Memorandum submitted by the Royal Society
of Chemistry[1]
SUMMARY
— Previous subject reports are extremely
helpful in improving science education.
— The new inspection regime provides
much less rich data on which to base these reports.
— Other organisations collect data
but gaps remain.
— The provisions for subject inspection
need to be reviewed and collaborations with other organisations
considered.
EVIDENCE
1. This evidence is provided by the learned
societies, academies, and subject associations who work closely
together in the field of school science education (the Association
for Science Education, the Biosciences Federation, the Institute
of Physics, the Royal Society, and the Royal Society of Chemistry).
2. The above organisations support the role
of Ofsted as helpful guardians of standards in schools. However,
while we recognise the importance of school inspections to support
institutional improvement, and thus strongly commend the New Relationship
with Schools in its efforts to reduce unnecessary burdens of the
inspection regime, we are extremely concerned about the future
of subject inspection.
3. We find reports such as Science in Primary
Schools, HMI 2345, and Science in Secondary Schools, HMI 2332,
reporting on the state of science education, to be extremely valuable.
We agree that sections such as "standards in national tests
and public examinations" could still be counted on as authoritative.
It is our contention however, that the programme from September
2005 for a minimum of 30 visits per phase per subject of the National
Curriculum are unsatisfactory. This is particularly true for National
Curriculum Science at Key Stage 4 where there are clear differences
in the supply of appropriately qualified biology, chemistry and
physics specialists. We consider it would be most unwise to make
robust generalisations on a visit to a sample of schools, possibly
as small as 30 in number, given the diversity of provision across
England.
4. As we understand it DfES have in the
past considered a sample of 100 schools to be the minimum required
for even a narrow study to be considered reliable.
5. Since September 2005, when inspections
became very much shorter than they were previously, there has
not been time for inspectors to evaluate individual subjects in
detail, except in the case of some college inspections. This means
that Ofsted needs to find other ways to fulfil its statutory duty
to give advice to the Secretary of State on subjects and other
aspects of education. At that time it proposed to do this through
additional visits to schools and colleges, focusing on subjects
and curriculum areas, from the Foundation Stage right through
to post-16. These visits are intended to:
— feed into the Chief Inspector's Annual
Report to give a national picture of strengths and areas for development;
— provide the basis for Ofsted to disseminate
findings, including good practice, through its website, conferences,
talks and articles;
— give institutions detailed feedback
to help them improve; and
— support institutions' self-evaluation.
We are concerned that these visits do not provide
enough robust statistical data to do this.
6. It is our contention that changes to
the inspection of schools and subjects has altered considerably
the quantity and nature of data available to Ofsted. This, despite
the comment by HM Chief Inspector of Schools in his commentary
to the Annual Report 2004-05 that, "Never before have we
had such a wealth of data at our disposal". Such a "wealth
of data" are clearly not available now under the new regime.
7. It may be helpful to compare the data
available per year up to 1 September 2005 and afterwards.
8. Pre-1 September 2005 numerical data are
available from a statistically representative sample of around
600 secondary and 400 primary schools by key stage. Each subject
has 43 judgements made about it. Thus "how effective are
teaching and learning" has 20 indicators including teaching,
learning, assessment, challenge, use of time, homework etc. This
mass of data allows year on year comparison of judgements on science,
allowing an exploration of the impact of initiatives.
9. Post-1/9/2005 numerical data are made
available from a non-nationally representative sample of 30 secondary
schools and 30 primary schools. Only four judgement grades on
"Standards", "Progress", "Teaching",
and "Overall Quality of the lesson" will be available.
We believe it is not be possible to compare these kinds of data
in any meaningful way to the present data sets.
10. Ofsted could work with other government
organisations to gather subject information and data and could
allocate appropriate subject HMI to the organisation to do this.
We believe, however, that the data produced by these organisations
may not be as helpful as that currently available.
For example:
(a) DfES gathers data but few data sets relate
to specific subjects and they are collected principally by questionnaire
and not by direct observation.
DfES appears not to collect data that Ofsted
could. A recent question [Hansard 96996] to the
Secretary of State elicited the response that the Department does
not routinely collect information on individual laboratories in
response to the question:
"(i) how many school science laboratories
are designated of a satisfactory standard; [96996]
(ii) what progress he has made on bringing school
science laboratories up to a (a) good and (b) excellent
standard by 2010. [96997]?"
(b) QCA routinely evaluates curriculum matters
by questionnaire followed by some school visits. However, classes
are not directly observed and no data are derived from first hand
observation.
11. Other bodies, such as the learned societies,
gather and report data where it is unavailable from Ofsted or
Government. Recent examples includes "Laboratories, Resources
and Budgets" from the Royal Society of Chemistry on the
state and number of school science laboratories, the Institute
of Physics' report on girls and physics, the Royal Society's "Increasing
uptake of science post-16" report and the Association
for Science Education/Royal Society's "Survey of science
technicians in schools and colleges".
12. It is noteworthy that the House of Lords
Science and Technology Committee in its report on Science Teaching
in Schools (November 2006) recommended:
"We do not believe that Ofsted's new regime
for the inspection of individual subjects, based on a small and
statistically insignificant sample of schools, will provide sufficiently
reliable data on science teaching. We recommend that Ofsted revisit
the new subject-specific inspection regime with a view to devising
a system which draws evidence from a substantially larger number
of schools. We further recommend that subject-specific inspections
be carried out by specialists in the subject concerned. (3.7)"
13. It is our contention that the details
of "Subject and Survey Inspection" HMI 2489 July 2005
should be reviewed in the light of our comments above, to provide
a reliable and statistically significant review of subjects, providing
data that can be compared to that obtained pre-1 September 2005.
December 2006
1 On behalf of the Association for Science Education,
the Biosciences Federation, the Institute of Physics, the Royal
Society, and the Royal Society of Chemistry. Back
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