Examinatin of Witnesses (Questions 200-239)
MS CHRISTINE
GILBERT CBE, MS
ZENNA ATKINS,
MS MIRIAM
ROSEN, MR
DORIAN BRADLEY
AND MS
VANESSA HOWLISON
9 MAY 2007
Q220 Fiona Mactaggart: I am sorry
that I have not seen the NFER report but I presume that one of
the reasons why you commissioned it was that only one in three
schools are returning post-inspection questionnaires. Why do you
think the figure is so low?
Ms Gilbert: We commissioned it
because we did not think people would believe our own evaluation
of what we were saying. We wanted some sort of external perspective
on what we were doing and we thought it would complement the work
we were doing. We have been worried about the low figures and,
in fact, the very first meeting I attended of the regional inspection
providers had a focus on how could the numbers be increased. In
fact they have increased. I think they are up to about 50.
Ms Rosen: Late 40s now.
Ms Gilbert: Because we had had
a focus on doing it. I will not go into it, but there were technical
problems that we seem to have resolved. We have made it very clear
that we would welcome responses from them. I have reassured them
at conferences that if they return the form and complain it does
not mean that we will treat them any more harshly than people
who are not returning the form or who are being positive about
it. So there is a whole host of things we are doing. We really
are trying to make it important. The regional inspection providers
are trying hard to get the responses up. We have made significant
progress, I think.
Q221 Fiona Mactaggart: It is disappointing,
is it not, that even if you solve the technical problems less
than half of these questionnaires are being returned. Can I suggest
that one of the reasons for that might be the phenomenon of "gaming"
the Ofsted system; that people are working out how to work it.
They are doing the performance of what you need to see, producing
that for you and then going away. They are not seeing it as a
process for them or for the children in the schools but a performance
that needs to be performed through. How do you avoid that?
Ms Gilbert: It depends what they
are performing to. I think the framework sets out the sort of
expectations of a really good school that anybody would want to
see really, so they would have to be performing across that range
and you could not do it for 24 hours and then stop it on the day
after the inspectors have gone. There is no notice any more—next
to no notice. You come and see the school as it really is and
inspection is rooted in performance and the performance of individual
groups, and focused very clearly on the outcomes of those individual
groups and individual pupils in the schools. It would be hard
to perform for 24 hours, get a good inspection and go away. That
is not to say that people do not become more familiar with a framework
and look at different aspects of it and perhaps focus on some
areas they might not have been focusing on before, but I do think
the framework is a good framework, and it does point to the broad
area of things we should be looking for in a good school and that
they should be developing in a good school.
Q222 Fiona Mactaggart: Chief Inspector,
you have said yourself it is hard but not impossible. One of my
concerns about all sorts of areas about government regulation
and inspection, is that people put their energies into performing
to the test, to the inspection, and not into achieving excellence.
Can you give me an example of how you have acted to reduce that
or an example where you have seen that, perhaps where you have
changed processes in order to try to deal with it. Because it
cannot not be a problem.
Ms Gilbert: Miriam might want
to add to this but the biggest example is reducing the notice
for inspection so that there is not this long lead-in time. I
was looking at some comments from children about being told to
smile for 24 hours when the inspectors were there and so on. It
is fairly difficult to get kids to smile for 24 hours if they
do not like the school and what is happening in the school. I
think the reduction in notice is a major shift. At two days' notice
you cannot do the sort of preparation that was there before. Although
I am not sure how effective that preparation would have been if
the inspectors were in looking at all aspects of the school for
that long, nevertheless the school might have thought it was.
Ms Rosen: I would confirm exactly
what Christine has said. The reduction in notice was taken for
that reason and I think it has been very effective.
Q223 Chairman: You recognise what
Fiona is putting to you. If you take the curriculum and then you
take all the testing and assessment and the Ofsted inspection,
when we go into schools we very often hear a voice which says
that the whole process of learning, developing children, innovation,
the creativity of the school does not happen because of what you
people do. Does that strike any chord at all?
Ms Gilbert: I think some head
teachers think that. One of the things I have certainly been stressing
in talks I have been doing is that they sometimes misunderstand
what inspectors will be looking at. There are very few of our
outstanding schools that are not innovative and creative in what
they are doing it seems to me. It is perfectly possible to perform
very well in an Ofsted inspection and be different and creative
within, obviously, a framework of expectations. I think there
is a feeling out there that we are dumbing down creativity. I
have done what I can to redress that balance and I am sure Miriam
has as well.
Q224 Chairman: It might be all right
if you get an outstanding school. In our experience an outstanding
school, in a sense, does not care about you. They know they are
good. You come and they know you are going to see a good school.
It is that middle band of average schools—a bit timid, a
bit worried—that is the bulk of schools. The average school
is the bulk of schools.
Ms Gilbert: They need to be more
confident about what they are doing but they also need to be confident
about getting some of the basic things right as well.
Q225 Chairman: But they have testing
and the curriculum and all these other things apart from you guys
pitching up at very short notice.
Ms Gilbert: It is no good being
a very innovative, satisfactory school if the children in the
school cannot read or cannot write or cannot add up. Those sorts
of things are absolutely crucial to the development of the school,
it seems to me.
Q226 Fiona Mactaggart: What do you
do to create the confidence in schools that you expect that of
them? Do you see what I mean? I do not think you have done that,
if I can be quite honest. I think it is still quite usual for
good enough schools to focus their energies on matching the kind
of pro forma and avoid risk. You do not have to sacrifice
teaching children to read if you take risks. You do not balance
the two against each other. Of course there are basic standards
everyone has to achieve but what are you doing to encourage schools
to be prepared to take risks to be really excellent?
Ms Gilbert: I think that is the
job of the head teacher and the leadership team in a school .
It may be that we can be clearer about our expectations, but our
expectations are rooted in the framework, which is what we assess
and we use to make our judgments about schools. We do try to pick
up good practice. I spoke earlier about the emphasis that we are
going to place on our thematic and survey work. It might be that
we need to be more focused and clearer about picking up examples
of good and interesting practice. It does not have to be brilliant
practice because sometimes the most innovatory practice is emerging;
it has not got there yet. We might be sharing some of that in
a more focused way. We are doing that but I think probably it
does not have the sort of impact that you are alluding to. School
inspection reports are grabbed and read by people in the school
and acted on, and parents see them and so on, but actually the
impact of our survey reports, out thematic reports, is not that
strong, and we need to focus that and make it stronger, I think.
We might be able to do it in the sort of way you are suggesting.
Q227 Paul Holmes: Could I go back
to one specific thing Miriam said earlier in response to questions
from Rob. Back in February there was a spike in the number of
schools going on special measures. It went up from 208 to 243,
which is about an 18% increase. It had a lot of attention at the
time, and Ofsted at the time and Government ministers said it
was because you had raised the bar: it was the change with the
2005 framework and satisfactory was no longer satisfactory and
all the rest of it. But Miriam said about 10 minutes ago that
it was because more schools were slow in getting out of special
measures. They are two completely contradictory measures. Which
one is it?
Ms Rosen: The bar was raised and
we did sharpen our criteria. But, as I have said, the proportion
of schools inspected going into special measure stayed constant
between those two years. More schools actually went into special
measures because we were inspecting at twice the rate. We had
moved from a six-year cycle to a three-year cycle, so there were
more actual numbers of schools in but I would like to emphasise
that the rate at which schools inspected went in remained constant.
There was, however, a change between the number of schools judged
to be good. If you put together the proportion of schools judged
to be good and excellent, that was less than we had had under
the old seven-point framework judged to be excellent, very good
and good. I think that is directly attributable to having raised
the bar.
Q228 Paul Holmes: Raising the bar
meant there were less becoming excellent or good, but that is
not the reason, you say, why more were in special measures.
Ms Rosen: It was not precisely
the reason why more were in special measures.
Q229 Paul Holmes: But Ofsted did
categorically state back in February that is why there had been
an increase, because the bar had been raised.
Ms Rosen: I am afraid I cannot
remember exactly what we said in February. We have quite unashamedly
raised the bar but the proportion has remained fairly constant.
Ms Gilbert: I do not know if the
difference might be accounted for by the notice to improve schools.
Ms Rosen: Yes, that is true actually.
A higher proportion became grade 4 but that was because we saw
an increase in schools having a notice to improve compared with
the other sorts of categories we had had before.
Ms Gilbert: That was a new category
under the new framework.
Ms Rosen: Yes.
Q230 Paul Holmes: As I say, you said
about 10 minutes ago that the other explanation was that schools
were being slower to move out of special measures. Why is that?
Why are they slower now than last year or the year before?
Ms Rosen: No, we did not say that
they were slower to move out. It is to do with how many there
are in and there were less coming out. They were not being slower
to move out, there were just less physically coming out, and that
is to do with the numbers that were in and when they went in.
Quite a lot went in in that first term, in the autumn of 2005.
As I say, we were inspecting at twice the rate that we had been
inspecting before, so quite a number went in. As that little bulge
starts to come out, then the numbers overall will drop.
Q231 Paul Holmes: I think you said
the number was about 240-odd still, so three or four months later
there is not an increase, where there was up to February. Why
has it levelled off? There was a spike in the number in special
measures for whatever reasons, but in the last four moths that
has levelled off, the spike has not continued.
Ms Rosen: That is right. It is
more to do with numbers coming out than numbers going in. May
I also say something about Mr Wilson's question earlier. The lists
are now on the website. In February, the data was published first,
because some of the schools were subject to moderation. As soon
as all the moderations went through, the lists were published
on the website, but that was a few days afterwards. So you will
now find the lists if you look.
Q232 Jeff Ennis: We have already
focused, Chief Inspector, in response to earlier questions, on
inspection, the enhanced role in the consultation we have with
parents. I know that also applies equally to governors, having
been recently quizzed by one of the inspection team at the local
high school where I serve as a governing body member. One of my
hobbyhorses is that in schools in very deprived circumstances,
representing deprived communities, it is not just a question of
engaging with parents; it is a question of engaging with entire
communities and raising the profile of education across the entire
community and not just with specific sets of parents. I am wondering
if it is possible for the inspection regime to bring out what
schools are doing in terms of community engagement, not just with
parents, hopefully to raise the whole profile of education within
deprived communities. I wondered if you had looked at this.
Ms Gilbert: There is a component
of the framework that asks the school itself, and inspectors then,
to look at the contribution that is made to the local community.
That is there at the moment. Whether it comes out strongly enough
or not, I do not know. It may be that the local area assessment
might be a way of generating more discussion about the sorts of
areas you are talking about. It is not going to be a heavy process,
it is going to be a light process, but it is hard to see that
it would not in some way look at that sort of engagement of a
whole educational community, contributing not just to education
but to the whole aspirations of the community, raising the aspirations
of the local community in terms of the quality of life—and
by that I do not mean something just soft, I mean something across
the whole range, in terms of health, work and so on.
Q233 Jeff Ennis: Do you think the
fact that schools are asking now to work more collaboratively,
particularly looking at 14-19, will assist in the process of greater
community involvement across the whole school settings?
Ms Gilbert: It certainly has the
potential for doing just that. We have not looked across the piece
in that way, but my own experience as a head and in a local authority
was that generally collaboration supported individual schools
and improved the performance of individual schools. They were
not wasting time when they were doing it, and generally made the
commitment to the area and to the locality, if not the whole broad
area, really strong in different organisations.
Q234 Chairman: Chief Inspector, if
you are doing an inspection of the school and you arrive and there
are no unruly children and it is very, very peaceful, do you probe
the fact that there might be a very significant percentage of
those less orderly students missing but in an FE up the road?
Ms Gilbert: Miriam would have
to answer the detail of that but this question comes up in various
ways. I do not think there is any time, if this really ever did
happen, to move them up the road if they were not going up the
road anyway.
Q235 Chairman: The mobility of students
is going to make your inspection more difficult, is it not? The
whole Government agenda, when the new diplomas come in, is that
children will be in one setting and they might go to a school
with a strength in one diploma area. They will be moving all over
the place.
Ms Gilbert: But that is absolutely
the case for the new Ofsted. We are not just looking at what is
going on post-16 or post-18; we are looking for examples at the
development of skills right from pre-school all the way through.
That is what the new Ofsted gives us.
Q236 Chairman: But you are very institutional.
You arrive at an institution. You do not go to a cluster of institutions.
Ms Gilbert: We might go to different
institutions. Certainly with the joint area reviews, we look at
the whole area and the work going on across institutions. An inspection
I had before I became Chief Inspector focused on what was going
on 14-19. It was an analysis across all of the organisations and
the work-related learning as well. So some of that has been going
on for ages.
Q237 Chairman: So you are moving
with the times, then.
Ms Gilbert: I hope we are, yes.
Q238 Chairman: All the examination
boards now have very sophisticated methods of showing you every
child's performance, every examination script marked; whole class
performance; the school performance; the local authority performance
and how that compares locally, regionally and nationally. Is all
that stuff of interest to you? Do you look at it?
Ms Gilbert: The contextual value
added looks at all those things.
Q239 Chairman: I am not talking about
contextual value added.
Ms Gilbert: It is the same sort
of thing, is it not?
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