Select Committee on Education and Skills Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240 - 259)

WEDNESDAY 9 MAY 2007

MS CHRISTINE GILBERT CBE, MS ZENNA ATKINS, MS MIRIAM ROSEN, MR DORIAN BRADLEY AND MS VANESSA HOWLISON

  Q240  Chairman: Is the sort of stuff that this Committee has looked at, shown to us by people like Edexcel, taken into account. They can tell you in the school which questions were particularly badly answered and I suggest that might lead you to surmise that that part of the course was badly taught. That is very valuable information. That is what I am told by people at Edexcel. Are you using it?

  Ms Gilbert: We would be very unlikely to pick up that sort of detail in the short school inspections we are doing now. However, if we looked at that issue thematically or in a survey or a topic that it was important for us to look at or that the DfES asked us to look at, we would feed it into our programme and look and feedback on just that. It would be a piece of work.

  Q241  Chairman: Why do we have to wait for anyone to ask you? It seems absolutely clear that here is the new technology, rapidly changing, that can give you more information about how children are scoring in exams, what is well taught and what is poorly taught, and you are saying that you would not look at that routinely?

  Ms Gilbert: I do not know what it is you have seen as a committee, so I would have to look at that and see. I do not know what the theme or topic would be. We look at a number of issues and we prioritise those issues, because there are always more things that people want us to look at, or that we want to look at in our programme, than it is possible to do, and we make decisions about those. I do not know what the information is but we use information as much as we can in the institutional inspections but also in the survey inspections.

  Ms Rosen: If a school has that kind of information, it really should be building it into its self-evaluation. It is extremely valuable information for the school. If the children are not doing well in one particular aspect of a subject, that will be reflected in the self-evaluation and will be discussed during the inspection. It is a good school which knows its strengths and weaknesses and is acting on them and doing something about it. Our focus would be: "You know this, what are you doing about it?"

  Q242  Chairman: I do not want to advertise a commercial organisation but I would suggest, Zenna Atkins, that you and your committee get down to see Jerry Jarvis at Edexcel, and OCR and AQA, just to see the high level of information that is now available. I am sorry, but if Ofsted is not looking at that, I am worried.

  Ms Atkins: The Board, and certainly I, will take you up on that. I think it is an issue which faces more than just Ofsted. It is about the effective and efficient use of the vast range of electronic data that is now available to us as inspection regulation services in inspecting and regulating public services. I have been talking to the Chairman of the Audit Commission about how they are using that information, how they are farming data from wide sources, and talking to the Chairman of the Healthcare Commission, Sir Ian Kennedy, as well about what is the range of data available and where does it interface and where is it useful to us as individual inspectors and regulators. I will certainly take you up on that and make sure those organisations are fed into that debate, because they may be very relevant to the health of a community equally. We will take that on board.

  Chairman: Thank you. That leads us nicely into Helen's last questions on improvement and innovation.

  Q243  Helen Jones: In the Strategic Plan, Chief Inspector, you say that good inspection makes what you call "a vital contribution to recovery and improvement". How does Ofsted measure that contribution?

  Ms Gilbert: We ask schools, in the process we have outlined this morning, about that. We do track improvement, particularly in those schools that are performing less well. I do not just mean the inadequate schools but we look in detail at progress in terms of the special measures schools. With notice to improve, we go back very quickly and we assess the progress there, and generally that has been extremely positive. In satisfactory schools with worrying aspects, we are now using the resources that we were using for outstanding and good schools and investing it in those schools, because we feel that our contribution there is going to have greater impact. We can track and show; for instance, of the 59 schools that were designated notice to improve at the beginning of, I think, last year, when we went back six to nine months later 56 of those had improved.

  Q244  Helen Jones: That is very interesting but I am trying to tease out of you how you measure the contribution of Ofsted as opposed to the contribution of everything else going on: the school doing self-assessment, for example; the role of the local authority, for example. You are now a very big organisation which costs a lot of public money and I am asking you how we can measure what we are getting for our money.

  Ms Gilbert: To some degree, we have to rely on the schools. As Miriam said earlier, it is quite difficult to isolate effects sometimes, but the schools will tell you. For instance, if you ask schools in special measures what made the greatest difference, they will tell you that it was, first of all, being designated special measures and then the regular visits from the inspectors after that which really honed up the schools' skills in terms of self-evaluation and development. We have to rely on that. It gets harder as the schools get better. It is an important piece of external perspective, which is what schools are telling us. They value it for that; they value it as an endorsement of their prioritisation and so on. But the direct link you are suggesting with all schools is quite difficult to tease out.

  Q245  Helen Jones: The Chairman referred to schools that are very innovative earlier and to the inspection team. Can you give me any examples of innovative schools that Ofsted has inspected and the results of those inspections? How do you then spread that good practice?

  Ms Gilbert: I cannot give you any individual examples of that. We do pick up good practice when we are inspecting schools and that is looked at sometimes in subject reviews—the reviews we mentioned earlier, when we are looking at a particular topic or an aspect of work and so on. We go into those schools or colleges where outstanding or good practice has been seen, the report is then written up and it is described and shared at subject conferences and so on. The survey work does pick up examples of good and interesting practice, as I said earlier. The schools themselves are very positive about those thematic inspections. Those that have been involved in it say it has helped them to reflect on what they are doing, to be crisper and clearer about what they are doing, and to improve their good practice in that area just by having the inspectors coming in. We have evidence about that in the reports we have done.

  Q246  Helen Jones: Before Miriam answers, can I clarify that? We have heard earlier that there is a very small proportion of schools returning surveys from normal inspection. Is that the same for thematic inspections?

  Ms Gilbert: I think with thematic inspections it is easier to pick up the survey returns because there are far fewer numbers. For instance, if you are looking at a subject, it might be around about 30 schools in a year. You can phone, you can pursue. We do get better returns from them.

  Ms Rosen: This year we are conducting a survey into schools with innovative curricula. We will be publishing that and hopefully that will give examples of good practice that others can look at and find interesting.

  Q247  Helen Jones: We will look forward to seeing that. You also say in your plan: "We influence policy development through our analysis and reporting." It is correct, is it not, that in two very important areas, the academies programme and the School Improvement Partners, the Government has used private consultancies, PricewaterhouseCooper and York Consulting to look at those programmes. Why, in your view, is that happening? Is it a failure in Ofsted? Are you not able to analyse those programmes?

  Ms Gilbert: I do not know why the DfES has chosen to do that. I have not been engaged in any of those discussions and I think that question is probably best placed to them. They might be conscious of the restrictions placed on Ofsted through the Better Regulation initiative. We have to work through a very tight budget to do some of these things. If the programme is full, for instance, for the year—if we are looking at a programme of issues and they want a big piece of work done—it might be that they have to ask somebody else to do it. I do not know if Miriam has been involved in those discussions.

  Q248  Helen Jones: Before Miriam comes in, could I ask a follow-up question. These are very important educational initiatives. Is Ofsted going to look at them at all?

  Ms Gilbert: We might do. They are not in the programme. This is the question the NUT asked me when they wanted us to do them. We might, in time, look at the impact that they are having on the ground. In terms of our planning, we will think about our programme, we will look at what is in our programme, and it might be that moves up the agenda in something that we might look at. It did not feature in the list of things that we looked at for our three-year programme, but it is a rolling programme which is reviewed annually. We would not look at it this year if the DfES was getting somebody else to look at it, but it might be that in three years' time we wanted to see the impact of the SIPs on the quality of provision in schools.

  Q249  Helen Jones: The academies programme has been running for some time and is expanding. I accept that SIPs has only just started up but are you telling me that Ofsted as an organisation does not have in its work plan any plans to look at these very new and sometimes highly controversial areas in education. If not, why on earth have they been left out?

  Ms Gilbert: I think we invest quite a lot in the academies. We do very detailed visits and inspections of the academies. Each academy is inspected by Ofsted and there are various visits to the academies. The SIPs is a different issue. As I say, it may or may not feature on our programme in future years.

  Q250  Chairman: Could I push you a little bit, Miriam, on this. When we go to schools, heads or the teams often say to us, "Look, we are doing this really innovative stuff" and they see as a problem that the Government puts so much emphasis on individual school leadership, that a head may go and a wonderful new system will die because the head has gone off somewhere or retired. What can we do not just about identifying innovation and good practice but spreading it systematically. Should that not be part of Ofsted's role?

  Ms Rosen: By our reports we do hope to disseminate good practice, and also, by frameworks that we produce. The current framework for inspection of schools, for example, does not focus only on the leadership of the head but it focuses on leadership throughout the school. Therefore, we would hope that if the head leaves the whole school does not immediately fall apart. But I think we do quite a lot by publishing survey reports and by publishing reports of outstanding schools that other people can look at.

  Q251  Chairman: Would you agree with Policy Exchange who recently said they have done some work that suggests that heads do not make a difference in a school?

  Ms Rosen: All our inspection evidence is that the quality of leadership and management is very important and that heads do make a difference. We would agree that a head cannot do it by themselves; that the other managers within the school are also very important, as indeed are the teachers. The head hopefully will make sure that they have around them a good management team and good quality teachers and will help to keep those teachers up-to-date and well trained.

  Q252  Chairman: Would you have evaluated the Policy Exchange report, Chief Inspector? Would your team have read that and would you have had your team assess it?

  Ms Gilbert: We are due to discuss it. We have looked at it and we have had brief conversations about it, but, as I read it—and I would absolutely endorse this—teaching and learning is absolutely fundamental to good progress from pupils, and good heads generally set up a structure which gets good teachers and good teaching in classrooms. So I do not think we are at great variance there.

  Q253  Chairman: You can tell, these are the last couple of questions. When we were looking at Sustainable Schools and Building Schools for the Future, we found that, for a school involved in the early waves, if they were going to do it well it was a tremendous distraction from their day job. Are you in inspection picking up that that is a very great pressure? Does a school's performance deteriorate when they are involved in a large programme like that?

  Ms Gilbert: Certainly so far it has not emerged as an issue that we have picked up generally. I read a selection of reports and all special measure reports, and even in those special measure reports—and I might read half a dozen a week—there has never been a mention of Building Schools for the Future. Actually, that is not true. It was not Building Schools for the Future, but one of them talked about building work in the school having slowed down progress, but generally there is no reference at all to Building Schools for the Future in distracting from the main purpose of the school.

  Q254  Chairman: Dorian, I am probably more fond of Wales than I am of Portsmouth, and I cannot resist asking you a couple of final questions. You are going to go down in history as the man who brought testing in for seven-year-olds, are you not? Is that one of your claims to fame?

  Mr Bradley: That is one of the things I have done in my past, Chairman.

  Q255  Chairman: Do you think it is about time we scrapped it?

  Mr Bradley: I thought it had been just about scrapped, Chairman.

  Q256  Chairman: Why have they just about been scrapped?

  Mr Bradley: I thought that was the trend. Certainly, it has occurred in Wales, which may be leading the UK countries in this regard.

  Q257  Chairman: Do you think they are going to be scrapped in England now?

  Mr Bradley: It is not for me to say, Chairman.

  Q258  Chairman: You just said it.

  Mr Bradley: I thought what I said was that I thought that was the trend.

  Stephen Williams: Wales leads the way.

  Q259  Chairman: That was a trend. Do you think that is a trend, Chief Inspector?

  Ms Gilbert: I believe very much in the importance of assessment. I believe formative assessment, assessment of learning, is absolutely crucial. I see that as the area on which we really have to focus next. You asked about issues coming out of inspection reports and for me the issue of assessment is still the weakest part of teaching and learning, so I think it is a crucially important area and I am really pleased that your Committee has chosen to have to focus on it over the next few months.

  Mr Bradley: Chairman, perhaps I could say, having been so closely involved and in all that I have done ever since, that I am rather sad to see that assessment is going. The initial form of standard assessment tasks, as they were when they were introduced, I thought did a lot to improve the standard of teaching and learning in infant schools and this certainly helped year 2 teachers lead the way in using assessment to set a programme for improvement of those young people. I am really sorry to see that go from the national scene.


 
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