
cetera, and sacking governing bodies and teaming up with external
partners. Is that a help?
Ms Gilbert: I would hope that
with a stronger focus on their school improvement role, linked
with the work of the School Improvement Partners, if those things
are working effectively, there should be fewer schools going into
special measures because the issue should have been picked up
in a more focused way earlier and addressed locally earlier.
Q217 Mr Wilson: How closely are you
working with local authorities to identify struggling schools?
Ms Gilbert: Part of the work we
are doing is refining our processes about risk and assessment
of risk in a local area and so on. We are talking to directors
of children's services about how we might use them as part of
the general risk assessment process. We have not come up with
any final conclusions to those discussions but I think we have
very good relationships with them and we engage them in different
aspects of our work. I meet with them regularly, for instance,
and have those sort of discussions. The sort of issue you have
just been describing is a feature on the agenda of some of those
meetings.
Q218 Mr Wilson: Do you feel these
new powers cut across Ofsted and what you are doing at all?
Ms Gilbert: No, I think they do
not. They complement our work. We give an external perspective
to the work of local authorities, the work of SIPs and so on.
We think we just give a bit more edge to that work in helping
areas progress and in helping schools progress.
Q219 Mr Wilson: Do you think a local
authority has the necessary expertise to identify a struggling
or failing school because obviously they are not trained to inspect
schools?
Ms Gilbert: I think some authorities
have the resource. I do not know any more the sort of complement
of local inspectors or local advisors held by each local authority.
It did change significantly over a number of years. Some people
reduced their inspection service and advisory services; others
always kept a core. It was very, very rare for a local authority
to have no local advisors or inspectors, whatever you might call
them. I see them using the School Improvement Partners now, in
many ways as some effective authorities used local advisors before:
as a sort of link between the individual school and decisions
of the local authority. So the role of the school improvement
advisor will be to analyse what is going on in the school in a
very focused way, to make some sort of judgment on the school's
progress in achieving its targets and its outcomes, some comments
on the quality of its improvement planning and then some judgments,
and some support for judgments, on the performance appraisal of
the head and the performance management that is operating in school,
and then brokering some support for the school with the local
authority. That is how it should be working. In some authorities
I think it has begun to work like that with the SIPs that they
have been employing in secondary schools. It is just taking off,
I think, in primary and in special. I think we will have to wait
and see how it evolves. Some school improvement advisors are offering
greater challenge around issues such as targets than others with
the schools. We are not doing a formal evaluation but I understand
the DfES is doing a formal evaluation of the School Improvement
Partners.
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