Select Committee on Education and Skills Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)

MS CHRISTINE GILBERT, MR DORIAN BRADLEY, MR ROBERT GREEN, MS VANESSA HOWLISON AND MS MIRIAM ROSEN

13 DECEMBER 2006

  Q40  Mr Carswell: Why do we have an Ofsted?

  Ms Gilbert: Why do we have an Ofsted? I think we have it for a number of reasons. I think we do have it to generate improvement; we have it to demonstrate that public money is being used effectively; we have it to give assurance that what is happening in care and education up and down the country is reaching at least minimal standards; and I think we have it to give advice to the Secretary of State. Have I missed anything out? I am sorry, and information for parents—that has been absolutely key.

  Q41  Mr Carswell: So we have had years of Ofsted, and yet in your report you say that standards are not good. How can you claim that Ofsted is actually good for standards: it has not done terribly well if improving standards is its raison d'etre, has it?

  Ms Gilbert: I think I say in the report, and I said at the launch of the Annual Report, that things were still not good enough. As I said in response to some of the Chairman's remarks and in my introduction, I think there has been significant improvement. Ofsted cannot take all of the credit for all of that improvement—I do not think Ofsted would pretend to—but I think it has contributed to the improvement that we have seen. I think one of the things that Ofsted is very good at is reporting fairly and frankly about what they are seeing, even if it is unsettling for people, even if people do not like it, and I think that people take those remarks very seriously. The research that we did with parents told us that 92% of parents think that Ofsted is a very good thing and they felt reassured by it and it led to improvement.

  Q42  Mr Carswell: You have talked me through the actual mechanics for improving standards, how can it drive up standards? Is there not a case for saying that actually the additional paperwork and the distraction from the classroom that Ofsted inspections create for teachers and the senior management teams in schools maybe distracts from high standards? How can the tick-box inspection system actually drive up standards? Could you talk me through what is a measure of performance which actually influences outcome and process?

  Ms Gilbert: I will ask Miriam to say something about the grades and the detail of the framework, because I think that would be helpful in terms of the general answer, but I do want to emphasise that Ofsted is not asking for loads of paper, it is not asking for anything other than a look at the school evaluation form, which I think most schools would tell you is a real aid to their own development, and particularly having done it once where they did find it time-consuming, and so on, they find that they are just amending it and adjusting it during the course of the year, they find it a very valuable tool in terms of their own improvement. I cannot stress enough that it is the schools that improve themselves. We give them information that they might not have got anywhere else. The external scrutiny is really important, I think, and certainly on the receiving end of it as a local authority, both in education and the wider view through the comprehensive performance assessment, it was very rare for inspection not to just hold a mirror up in a slightly different way and help you see something or help you see your way through something that you had not been able to see your way through before. So I think the element of external scrutiny, which is why an Ofsted inspector's role is so different from the role of the SIP, is really valuable. In the discussions with colleagues from FE when I went to speak at their conference, a very large conference at the Association of Colleges a few weeks ago, I was expecting some hostility to Ofsted. There was absolutely none. There was a real welcome for the level of scrutiny people get externally from us, and they feel that the way we are going in terms of proportionality, and so on, is absolutely right; but I did want to clarify that people are not being expected to do loads of extra paper work because they are now being inspected. In terms of the level of improvements, I think that the grade descriptors are really helpful. Perhaps Miriam could add to what I have just said in terms of that.

  Ms Rosen: Can I, first of all, say that the new current schools inspection framework has certainly reduced the stress for schools. All the feedback that we have had from head teachers and teachers says that the stress is reduced because the inspections are shorter and also it is much less noticed. There is not the six weeks of waiting for the inspectors to come doing additional preparations; so we definitely cut down the stress. The framework makes explicit the standards that we are looking for, and this helps the schools know what they are aiming for, helps them with their self-evaluation. That has been a significant driver for improvement. One of the things we have done with the new school inspection framework is that the criteria are actually more rigorous, and because we have the new performance data, which enables us to look very closely at how different groups of people are making progress, again, that helps both the school and the inspectors to see: is enough progress being made by the pupils of this school? That is a significant driver for improvement.

  Q43  Mr Carswell: You used a phrase "driver for improvement". Standards in supermarkets or shops are not maintained by government inspectors. We do not have an Ofshop. Standards are maintained by choice. Surely, if you are out to drive up standards, you should be recommending that a driver for improvement should be a bottom-up choice rather than purely top-down inspection?

  Ms Rosen: Parents do have a choice as to where to send their children to school, and Ofsted actually informs that choice by producing independent external reports on schools, but I think at the same time the fact that we give schools very focused recommendations that they can concentrate on would also help them to bring about improvement. There is not a single answer to your question, I think.

  Ms Gilbert: Chairman, could I ask my colleague to say something about Early Years.

  Q44  Chairman: Dorian, we would hate for you to remain silent for any longer?

  Mr Bradley: Thank you, Chairman. Certainly since Ofsted took over Early Years in 2001 we have reduced the impact on the providers that we inspect in a number of ways. We have gone for a longer inspection period for the good providers. We have reduced the time on site, as it were. We certainly do not use tick-boxes; it is a professional dialogue with the providers and an in-depth assessment of what the providers do for the young children in the country. We can point to a fairly significant improvement in the quality of what we have seen. Compared with the inspection programme that ended in March 2003, which was our first major programme, the new programme shows that about 56% of child minders and 46% of day care providers have moved from unsatisfactory to satisfactory in that period, and a similar improvement from satisfactory to good, 25% of child minders and 18% of day care providers; so it is a steady growth in the quality which is measured by inspection and, as Miriam and Christine have stressed, it is important that providers take on that quality improvement agenda but they do it against the background of that external scrutiny and the recommendations made by the inspectors.

  Q45  Mr Carswell: One final question, if I may, to Miss Howlison. At the beginning we heard that an efficient use of public money was a key objective of Ofsted. Could you tell me what is the total annual budget of Ofsted this year and how many inspectors you employ?

  Ms Howlison: The total budget of Ofsted for the current year is 204.

  Q46  Mr Carswell: Two hundred and four million?

  Ms Howlison: Two hundred and four million pounds, my apologies, and we currently employ, I think, 260 HMI inspectors and we have around 750 childcare inspectors. Apart from that, of course, a considerable amount of our work is contracted out as part of the inspection contract connected to our five inspection partners in the private sector.

  Q47  Mr Carswell: How many roughly?

  Ms Howlison: The value of that contract is about £45 million a year. How they deploy their resources is their own business. Obviously we have a degree of involvement in their work, and I think that is more into Miriam's territory, but that is the kind of scale.

  Chairman: I now want to move to deal with the Annual Report. Rob Wilson.

  Q48  Mr Wilson: Thank you, Chairman. After ten years of almost constant initiatives in our schools, can we say that as a country we are proud of the results that have come out from our schools?

  Ms Gilbert: I think we can be proud of the improvements and the achievements that have been made, and I did say that in my Annual Report and in my comments linked to the report, but I still think there is much further to go. In the authority that I left, when I went there in 1997, 26% of young people were leaving school with five A-C GCSEs and this summer they achieved 56% five A-C. That was not including English, before you ask me that. So there is still a lot more to do, but that sort of progress is really impressive. Nevertheless, almost half are still not leaving with those qualifications, so there is still much more to do in these different areas.

  Q49  Mr Wilson: One in eight secondary schools are inadequate, by your own terms, 13% of secondary schools. You think we should be proud of that?

  Ms Gilbert: No, I did not say we should be proud of that. I would like to say it was one in eight schools inspected in the course of the year. That is what is in the report. There is a very important distinction which I think has got lost in the reporting. We absolutely should not be proud of that. It is very important that we address that issue and tackle that issue, because every young person deserves to go to a decent school where they are going to make good progress and do well.

  Q50  Mr Wilson: One in five 11-year-olds is leaving primary school with poor literacy. Is that something we should be proud of? I think you agreed that it was a national disgrace.

  Ms Gilbert: Yes, I am not saying that we should be proud of these, and I did not use the term "national disaster".

  Q51  Mr Wilson: You said you agreed with it when it was described to you?

  Ms Gilbert: I think it is a national concern. It is absolutely related to the point I am making about secondary schools in the report and in my introductory remarks, because one of the key questions is: why are these schools not providing an acceptable education for these pupils, and leadership and management is very important and has a major role. Nevertheless, if young people are coming to those schools not able to read and write effectively, I think it is a major issue that needs addressing before they get to secondary school. Nevertheless, if they are going to secondary school not able to read and write in a fully functional way, that is a very important issue for us. I am not trying to gloss over anything. I think the improvements have been significant, but I think we have got much more to do.

  Q52  Mr Wilson: Chief Inspector, are you a fan of Little Britain, the television series?

  Ms Gilbert: No, I am not a fan but I have seen it.

  Q53  Mr Wilson: If I said the phrase "Yeah, but no, but yeah", would that mean anything to you?

  Ms Gilbert: It is a phrase I associated, when I saw the reports of what I had said, actually, with myself—"Yes, but...."

  Q54  Mr Wilson: In a sense you are associated. There is a report out today that says that teenagers have a very narrow vocabulary, along the lines of a character in Little Britain called Vicky Pollard. I just wonder whether you think that is something we can be proud of coming out of our schools, with teenagers barely able to string two sentences together.

  Ms Gilbert: I think that oracy is a major part of literacy, and it is really important that we have a focus on this. I have seen well-qualified young people not getting jobs because they have not been sufficiently articulate at interviews. This is sometimes described as a range of soft skills, but I do not think that they are soft at all. They are work skills, if you like. Being confident orally is a very important part of those skills. If people are not confident orally, they are often not demonstrating how good they are at a number of things they can do.

  Q55  Mr Wilson: Presumably you have seen some of the criticism from, for example, Chris Woodhead, a former Chief Inspector, about the current inspection regime. How much faith can we actually have in this annual report, when we are now at a point where most schools are doing self-assessments; there are very short inspections; you only visit for a day or so into the schools? How much emphasis can we put on these results? It all seems a bit vacuous to me.

  Ms Gilbert: I do not want to repeat the things that I have said earlier, but we feel confident about the process that we have started after one year, and we are reviewing what we are doing. I cannot emphasise enough the importance of the performance information as part of that, and the importance of the school thinking in a much more focused way about its own self-evaluation. I think the very best schools always did do this. That was clear when you looked at their school development plan: that they had reviewed themselves very effectively. The other element—the very important element—is the inspector's judgment. I have mentioned performance information, but I also think—and we are talking about ways of getting at this more fully—the views of the parents and the views of the young people themselves are key. So I would stand by the system that we have established. In fact, we are seeing more schools. We saw more schools last year than we have ever seen before. So we are getting a picture of what is going on in those schools.

  Mr Wilson: How do you respond to a highly respected former Chief Inspector of Schools who thinks the current inspection regime—

  Chairman: He is highly respected in some quarters but not with some members of the Committee here who used to interview him.

  Mr Wilson: Am I allowed to ask my own questions?

  Chairman: Carry on.

  Q56  Mr Wilson: How do you respond to the highly respected former Chief Inspector's remarks that the reports are basically worthless now?

  Ms Gilbert: I do not think that they are worthless. I would invite him to look at the sort of detail that we have on the school before an inspector goes in, and I would invite him to look in some detail at the reports themselves. Actually, a number of the schools of the company that he is involved with very proudly display on their websites reference to their Ofsted inspections and so on.

  Mr Wilson: Can I move on to money very briefly? Is that possible?

  Chairman: Yes, briefly.

  Q57  Mr Wilson: Does funding make a huge difference to the results outputs?

  Ms Gilbert: I think it is how you use the money that is absolutely key.

  Q58  Mr Wilson: So it is not the totality of the money spent; it is how the budget is deployed?

  Ms Gilbert: The most important thing for me is how you would use the money that you are given.

  Q59  Mr Wilson: You said earlier that you have to demonstrate that public money is used effectively. Does Ofsted have any evidence about the levels of spending and the outputs that are resulting from it?

  Ms Gilbert: We are doing the sort of analysis that I referred to earlier, in terms of value for money. We are asking people if it made a difference. We have looked at our costs and worked out what it costs the taxpayer to have Ofsted, and we have looked at the costs that we have reduced over the years. So cost is a real issue for us and we are very alive to it. I am not saying we cannot do more, but we have looked very hard at costs, as Vanessa went through them. You could not make the sorts of reductions that Ofsted has made over the past few years unless you were very sensitive to cost, and I think that the reductions that are being made demonstrate that.


 
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