UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 165-i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

Education and Skills Committee

 

 

THE WORK OF OFSTED

 

 

Wednesday 13 December 2006

MS CHRISTINE GILBERT, MR DORIAN BRADLEY, MR ROBERT GREEN,

MS VANESSA HOWLISON and MS MIRIAM ROSEN

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 129

 

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Education and Skills Committee

on Wednesday 13 December 2006

Members present

Mr Barry Sheerman, in the Chair

Mr Douglas Carswell

Mr David Chaytor

Jeff Ennis

Paul Holmes

Helen Jones

Fiona Mactaggart

Mr Andrew Pelling

Mr Rob Wilson

________________

Witnesses: Ms Christine Gilbert, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools, Mr Dorian Bradley, Director, Early Years, Mr Robert Green, Director, Inspectorate Reform, Ms Vanessa Howlison, Deputy Director of Finance, and Ms Miriam Rosen, Director, Education, Ofsted, gave evidence

Q1 Chairman: Can we welcome Christine Gilbert, the new Chief Inspector, for her first appearance before the Committee, and the rest of the team - Robert Green, Miriam Rosen, Dorian Bradley and Vanessa Howlison - it is very good to see you all here. As we all know, we have a fixed appointment every six months and quite a lot in between, depending on what inquiry the Committee is conducting at that time. As you know, we are coming to the end of an inquiry into citizenship, so you will not be surprised if something around citizenship comes up today, and we also are well into an inquiry into sustainable schools, and so on, and have been looking at bullying too, so there will be some of that dropped into the questions that you will get today. Chief Inspector, we usually give the Chief Inspector a chance to say something about her Annual Report before we get started. Would you like a short time to give us, in a nutshell, what you think are the essentials part of it?

Ms Gilbert: Thank you, Chairman. I welcome the opportunity to appear in front of your committee in my new capacity as Her Majesty's Chief Inspector, and it is a privilege to account for the work of Ofsted through this parliamentary process. By way of introduction what I would like to do is to mention some of the key issues that emerged in the Annual Report, launched just a few weeks ago, and then point to the establishment of the new Ofsted next April. I took up the post at the beginning of October. One of my very first tasks as HMCI, in fact during my first week, was to review the Annual Report and produce a commentary on it. I describe it as my report, but you will recognise that the inspection activity within it was carried out with Ofsted under the work of my predecessors David Bell and Maurice Smith, both of whom I understand appeared before you on a number of occasions. You will have seen that this year's report is in two sections. The first provides the state of the nation summary, if you like, of the quality of education and care in England - this is a different format from previous years - and the second offers an overview of a range of issues in education and care based on surveys and reviews of children's services carried out this past year. If ever a justification were needed for the creation of the new Ofsted, then it is to be found in the pages of this report. The importance of providing high quality support for vulnerable children and young people cannot be the overestimated. The Every Child Matters agenda will receive the highest priority from me personally and from the new Ofsted, and it forms, I think, a common thread running through the entire report. I want the new Ofsted to play a central role in the drive for better education, life-long learning and care for children, for young people and for adult learners. To place in context where we are now, I found it useful to go back through the annual reports of my predecessors and look at how they had viewed the English education system. Their reports conveyed a sense of improvement and progress, and that was reinforced by my reading of this year's report. The overwhelming period of child care and nursery education settings inspected are at least satisfactory, and over half are good and outstanding; almost six out of ten maintained schools inspected this year were good or outstanding and I think that is a particularly reassuring statistic and impressive given that the new inspection arrangements have raised the bar; the trend of improvement in further education colleges continues and 11% were outstanding and 44% good; the quality of training for our next generation of teachers, particularly among the school-based providers is improving; and, last but far from least, I think, annual performance assessments of local authorities judged that the overall provision of children's services in three-quarters of authorities is good or very good. However, as was widely reported at the time of the Annual Report launch, the picture is not a wholly positive one. It is not acceptable that one in 12 schools inspected was judged to be inadequate this past year. In the secondary school sector this proportion rises to around one in eight, nearly twice that of the primary sector, and improving these schools must be a key priority. Equally, the poor levels of attainment and attendance of many children in care is simply unacceptable. I welcome the fact that over the next few months colleagues from the Adult Learning Inspectorate, the Commission for Social Care Inspection and Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Court Administration will be joining with colleagues from Ofsted to form a potent new force in the drive to enhance the quality of life of children, young people and adult learners. The new Ofsted will be built on the very best of these four inspectorates, and from April we will have a very real opportunity to create a strong, innovative organisation that adds value to what happens currently and drives up performance and standards. The new Ofsted will be supported by stronger governance arrangements, and a number of experienced and very capable non-executive members have been appointed to the new Board, which is to be chaired by Zenna Atkins. The Education and Skills Act protects the Chief Inspector's independence and direct accountability to ministers in Parliament; so this will not be my first and last appearance before your Committee, Chairman. My colleagues and I now look forward to taking your questions. Thank you very much.

Q2 Chairman: Chief Inspector, thank you very much for that. Can I open the questioning by asking you: it is very good to look at the history, but let us look at the recent history since you took over as chief inspector? The very first performance in front of the press seems to have given the press the impression that English education is going to hell in a hand-cart. You have given us a fairly balanced view of what you found as you looked at the report and as you did your commentary on English education, but the overwhelming impression in the press was that the state of English education was dreadful and getting worse. Why do you think they got that view?

Ms Gilbert: I clearly cannot speak on behalf of the press, and in fact the presentation I did at the beginning of the press conference did present a very balanced view. It gave very positive messages and then the negative ones, but I guess the negative messages sell more papers. We are running a number of receptions for outstanding providers of Early Years in childcare, schools and colleges - we are running eight of them up and down the country. We had two last week with, I think, 180 in London and 130 people in Manchester, and then we invited the press. There was not a single representative from the press at either occasion and both were very positive occasions both for Ofsted and for those being celebrated in that way.

Q3 Chairman: So you think you got an unrepresentative press coverage. They did not reflect really what you said?

Ms Gilbert: I said a number of very positive things which, to be fair, were reported in most of the press, I guess they do not make the headlines, and the picture, I think, is a strong and positive one. Nevertheless, it is part of Ofsted's job to report fairly and frankly on what it sees through the inspection process, and it is very important that I do that too.

Q4 Chairman: I understand that. You have been reading (and this is a very valuable process) all the annual reports, so you have got a very good idea of the beginning of Ofsted. You know for what reason it was introduced, it has been maintained over two administrations and we are now where we are, so you have got a good historic overview of the process over time. Has Ofsted made a difference?

Ms Gilbert: I am very positive about the inspection process, be it by the Audit Commission, Ofsted or anybody else. I felt that at school level, local authority level, and so on. I thought that before I even applied for this particular job, and I have got lots of anecdotal evidence to show that inspection certainly supports improvement. It does not do the improvement but it supports improvement. Since I took up this post in Ofsted, I have seen more detailed evidence of the impact of our inspection on the process, because this has been something that Ofsted has been giving greater to emphasis to over the past few years; and it is not just me thinking it makes a difference, parents tell us it makes a difference, teachers tell us it makes a difference and heads, as part of those responses, tell us it makes a difference.

Q5 Chairman: What I am trying to get at is, as you did your review, have schools in England got better year on year?

Ms Gilbert: Yes, in my view they have. As you read the annual reports year after year and if you look at the framework that was used in those, you can see in the back of those reports the steady improvement. This year, of course, we have changed the framework for inspection, so it is not quite clear by looking at the stark data that that improvement has continued, but one of the reasons that the change in the inspection framework came about is that schools have improved but, at the same time, people's expectation of schools and education and care, more generally, have also risen, and it is important to keep that focus on accelerating improvement, I think, really clear in our minds. The new inspection framework was designed to do that. It was to capture higher expectations and to drive up standards even further.

Q6 Chairman: In your Annual Report you do not reflect that, in the sense that there is no graph or there is no narrative that says, over the period that Ofsted has been operating, there has been a steady improvement in educational attainment and performance. Why do we not have that historic overview, because if the press wants to say education is going to hell in a hand-cart, surely Ofsted can then say, but if you look at the years that Ofsted has been engaged in this process, things have either got steadily better or there have been some dips, but where is the narrative in the report?

Ms Gilbert: Looking through the Annual Report, that is said sometimes in some of the commentaries; it is not highlighted every year. I think it would be fairly arid to make some comment like that every single year, but one would want to look at trends over time. I think it is important that we do that. My focus very much, coming in new in the first week of October, was to look at the report I was being presented with and to sit back and draw back from that report and look at the key issues that were emerging from me reading it, to discuss those with colleagues and then to write the commentary. My focus this year was very much on what had been achieved this past year.

Q7 Chairman: You do understand?

Ms Gilbert: I do.

Q8 Chairman: If you are a taxpayer, you would quite like to know if all this taxpayers' money that has been poured into Ofsted over the last ten years has actually made a positive difference and an incremental difference?

Ms Gilbert: I take that point, Chairman.

Q9 Chairman: Can I ask you about the new inspection. We used to have the Chief Inspector come in front of us, and the sort of information that we would get from all sorts of people who knew that the chief inspector was going to be in front of us would be on the lines of, "Too much inspection; too rigorous; they are here too long; they take over our schools; we are terrified; our staff are immobilised by the fear of Ofsted coming along", and now we are getting people writing in to us saying, "This is so light-touch, there is no way it can show the quality of our school. There is no way that it can do anything very useful. The light touch has gone beyond anything meaningful." Are you worried about that, because we are getting that kind of report?

Ms Gilbert: I have had both of those things said to me since taking up my post, and reviewing the new process is something that we have taken very seriously in Ofsted. Miriam might want to talk about that later on, but the process has changed in a number of ways. We have got better performance information now than we ever had before, and that plays a major part in the new process. The second major strand I would identify is the increased focus on self-evaluation - much stronger now than ever before and getting better almost as I speak to you - and schools themselves are universally positive about the self-evaluation element. So we have those two things, and we might have a range of data captured in the school evaluation formula set, as it is described, but the key piece and the most important piece is still the inspector's judgment. Inspectors look at that information before they go into a school, they then test it out in the school in a number of ways. They test it out by talking to the senior management, to teachers, to pupils, they have got information from parents and they go in and out of classrooms. That process is different from the process before. It happens more frequently than it happened before - every three years now, not every six years. Last year, for instance, Ofsted inspected many more schools than the previous year, so those things, I think, are very important and are helping us and I have been reassured that the system is rigorous. I read every single report if a school is placed in special measures, so I read about maybe half a dozen a week, and I have to be assured that the judgment is a right one, and that report will have been through a number of quality checks before it comes to me, and think there is only one since October in which I queried the judgment. In the end I was persuaded and we have left the judgment, but I was persuaded by the quality of the judgment set out in those reports that the inspectors had got to the heart of what was going on in that school and were seeing that school very clearly.

Q10 Chairman: Is that a problem, Chief Inspector, in the sense that it is in a way easier to evaluate a school that is in serious trouble perhaps, that the short-comings really jump up and bite you as your inspectors go into the school and watch and listen to what is going on? Is that as good when you are visiting a coasting school, a school that is sort of average, not going anywhere, not really improving as fast as you would like, and is that one of the problems that you find? You need a much more sensitive approach, do you not?

Ms Gilbert: I think this new system is absolutely---. If you ask me the single biggest difference it will be the closer and tighter focus on a pupil's progress and school performance in those schools, because this time the performance data raises a number of questions that you will then debate when you go into schools. For instance, a school that is getting 70% five A to Cs will look on paper as though it is a very good school. The CVA data might suggest that it is not quite as good as it looks on paper. It is not telling you that it is not, but it is raising a number of questions that the inspectors would then follow through when they attended the school, when they inspected the school.

Q11 Chairman: You have a fascinating background because you have seen education from almost every view, but, drawing on that experience, are you really confident? You have come in and you have got the system you have got; you have not had time to change it. Are you sure that this great emphasis on self-evaluation is really the way to go?

Ms Gilbert: I am absolutely sure that self-evaluation is core to improvement, and I think, whether an organisation is being inspected or not, knowing yourself well, knowing your strengths and weaknesses is absolutely crucial in any organisation. Be it education or the world of business, I think self-evaluation - you might not call it that - is absolutely central. If you do not know your strengths and weaknesses, I do not know how you can progress in a very focused way, and so I do think self-evaluation is very important. What external scrutiny does it sharpen that up, and, in fact, that was the most fascinating thing for me reading the evaluation where, I think, about 82% of heads were saying how positive it was. A large majority of them were saying: what it has helped us to do is to validate the things that we are saying in our own assessment; it is reinforcing, if you like, that we have identified the right things and we are going in the right direction.

Q12 Chairman: You do not think, Chief Inspector, that this enormous growth of Ofsted - the taking over of the Adult Learning Inspectorate, getting into the Early Years, the responsibility for Every Child Matters - overall has weakened, that you are doing so much that you have lost your focus? Do you not think that is a danger? People outside are suspecting that that might be the case.

Ms Gilbert: It does not feel a very big organisation to me. I have come from one that is almost four times its size, so it does not seem a very big organisation. I think the issue is whether we are clear about our purpose, and the bringing together of inspectorates, I think, is key in terms of that. It is very clear to me that the Act and the job descriptions I received when I applied for this post focus very much on three things. They focus on improvement, they ask us to focus on users and they ask us to focus on the efficient and effective use of our resources. Those three things are central, and I think that bringing the four inspectorates together gives us an holistic view of what is going on in terms of learning, skills, development, care and so on. We will push forward the ECM agenda, but the broader agenda too in terms of performance in a way it has not done before.

Q13 Chairman: It may not be as big as the last organisation you were with before, but it is a lot of taxpayers' money.

Ms Gilbert: It is.

Q14 Chairman: There are a lot of people in education who say, "You got rid of Ofsted. What can we do with that money in terms of school improvement?" We could do all sorts of things, and you would agree, would you not, that if under your leadership Ofsted does not show value for money, it makes a difference, people will increasingly say, "Why have Ofsted? We have just come back from Australia. They do not have an inspection system like this. They seem to work very well." Unless under your leadership you prove value, people will increasingly say, "Do we need you?"

Ms Gilbert: I applied for the job because I believe that Ofsted and the new Ofsted will make more of a difference actually than even the four inspectorates separately. If we do not, there is something that I am not doing very well in leading the organisation, but we will continue to build on the processes that are already there in the different organisations to varying degrees on the processes there for benchmarking ourselves. It is far more difficult to benchmark Ofsted than it was to benchmark the organisation from where I came, but we will continue to do that, we will continue to look at how efficient we are, we will continue to look at how effective we are and we will ask our users, and find more innovative ways of asking our users, about the difference we make to what is going on on the ground.

Q15 Chairman: Chief Inspector, thank you for that. As you will know, the Chairman of the Committee is the warm-up act.

Ms Gilbert: I did not.

Chairman: We now have some serious questions from David Chaytor.

Q16 Mr Chaytor: Chief Inspector, how do you think the purpose of inspection will change as a result of the creation of new Ofsted?

Ms Gilbert: I think the three things that I have just referred to when answering the Chairman's questions are absolutely central, and they are really clear in the Act. The focus on improvement is much more stark than was there before. We do have to be clear that we are making a difference and that inspection activity is contributing to improvement. We do not improve ourselves. The different settings, the different organisations use our recommendations and they do the work in terms of improvement, so we do not do that. Secondly, I think the focus on users is much more strong than it has been probably in at least three of the four inspectorates. I think it is very strong in CSCI (the Commission for Social Care Inspection) and I think the new Ofsted will build on the strengths of the existing inspectorates and our focus will be really sharp and clear on users; and in the questions that we have been having about value for money, and so on, I think those things will be really important in establishing this new organisation, because we are describing it very much as a new organisation.

Q17 Mr Chaytor: In terms of the focus on improvements, the Annual Report highlights that in your inspection of Early Years you have a responsibility to see through the recommendations you make in your inspection reports, and I think, from memory, the report says that you had made 80,400 recommendations during your inspections of Early Years settings. Your responsibility is to ensure that these recommendations are implemented, but you do not have quite that responsibility in respect of school or college inspections. Do you now envisage that that will change and there will be a far greater follow-through in the role of Ofsted?

Ms Gilbert: In terms of schools and colleges?

Q18 Mr Chaytor: In terms of schools and colleges?

Ms Gilbert: We cannot force the schools or colleges to do what we are recommending that they do.

Q19 Mr Chaytor: You can in terms of Early Years settings?

Ms Gilbert: It is a different process. It is much more to do with compliance against national standards. I do not know, but Dorian might want to pick up some of that. There is much, much more of a regulation aspect, in fact it is regulatory, in the Early Years, whereas it is very much inspection activity in schools and colleges; but what we have established from the evaluation that we have carried out is that over 80% of schools are telling us that they think the recommendations are right and that they are using the recommendations. Some of them are even using them before we have produced the report. So they are telling us that that is the case. If a school is in an inadequate category, we will be going back to check that they are doing, not necessarily the detail of what we have said, but their provision in the school is improving.

Q20 Mr Chaytor: In terms of your focus on school improvement, the only change will be slightly more frequent return visits or a quicker return visit in the case of a school that is in difficulties. You do not think that the power to make schools comply would be an essential power if Ofsted is really going to focus on school improvement?

Ms Gilbert: No. I would not want any more powers in terms of school compliance than we have at the moment. I cannot stress enough that the responsibility for improvement rests with the institution, the organisation. We cannot do it from outside the school, and we do not do it in the Early Years setting either, but we go back to check that it is being done in a very formal way against national standards, but the approach is different, as I said.

Q21 Mr Chaytor: You will recognise that one of the criticisms of the role of Ofsted has always been that the inspectors come in, they make their criticism and they go away and that is it, and the school is left without sufficient support. Has that been a valid criticism in the past and, if it is, do you not think that there is a responsibility to respond to that and be a little bit more---

Ms Gilbert: I would probably say that that was a misunderstanding of our role. That is not our role. As part of the change in the new framework, we devote more resources to schools that are in difficulties, and I think that is entirely appropriate. What schools have told us there is that the regular visits when a school is in difficulties help them to become better at evaluating themselves in assessing whether their progress has been as good as they think it has, but as to the real locus of responsibility for development and improvement, it seems to me absolutely essential that it rests with the school.

Q22 Mr Chaytor: What would the relationship be between Ofsted and the School Improvement Partners?

Ms Gilbert: I think the School Improvement Partners are doing a different job. We work closely with the DfES, and so on, in a number of ways, and so the initiative came from the DfES, and they have only been going a little while. I suppose I would liken them (and I do not know if this borne out in practice, it might be borne out just by my anecdotal knowledge) more to local authority advisers: they give support, they also give some challenge to schools in particular areas. They are employed, I think, they are certainly funded, by the local authority, and their focus is very much on support and development of that school. They understand Ofsted's role, which is external scrutiny. Ofsted developed in the very beginning because the system that we had, I think, for local advice and support was not sufficiently rigorous to get the sort of improvement the country needed.

Q23 Mr Chaytor: But after a critical inspection, will the School Improvement Partner not be responsible for ensuring that the Ofsted recommendations were implemented?

Ms Gilbert: I do not know enough about them to say, but my guess is that they would not. My guess is that the school is itself still responsible. The head and the governing bodies have to discharge that responsibility, because they can ignore, presumably, what the School Improvement Partner is telling them. They will be fairly daft to do so, particularly, I guess, because they are generally involved in the performance assessment of the head teacher too.

Q24 Mr Chaytor: You do not see the School Improvement Partner as an enforcer; the School Improvement Partner will remain a critical friend rather than an enforcer?

Ms Gilbert: Certainly that is my understanding of their role, but, as I say, I have not had detailed experience of it. We have not done an evaluation in Ofsted, as far as I am aware, of the role of the SIP.

Ms Rosen: The School Improvement Partner's role is to provide support and challenge. If you consider the case of a school which has just been put into a category of concern, perhaps into special measures, it is the role of the head teacher to bring about improvement but they will receive support from the School Improvement Partner, from the local authority; and the local authority is likely to take action if they do not bring about rapid improvement, but the locus of responsibility has to remain within the school; external forces cannot make a school improvement; it is the work of the head and the teachers within the school that brings about the improvement. As to our interaction with the School Improvement Partner, we will look at the School Improvement Partner's report on the school when we inspect a school.

Q25 Mr Chaytor: Finally, can I ask, Chairman, about the value for money aspect. Clearly, the cost of Ofsted has been an issue. The amalgamation of different inspectorates has resulted in some savings. Do you expect this process to continue? Are you planning for further reductions in the size of the Ofsted budget over the next two/three years and, specifically, how do you expect to squeeze out more value from the existing the budget on which you are working?

Ms Gilbert: One of the things that has struck me in coming new to Ofsted is the level of reduction that the organisation has already managed and managed, I think, very effectively. It has been very significant. There have been Gershon efficiency savings and then there have been the reductions relating to the Better Regulation Executive. I think it is about 120 over time that has got to be found. A significant amount of that has been found, but there is still more to find. I cannot pretend to you that is easy, we will live within whatever budget we have got, but we are still looking at a number of ways to bridge the remaining gap that we have. We are part way through a cycle of reduction which we are going to see through. I do not know if Vanessa wants to add anything to that?

Ms Howlison: Yes. Our combined budgets were 266 million in 2003/2004. The reduction needs to take us to 186 million by 2008/2009. That sounds like a big jump, particularly when you consider the inflation impact, and it is a big jump, but Ofsted has done a considerable amount in the past to deliver savings, as Christine says, partly through Gershon, though the merger itself will generate a dividend of 15 million, which is where it will cost us less to provide, particularly back office functions, when you merge the organisations together. There are a range of other proposals which we are discussing with the department to take us further down the road to BRE compliance, and we do still have a gap at the moment. We are working with DfES on proposals to bridge that gap, and a lot of them are about really moving further forward down the track that Ofsted were already going in terms of proportionate inspection. We were also reducing our costs before the BRE reduction was announced and a lot of the proposals are simply taking us further down the line of proportionate inspection where we are focusing more of our effort and resource at the areas which deserve it most.

Q26 Mr Pelling: Can inspectors be advisers?

Ms Gilbert: Can HMI be?

Q27 Mr Pelling: Yes, in their brief visits to schools?

Ms Gilbert: Technically can they be, do you mean?

Q28 Mr Pelling: Or informally can they be?

Ms Gilbert: I see, informally. I am sure they certainly cannot be SIPS officially, but they can certainly---. Actually I have had a number of letters since I started saying how much head teachers have valued the support. They usually do use the word "challenge" in that as well. The ones that I am talking about are the schools essentially in special measures that have had quite an intensive relationship with an inspector over a period of time, because it is the same inspector, generally, that will come back for the visits, and so on; and, obviously, if you are talking with the head and school about what you are seeing, you are advising as part of that, or you are making some recommendations as part of that.

Chairman: That was Andrew's first question as new member of the Committee. Welcome.

Q29 Paul Holmes: When Ofsted go into an FE college and they use the Common Inspection Framework, the college knows what they have got to do to please Ofsted and try and get a good report, but colleges also have another master that they have to appeal to, which is the Learning and Skills Council, who control funds and, under the current Government's proposals, are going to be giving a direction on how to close colleges down. The Learning and Skills Council are developing a Framework for Excellence, which they consulted on in October, there is a vision document in January and the final version in June. So the colleges are getting a bit worried that the Framework for Excellence seems to be developing out of kilter with the Common Inspection Framework and that by next autumn they are going to have to do one set of things to please the Learning and Skills Council, who control the money, and one set of things to please you, who can hang them out to dry with a bad report. How is that going to be catered for?

Ms Gilbert: I have had a number of discussions with the Association of Colleges and various college principles since I took up post, not just about that but as part of that discussion, and every single one has raised the same issue. We have responded at Ofsted to the consultation that came out on this and made a number of points, such as the need to have one framework, also coherence across the frameworks. For instance, we would be asking for four grades rather than the five that they are recommending, and so on. We have sent in a response, and we hope that those points will be considered. I think the overriding thing is that relationships are good at various levels in Ofsted and the LSC and so on and that we are talking and debating, and we have responded formally and we hope that those responses will be listened to, because I think it would be very difficult to operate with two frameworks in the way that you have just described.

Q30 Paul Holmes: So you hope that the Learning and Skills Council are going to respond. Perhaps Miriam is doing this more nuts and bolts. Are you getting a good response from the Learning and Skills Council?

Ms Rosen: We are working closely with them to make sure that there is coherence between the Common Inspection Framework and the Framework for Excellence. So that work is going on together with the department, and we will have to think about how best to operate that, whether the Common Inspection Framework really fits into, and is part of, the Framework for Excellence, but we are quite sure there has to be coherence and that we cannot have colleges operating to separate frameworks. I think there is goodwill on all sides to work as closely as we can to achieve that aim.

Q31 Paul Holmes: So you do get the impression that the Learning and Skills Council share your concern that colleges should not have two separate contradictory frameworks?

Ms Rosen: Yes. I think that is well understood and they wish to work with us. If you look at the response to the consultation document, it actually quotes from us and names us all the way through, which, again, I think, is very good because it has been very open about what we have said and what other people have said and how we want to resolve things in the best possible way.

Q32 Paul Holmes: One of the things the colleges valued about the Adult Learning Inspectorate was that when they saw good practice during the inspections, they have their website called Excalibur, and they put the good examples up so that colleges could easily refer to them, and that has now been passed on to the Quality Improvement Agency. How will the Ofsted inspectors pass on really good examples or do they not see that as their role?

Ms Gilbert: Again, I think relationships are very strong. This has not been raised with me. It has been talked about that this is going to happen, but it has not been raised with me as an issue of concern. The details are still being worked out, but it is absolutely accepted that Ofsted inspectors will continue to provide examples of good practice which would then be fed through to the QIA and so the resource will continue for the system in some way.

Q33 Paul Holmes: So that will be a specific requirement of Ofsted inspectors, that they should pass the good examples straight through?

Ms Gilbert: Yes, they are absolutely clear that that is what they will be doing as part of the new arrangements.

Q34 Paul Holmes: With Ofsted expanding into different areas, from schools, to Early Years to colleges, it is a little like the parallel one with a single equality contribution set up with different strands - visibility, gender, etcetera. They all feel, "We are going to lose out in this merger", that only one strand will come to dominate. There is the same feeling with Ofsted. How far will the specialisms of the Adult Learning Inspectorate, for example, change the way Ofsted operates or how far will simply Ofsted say, "This is the way we do it."

Ms Gilbert: I have been very keen to talk all the time about new Ofsted, because though Ofsted/Ofsted remains, the title remains, the title of the offices is different than previously from 1 April, and though Ofsted is bigger than the other organisations, I think it is very important that we certainly look and feel new internally, that it is one organisation focused very much in the same way. I do see the strengths of each, and I do not mean this in just the clichés that you exchange. I think that the strengths of each will really contribute to the whole. In year one, actually I do not think that the differences will be more than minimal in some of the ways that we operate, but I think through time we will change in the way that we are inspecting, and so on, by using perhaps more imaginative ways looking across the different strands in different things. The inspectors from the ALI seem to me now positive. They were accepting, and they are now positive, about the move and are very keen to get started. Some see a larger organisation giving them more opportunity to do different things; some, for instance, have asked to be trained as school inspectors as well so that they might have a broader view across, and I think that is particularly important with things such as the 14-19 focus that we have got. So we do see that bringing the strengths together will make a stronger, more thriving organisation; it will do much more than we would be doing separately.

Q35 Paul Holmes: But in three or four years time when all this has bedded in, is your vision that you will have generic inspectors who this week can do a nursery placement and next week do an FE college, or will it be more discrete areas?

Ms Gilbert: No, I do not ever envisage whatever, who knows, but certainly within four years I would not envisage that. I think it is important that we do not lose our specialism in some way. In particular, in some of the adult learning the focus there is important, and certainly employers have valued that as part of the service that they have received from the ALI. So I do not see that we are just going to have generic inspectors but I think we might be doing things together across the organisation, in a way, and I think there will be a lowering of some of the boundaries that we have established or that we will be establishing from April.

Q36 Paul Holmes: One last question, and it parallels something that is going to be asked later about subject reports within schools. If you go into an FE college, on the one hand you might need the expertise to assess whether you are training bricklayers and plumbers very well, but later on that morning you go and look at the graphic design department, which is an utterly different world. Have you got the expertise, will you retain the expertise, to make proper assessments of those vastly different areas within an FE college?

Ms Gilbert: As far as I am aware now, the teams are joint for some of the inspections of FE colleges. I think that is one of the reasons that the ALI inspectors themselves are so positive about coming over; but we are looking at the inspection process, or will be looking at the inspection process, for FE. In fact, we are going to be consulting on shifts to that post probably early in the New Year now, and, again, that will have the same risk assessment, if you like, and putting resources where they need to be. That does not mean, in my view, that there will be no external scrutiny of the very best, but there will be minimal scrutiny of the very best, or a light touch, if you like.

Q37 Chairman: But you are going to have a wheel-change, the Leach suggestions are going to transform FE, and you are going to have to change your inspection system quite dramatically to meet those new circumstances, are you not?

Ms Gilbert: We will have to change, but I think, as I look at the history of Ofsted, it changes the inspection framework and I think it is very healthy that it does change the framework. I think what is coming in terms of skills and so on, certainly we will have to look at what we are doing but I do think there are elements in what is happening now that can be built on, particularly what is going on now with the work-based inspection through the ALI.

Q38 Chairman: Do you share the concern of your colleagues in the Adult Learning inspectorate about that shift that is in Leach, that there is so much more emphasis on employer-driven, demand-driven in that sector? You have seen the comments of your colleague in the Adult Learning Inspectorate?

Ms Gilbert: Yes, I was at the launch of the Annual Report yesterday, and I do not recall the comment, I do not recall anxiety. He talked about some anxiety about light-touch inspection - maybe that is the bit I noticed - but I do not recall him talking about anything other than positively about the changes that are being proposed.

Q39 Chairman: It is the wicked press again, is it?

Ms Gilbert: I have missed it. I have obviously missed what you are referring to.

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 was 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 you 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 slightly 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 grey 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 2004, which was our first major problem, 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, my apologies, and we currently employ, I think, 260 million 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 sources 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 to C GCSEs and this summer they achieved 56% five A to 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.

Q60 Mr Wilson: Do you think that there is an educational requirement for state schools to have matched funding with private schools? So the same levels of money spent in the state sector as in the private sector?

Ms Gilbert: I think schools need the money to do the job that they are being asked to do. Private schools all charge differently, as far as I can see. I think the schools need to be funded for the job that they have to do. I would not pretend to know the difference in the impact that you are describing that happens in private schools compared to state schools.

Q61 Mr Wilson: So the answer is you do not know whether there is a case?

Ms Gilbert: I do not have enough knowledge or enough evidence.

Q62 Mr Wilson: Does anybody within Ofsted have that knowledge?

Ms Gilbert: I am sorry?

Q63 Mr Wilson: Does anybody - because I know you are new - within Ofsted have that knowledge whether there should be the same level of spending on state schools as private schools?

Ms Gilbert: I do not think that is something that has emerged from any report that we have looked at, and I cannot see how we would look at it, actually. We look at the educational provision. We make a judgment on each school whether they are providing value for money and we set that out in the report; but we do not make an explicit comparison in the sort of political way that I think you might be suggesting.

Chairman: We have to move on, Rob. We have only covered a small number of the questions we want to ask, and you have had quite a good innings.

Q64 Helen Jones: The annual report said that eight per cent of the schools that you had looked at were classified as "inadequate" and the rest were "satisfactory" or above. Is that good news or bad news?

Ms Gilbert: It is not good news that we have any schools classified as "inadequate". At Ofsted we would hope to get to a state where we have no schools classified as "inadequate". Of those schools, it gives some reassurance - but it is still not reassuring enough if you are a parent near such a school - that the majority of them, we think, have the capacity to improve within them. So they have something called a "notice to improve", and we go back and check that they are making that improvement. The smallest number are the schools placed in special measures, which do give us greatest concern because the inspectors there are reaching a judgment that the management of the school do not have the capacity to make the improvements that we think need to be made. So it is not good news to have any schools classified as "inadequate".

Q65 Helen Jones: Can I look at the schools you have classed as "satisfactory"? Your report states that "'satisfactory' can never be good enough". Apart from doing some violence to the English language, does that not call into question the categories you are using and the inspection framework that you are using? There was an article in the TES which suggested that a comparison is made during an inspection of schools results compared to the national average. If that is the case, you can never have a majority of schools above average, can you? Does it not call into question the categories you are using and the way that the information in your report is then conveyed? What does "satisfactory" mean?

Ms Gilbert: I do want to emphasise that the categories are absolutely not norm-referenced. You could have all of our schools "outstanding" but more schools could be "good". The categories themselves are not norm-referenced; they are based on the inspector's judgment, going in to the school. The inspector does not say, "I've got two 'outstanding' this month. I need to identify two 'special measures' to compensate". If you look at a "satisfactory" judgment, it means that no aspect of that school's provision - no major aspect of that school's provision - is what we would describe as "inadequate". We would think, though, that that school had much further to go. I do not think that any parent would choose, in most cases, to send their child to a school that was described as "satisfactory"; they would rather want one that was described as "good" or "outstanding". So my personal ambition is that all of our schools are "good" schools. I think that far more of them could become "good", and I would hope that what we are doing in inspecting them might help them to do that.

Q66 Helen Jones: That raises two questions, does it not? Is the TES right in what it said about the statistical tools that you are using? I accept what you say about the inspector's judgment. Secondly, if everything was classed as "good" - if we got to that stage where everything was classed as "good" or "excellent" - what use would the categories be?

Ms Gilbert: Shall I start with that one first? The categories would give you some reassurance and information about what was going on in that school. The supermarket analogy was used earlier. All the supermarkets could be good supermarkets for a particular brand and you would not think that there was anything strange about that. So I do not think there is anything wrong at all in aspiring for "good" or "outstanding" for all of our schools. The first point was about the performance information. Some of the performance information, the CVA - the contextual value-added information - has a norm reference. However, as I said at the beginning, that is part of the whole picture; it is not the whole picture. We do look at a number of things. The overriding thing - and I really do want to stress this - is the inspector's judgment; the debate in the school; what she or he sees in the school; what emerges from discussions; and what other information the school may have. We use some information. Some of the schools use very sophisticated information for their own schools, and for some of the small schools the CVA is not helpful. For some of the bigger schools I think that it is very helpful indeed.

Q67 Helen Jones: Let us return to the categories. If you have schools classified as "good" or "outstanding", that surely indicates that they are better than average? They are better than the norm. If I, as a parent, looked at your categories and all schools are classified as "outstanding", that would not tell me anything, would it? Then to use the phrase that "'satisfactory' is not good enough" implies that those schools are failing. They are not, are they?

Ms Gilbert: They are not inadequate in any major aspect of their provision. I do not think that they are providing a good enough education. One of the points I made about some of the FE colleges that worried us is that too many of them are getting stuck with a "satisfactory" rating and not moving. Part of my job in managing a school, a local education authority, a local authority, has always been to push up aspirations and ambition. I think that it would be dreadful if we told schools that "'satisfactory' is fine and we are not expecting more of you". I think that parents who live in a local area want their child to go to a school that is better than satisfactory. Therefore, I would ask the schools to lift their sights and move forward. What we are saying is we think that they have the capacity to do that; we are making some recommendations that would help them do that.

Q68 Helen Jones: I accept what you are saying, that schools can improve and should always be looking to improve. I do not think there is a dispute about that. Our difficulty as a Committee is with the categories Ofsted use, and with the implication in your report that "satisfactory" is failing. I will put it to you again. Do you not need to consider your use of categories? Because if all schools reach the level of "outstanding", that would be a nonsense, would it not? Everything cannot be better than average; everything cannot be outstanding. That would not tell me anything, as a parent.

Ms Gilbert: The categories are not based on average. To drive a car, you do not get one of four categories: you can or cannot drive a car. I would be delighted if every school was identified as "outstanding", because----

Q69 Helen Jones: I am sorry, that does not make sense. In terms of the English language, that does not make sense, does it?

Ms Gilbert: The word "outstanding" is not necessarily related to norm-referencing.

Helen Jones: It is. It means "better than the rest". You cannot be outstanding unless you are better than a lot of others. By definition, everything cannot be outstanding.

Q70 Chairman: It could be referenced to international comparisons - but who am I to...? Chief Inspector, I do not think that we are getting any further on this.

Ms Gilbert: If you look at the detail for the grade descriptors, they say what an outstanding school is. They do not reference that to any norm. If the school is doing the best by the pupils attending it and providing excellent provision, it would be described as an outstanding school. I think that is about it, is it not, Miriam? Do you want to say anything about the descriptors?

Q71 Chairman: Robert is in charge of this area - are you not, Robert? Do you want to say anything?

Mr Green: I do have some thoughts, if I may, Mr Chairman. I think that what Christine says about the content of the descriptors is surely the crucial thing. Ofsted is an organisation in which we can bat for England in terms of deciding whether a particular adjective is the right adjective to use. However, it seems to me that the important thing is the substance of what is actually being looked at. We are a long way away from a position in which all schools are outstanding, so that at the moment that kind of language makes sense. It may be - I do not know - if we move to a stage where 100 per cent of schools were outstanding, then the language would be something you would look at; but that would not change what you were looking at in substance in terms of what inspectors are saying.

Helen Jones: Has the percentage of schools classified as "satisfactory" changed over the years? If so, in what direction?

Q72 Chairman: Miriam is nodding.

Ms Gilbert: It would be difficult to compare it with this year, but I think we should say for previous years.

Ms Rosen: I think that it has changed over the years, but you have to remember we are on our fourth framework and, each time we have changed the framework, we have changed it in a direction which is more rigorous. Perhaps that has not been recognised, but we have raised the bar several times and will continue to do so. So each time we introduce a new inspection framework, actually the percentages all shift downwards; then they creep up again as people aim higher. The trend overall is upwards, therefore, but there are changes each time we change the framework.

Q73 Helen Jones: I understand that. Does that not raise questions about how we measure the effectiveness of the inspection system? You have given us, Chief Inspector, anecdotal evidence about people saying they found it helpful and so on, but if you keep changing the categories it is very difficult to measure objectively the effect of the inspection regime on school improvements, is it not? Is there an objective measurement?

Ms Gilbert: I think that evaluative judgments are the most effective. Though I have given some anecdotal answers in response, the evidence that I am quoting from Ofsted is not just anecdote; we do our own internal surveys after every inspection, and we have done a piece of work internally on what we thought but----

Q74 Helen Jones: I am sorry, I missed that. Could you repeat it?

Ms Gilbert: I did not mean to suggest that all the evidence we had was anecdotal. We have done work internally on assessing the impact of inspection, but we also commission the NFER - who reported in July on what they had found on one year of the new process - and we are continuing to work with them on a more extensive and detailed survey. So there is some evidence about the impact of inspection on improvement.

Q75 Helen Jones: I understand you to say that that was looking at only the new process. What I asked was whether it is difficult, over time, to measure the impact of inspection on school improvement. If the categories keep changing, we are not comparing like with like, are we?

Ms Gilbert: But we would not pretend that the improvement in schools was all down to Ofsted. We are one, and I hope an important, lever in generating that improvement; but it is the schools themselves that do the work to improve. I would not use those sorts of figures in that particular way, therefore. Nevertheless, if schools were not improving and there was no shift at all, they would not be able to tell us that we were helping them contribute to that improvement - if you see what I mean.

Q76 Helen Jones: I think that we are mixing two things up, and I want to try and get some clarity on this. I personally have no doubt that schools are improving. The question I want to try and dig down to is what are the causes of that improvement and what proportion of that improvement is down to Ofsted. Do you have any evidence to offer the Committee on that?

Ms Gilbert: I think that we are clear about what are the ingredients that make an effective school, and the framework that we use essentially identifies those different elements. So we would look for performance in all of those areas. It is difficult to assess the impact of Ofsted without engaging the key users and stakeholders in assessing that impact. That is not to say I would ever expect 100 per cent satisfaction rate, and for us to become soft and cuddly animals. The external scrutiny does give sharpness and a rigour, but nevertheless schools are sufficiently professional and focused now in what they are doing that they are very honest about whether we have contributed to the difference that they have made or not. That is what they are telling the NFER; it is not that they are just telling us.

Q77 Helen Jones: That is interesting, but do you accept that actually that is still not an objective measurement? How do you think school improvement here compares to those countries where they do not have this kind of inspection regime? I am not necessarily advocating getting rid of it, but I am asking the question. If some countries manage to do it without the rigorous inspectorate, what difference does Ofsted make?

Ms Gilbert: All I can say is that, since appointment in October, we have had a stream of visitors. Nothing to do with me. That sounded as though since my appointment we have had a stream of visitors. I think that this is fairly common. There is a stream of visitors from abroad looking at our inspection processes, because it is seen as a major factor in the sorts of improvements that have been going on.

Q78 Mr Chaytor: Can I clarify the point that you made earlier, Chief Inspector, on CVA data? Is it the case that next year's report will be the first report to take account of the publication of CVA data?

Ms Gilbert: No. CVA is core to the new inspection framework and so we have reported now on one year of that. So CVA has been in operation this past year.

Q79 Mr Chaytor: So where we get references to achievement and performance, this now always takes on board the impact of the CVA data as well as the raw source?

Ms Gilbert: Yes.

Q80 Mr Chaytor: The second thing is that, in respect of your judgment on academies, it says in the report that nine of the new academies have been inspected under the new arrangements and the progress they are making, while uneven, is broadly positive. My question is this. Is that judgment a sufficient basis to justify a doubling of the number of new academies?

Ms Gilbert: I cannot remember if the point is made in the report. I certainly made it in response to questions about academies. That is a very, very low number of academies to be making general points about development. What we are looking at is not whether something is an academy or not; it is the provision within it. That point in the report about "generally positive" is because these were all schools that were in great difficulties, and so they have made - some of them have made - positive progress, and we wanted to acknowledge that. However, it is far too few for us to be making a general point about academies on.

Q81 Mr Chaytor: Could I ask one other, short question? In terms of your assessment of sixth-form colleges you said, "...seven out of ten are good or better in terms of overall effectiveness". What is better than "good"? Surely the only other category is "outstanding", so why does it not say that "seven out of ten are good or outstanding"?

Ms Gilbert: It could have done, I think!

Q82 Chairman: Going back to a couple of earlier questions, in terms of the underperforming schools, what is the correlation between the number of schools that are really underperforming and anything else out there? You mention leadership. Are most of these schools in the leafy suburbs? Where are they?

Ms Gilbert: Miriam may want to give a broader picture but, as I said earlier, I have read reports of every school placed in special measures since October. By about the third week, I asked Miriam to send me some good ones because I was getting such a depressing feel of what was going on. I think that there is not a single one where you would think that leadership and management was effective in any way. There may have been some where somebody new had come in, but inspectors were not seeing the positive feel that they got about the head reinforced in classrooms or in practice, and so on. So I think that leadership and management are really important; but I also think that the quality of teaching is absolutely vital. Those two things combined give you a really good focus on the progress that each child is making within the school. Is the child making sufficient progress? Are children generally in that school making sufficient progress? I think that those would be my key things - and Miriam is nodding.

Q83 Chairman: I want to drill down a bit further in that. The whole academy programme is based on trying to turn schools round in the poorest parts of our inner cities and inner towns. Surely there is a relationship between underperforming schools and poverty? Or does it have nothing to do with it? You are telling me that there is no relation between how poor that school is, where it sits, how deprived that community is on a range of measures. You are telling me that there is no link between these really underperforming schools and poverty?

Ms Gilbert: I would not say that there was no link. What I would say - and I did say this very strongly when I was in Tower Hamlets - is that poverty and disadvantage are absolutely no excuse for failure. When I moved from Harrow to Tower Hamlets, I could see immediately that the children in Tower Hamlets were no less bright than the children in Harrow. We had more money in Tower Hamlets per child, and it was what we did with that money to make more of a difference than we were making that was absolutely key. You have to make people believe in themselves and believe that they can achieve and do better, and they will. So I think that it is very much not saying, "We're disadvantaged, therefore we can't do X, Y and Z"; it is looking at what you can do and using the resources more effectively to effect change.

Q84 Chairman: So if you took those children from the other Harrow school they would do just as well, would they?

Ms Gilbert: I think that it is a number of factors. One of the big differences is that, when I was a head in Harrow and when I was a director, parents were very active and very key. I used to run a Monday evening surgery and open the school on Monday evenings for parents, and there used to be a stream of people on Monday evenings. I do not think that would have happened in Tower Hamlets. It did not mean that the parents were not any more committed to the development of their child; they were just less confident about tackling the school about issues. If homework was not set in a Harrow school, not only would I as a head have had a number of complaints, either in person or by letter, but probably as director I was receiving complaints too. Nobody ever complained to me in Tower Hamlets about the homework not being set. So it is trying to get the sorts of things that - Harrow is not entirely middle class -more middle class parents do for their children. We need to be using some of the resources to get that sort of intervention.

Q85 Chairman: You say poverty is not an excuse, but there is a correlation between underperforming schools and the degree of poverty and parental support.

Ms Gilbert: I am not sure if the evidence that I looked at recently, in terms of London schools, is saying that in terms of the judgment of inspectors on some of the schools. So in some of our urban schools, with good leadership and management - it is quite a small service, so I probably need to be a bit careful - it was suggesting that leadership and management in some of the inner city schools were stronger than elsewhere, and actually the provision and the grades that they were getting from Ofsted were better. There could be a link between disadvantage and attainment, unless we put in the interventions that we should be putting in to make sure that progress is better.

Q86 Paul Holmes: You have recovered the position slightly with what you have just said, but first of all you were giving very good examples from your own experience of working in Harrow and in a different capacity in Tower Hamlets of how there is a huge difference between the social background, parental support, and all the rest of it, that did make a big difference between the two areas. Then, in response to the Chairman's question, you said, "No, that's not really significant" - the social deprivation and so forth. It seemed incomprehensible to me that you could say that. If it was all down to leadership, quality of management and how we spend the resources, then Tower Hamlets, after your leadership, would be getting exactly the same results as Harrow, presumably - if it was just down to leadership.

Ms Gilbert: I would stress that I was chief executive for the last five years. There was another director of education; it certainly was not me. I think that the director of education would not say that it was him either; it is the schools that make the real difference. However, the results in some cases were not far off some off the Harrow schools.

Q87 Paul Holmes: Across the board at Tower Hamlets, do the results match Harrow, after these years of excellent leadership?

Ms Gilbert: No, they do not, but look how the gap has narrowed over those years. I did not mean to say - and I hope I did not convey - that disadvantage is not an issue; but you cannot say, "This is a disadvantaged school. They're only getting so-and-so results because they are disadvantaged". That is my issue with value-added. It is a very important lever in improving a school. No child can go to an interview and say, "Look at my value-added schools"; they have to go to an interview with real GSCE schools.

Q88 Paul Holmes: David was saying earlier that in the report on sixth-form colleges you were saying that 70 per cent of them are "good" or "outstanding". What is the percentage of schools that are "good" or "outstanding"?

Ms Gilbert: It is about 58 per cent or something. In the report we were saying that.

Q89 Paul Holmes: So why the difference? Is that because all the good and outstanding leavers go into sixth-form colleges, or is it because sixth-form colleges by their very nature are taking pupils who are academically able, well-motivated, and working at a higher level than an average school across the country?

Ms Gilbert: Yes, and sometimes you can have a school graded one way and the sixth-form provision is better. We have been looking at reasons for that. It is to do with the sorts of reasons that you have identified, and it is to do with subject knowledge, smaller groups, the focus, and so on. So we think it is to do with some of those things.

Q90 Mr Pelling: A fundamental in the annual report was your inspiring comments that "competence in literacy and numeracy continue to be fundamental in all learning". What has Her Majesty's Inspectorate seen in the inspections it has made as being the most important element or elements to ensure that that priority is given? Is it possible for schools within the competing demands of the curriculum to be able to deliver in this area?

Ms Gilbert: I think that it is very rare for a school, for a primary school anyway, not to see literacy and numeracy as central to their work, and I think that it is a focus for them. In terms of secondary schools, it is increasingly identified - but I need to be careful because I may be saying these things without the evidence of Ofsted reports to back me up. Certainly from what I have seen in terms of primary school Ofsted reports, literacy and numeracy are central to those. However, a number of studies have been done on this, and a number of studies of the national strategies might be helpful here. Perhaps, Mr Chairman, I could ask Miriam to pick up some of the key points in those. That might be helpful.

Ms Rosen: We have certainly found that the Primary National Strategy has been helpful in helping teachers to focus within the primary sector. One of the things that our last report, which is slightly out of date now - it was December 2005 - pointed out was that sometimes children who are not making the progress they should are left too late. There is a lot of catch‑up work done towards the top end of the primary school, Years 5 and 6, when we are recommending that it should be done earlier. That was one of the main messages that came out of the December 2005 report, therefore. We also reported on the Secondary National Strategies at the same time. There we said, yes, there were signs of improvement, but there were particular problems for schools taking in large numbers of children at 11 who had not yet reached Level 4 in English, because they do not have access to the whole of the curriculum. We also said that we did not think there was sufficient focus in literacy and numeracy across the curriculum.

Q91 Jeff Ennis: Chief Inspector, can I tell you that last Friday I went to the retirement party of the former head in the school where I used to teach for 18 years, Hillsborough Primary School. Stuart Bell is retiring early at 57 years old, having been head teacher for 16 years. The school has had a very good Ofsted report recently. The most telling comment he made in his retirement speech to the assembled audience was the fact that, when he was appointed as the head teacher 16 years ago, 30-odd people applied for the post. This time, with a good inspection, et cetera, there were five people who applied to be head at Hillsborough Primary School, and one of those dropped out. I wonder if you feel that the imposition of Ofsted over the last ten years or so has impacted on the number of teachers who are now willing to put themselves forward as head teachers. If it has not, what have been the factors which have resulted in our seeing a drastic reduction in the number of senior teachers putting themselves forward to be head teachers?

Ms Gilbert: One of the unions raised this with me, that Ofsted had been a factor here. There are a number of factors, which I think are being addressed by looking at salary and so on. The National College of School Leadership is doing some really interesting work in this area, encouraging people to become heads and so on, and identifying people to become heads. I think that it is a number of factors, really. We just need to try and address them. We need to give people confidence that it is not just them: that they are part of a leadership team in a school, and make them feel that the job is worthwhile and worth doing, which I think it is doing.

Q92 Jeff Ennis: What would the other factors be then, Christine, apart from salary? You have mentioned the fact that it could be Ofsted. Are there any other factors that have a bigger influence on the lack of head teachers coming forward?

Ms Gilbert: I think that the demands in terms of accountability put some people off. I think that people feel it is a lot of additional time; that they are happy to be a deputy but do not want the additional time, the additional responsibility and so on. That is why I think that the thrust taken by some of the major unions on shared leadership - I would not promote that sort of approach because actually there is one head, but nevertheless these days one head does not do the job that is needed to be done in the school. I think that there are the expectations on schools. I think that it is harder to be a head today than it was when I was a head. I think that the expectations of parents, government, Ofsted - all of those people - are harder than they used to be. What the NCSL is doing is very imaginative in some ways, therefore, in encouraging some people to come into headship. I also think that some people who would never anticipate being a head, given an experience of it, start to realise that they like doing it; that it is a job that they could do, and they should be given confidence in doing it. So I think that also we need to find more experiences like that.

Q93 Jeff Ennis: Do you think that the new inspection framework will assist in future head teacher recruitment, so that we do see more deputy heads wanting to become head teachers as a direct consequence of the short, sharp inspection, shall we say?

Ms Gilbert: As Miriam said earlier, schools are telling us that it is less stressful. They are stressed from when they get the phone call but they are only stressed for three days, rather than ten weeks or whatever it was, and it is forgotten afterwards. I mean the feeling of stress is forgotten, not the inspection report. I think that is a factor, therefore, but there will always be an element of some stress and adrenaline with external scrutiny.

Q94 Jeff Ennis: But you would hope, say over the next four or five years, with the new inspection framework, we would see more people wanting to become head teachers again?

Ms Gilbert: I do not know enough to know, at a general level, how much that has played as a factor against some of the other things that are a factor.

Q95 Chairman: Miriam does. She is shaking her head.

Ms Rosen: What I was thinking was that we have been told that the new inspection framework is less stressful overall, but there is more intensive focus on the senior leadership team. The self-evaluation means that the inspectors have to hold quite a focused dialogue with the head teacher and with other senior leaders about what their priorities are, why, what they are doing about their identified weaknesses, and so on. So I do not know if we are going to see a link or not. I think that there is a huge range of factors which contribute to workforce issues like this, not talking from my experience as an inspector but from the 18 years I spent teaching. Whether there were lots of teachers around or not seemed to be very closely linked to the economy, because I can remember trying to recruit science teachers when we would get one applicant for an ordinary post, and trying to recruit them when we would get 100 applicants. It did seem to be linked to the availability of other jobs as well.

Q96 Chairman: The economy was not very good 16 years ago.

Ms Rosen: I am talking about longer ago than that!

Q97 Jeff Ennis: One final question. What more can be done by Ofsted, or local authorities, or the DfES to support head teachers and members of the schools' senior management team?

Ms Gilbert: We can support them do their job more effectively by making our recommendations as clearly focused as we can. I do not think that we have a broader role in supporting them than that. In schools that are in special measures and so on, I think that we have a more focused role. Again, however, it is not just general support; it is very much focused on the development of the school and so on. We engage with partners - the NCSL and so on - in dialogue with them about what we might do. We would support the seminars, conferences, and so on; but I would not want to pretend that we saw ourselves as having a very direct supportive role for head teachers.

Q98 Jeff Ennis: So it is not your role, effectively.

Ms Gilbert: Absolutely.

Q99 Fiona Mactaggart: I want to ask about subjects and curriculum and whether the new inspection arrangements adequately deal with subjects outside English, Maths and Science particularly. We have had evidence from the Royal Society of Chemistry and the National Association of Advisers and Inspectors in Design and Technology, expressing concern that the present arrangements for subject inspection do not give an accurate picture about subject teaching around the country. What is your view of this?

Ms Gilbert: As you may know, we are picking up a look at subjects through the thematic reviews that we are doing, which complements the school inspection programme. We will look, over a three-year period, to get some sense of what is going on in some of the subject areas. The same criticism has been raised with me but, in dialogue with colleagues, it is hard to see the impact of some of the annual work on subjects. So I would hope that thematic work would give us an opportunity to have a closer focus on what is going on in particular areas, be it a subject or an issue or a theme, and to think very hard about the impact of that work on making a difference in what is going on on the ground.

Ms Rosen: Every year, we have a sample of schools that we look at for each subject. Over a three-year period we write a report on that subject. We all say something in the annual report in between times. We feel that this enables us to pick up on particular issues, on strengths and weaknesses, on trends that are happening, and for us to focus in on particular things that we are interested in. It will not be a statistically significant sample, because to be statistically significant you need a huge sample. We are not going to be writing state-of-the-nation reports but, even so, we will be able to write authoritative reports on the basis of these inspections, which tell us about issues in that subject and trends in it.

Q100 Fiona Mactaggart: You are confident that you can pick up weaknesses in teaching and give an assessment of that through this process?

Ms Rosen: We will find out quite a lot about the teaching in the schools that we visit, because we will spend quite a lot of time in classrooms. I think that we will be able to pick up on particular trends. As I say, we are not really pretending to give a state-of-the-nation report on it but, even so, it will be authoritative and it will pick up on particular issues of the day. For example, our modern foreign language inspector at the moment is particularly looking at uptake at Key Stage 4, because she realises this is a problem. So she is concentrating on that in the programme of modern foreign languages inspections.

Ms Gilbert: I would just add to that, by referring you to a report that I read fairly recently in this vein on history teaching post-16. I learnt phenomenally from just reading this report and seeing the sort of innovative practice going on. So the issue for me is how the outcomes of that report are disseminated; how they influence practice; and what we are doing in terms of the impact of some of the reports that we are producing.

Q101 Fiona Mactaggart: Let us take an area that we are presently looking at, where there is some confusion about what constitutes good practice. As you point out in your report, there is a lack of consensus about the aims of citizenship education, and we are studying it at the moment. What is your role in trying to sort this out?

Ms Gilbert: Miriam will answer the citizenship questions, but I would say that we have a role in seeing what is going on - citizenship is slightly different, is it not? - highlighting good practice and identifying that. We would disseminate it in a number of ways. We would attend conferences. I have spoken at conferences recently about the Creative Partnerships report, and so on. There are a number of things that we would disseminate in that particular way.

Ms Rosen: Going back to citizenship, I think that our recent report Towards Consensus? pointed the way very clearly. We were talking about what we had found, what constituted good practice, what did not. We were giving practical approaches on how schools could deal with this and we had recommendations there. I think that we have a clear role in picking out good practice and on giving clear recommendations, and I think that this is a very good example of it.

Q102 Fiona Mactaggart: Chief Inspector, you referred in your response to me to your report on Creative Partnerships. What do you think the next steps ought to be for Creative Partnerships? You have identified how they have highlighted issues of skills in terms of economic well-being for pupils. I think that in this report you have not looked - although in the other report I thought that you did more so - at the issue of how they contribute to creativity in schools.

Ms Gilbert: I looked at a number of reports, because I was asked to speak at the conference. So I went back a bit over the time before I had arrived. The areas visited were hand‑picked, so they probably do not give a warts-and-all picture; but I thought that a number of very practical recommendations were made. The more general thing that is not stated explicitly is that it would encourage schools to think more creatively - I am sorry to use that word! - about what they are doing. Because one of the key messages was that taking a more creative approach to some of these things could improve the basic skills, such as literacy, numeracy, and ICT was mentioned. However, there were a number of very practical things recommended, such as experience of working with creative practitioners, work experience placements with creative practitioners, and so on: all of which I thought were very helpful and designed to generate improvement. What I have not teased out yet, and want to over the coming year, is what happens with these reports. People are waiting for school reports and every line is read and pored over, but there is some terrific work going on and some very important work going on in some of these reports. Is it having the impact that it should have on people in schools and colleges?

Q103 Chairman: Could I follow that up for a second? This Committee looked very carefully and were very committed in the recommendations in our report to the value of out-of-classroom learning. We believe that it is a mark of a truly successful school that they take the out‑of‑classroom learning very seriously indeed, and there has recently been the publication by the Government of a manifesto for out-of-classroom learning. However, you do not have any purchase on that. How do you evaluate that? Are you able to evaluate it? Do you find it important? There is no demand from the Department that you should evaluate it.

Ms Gilbert: I do not know if it was a result of your report but certainly the guidance behind the school evaluation form points to this sort of area, suggesting that the school might want to consider what it does in this area. In the reports that I have read - even the ones in special measures - generally there is some reference to what is going on, and the children's broader curricular experiences are outlined in those reports. Ofsted itself does have the view that this is valuable and is important, and acknowledges that in the work that they see within schools. It contributes to the personal, social and physical development of young people, for instance, and there is always a section in the reports on that.

Q104 Chairman: It is an area that we care about and I think that the report was quite a seminal one.

Ms Rosen: Can I point out that we did publish a survey report in 2004 which was looking at outdoor education, which said many of the things you have said? We value it very much and we were encouraging schools not to lose sight of it. We gave lots of examples of good practice. We will be including another look at education outside the classroom in our next survey programme, that is 2007-08.

Chairman: That is very encouraging.

Q105 Paul Holmes: Coming back to the question of the citizenship report, was there a clear picture that emerged from the citizenship inspections that having a specialist teacher who was qualified in citizenship made any particular difference to the quality of what went on?

Ms Rosen: That was one of the main findings of the report. Having a specialist teacher who understood, was enthusiastic and could use, for example, political events of the day to help illustrate their teaching, really did help improve the quality of the citizenship curriculum.

Q106 Paul Holmes: So the relatively low number of places - 220 a year - that are available for training citizenship teachers, would you say that needs to be increased?

Ms Rosen: We did recommend that in the report and there has been a response to that. One thing we would say, though, is that some of these young teachers who are being trained in citizenship are being taken on by schools to teach other subjects. So we would also say to schools, "Consider recruiting a specialist citizenship teacher", because obviously schools are not always focusing on that if our young citizenship teachers are having to go in to take up other subjects.

Q107 Paul Holmes: On Monday afternoon we had a series of witnesses sitting there, representing Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, Catholic and Church of England faith schools. I think that one of the unanimous messages from them was that the curriculum was far too crowded; they were not really interested in recruiting citizenship teachers. They did it already anyway, because they were faith schools. Do you have any comments on that from the report?

Ms Rosen: The report did comment on that and said that, particularly early on, after the introduction of citizenship in 2002, schools felt they did it because they had a good ethos and they were naturally dealing with citizenship. What we found in the report was that it was rare for schools to be able to teach citizenship successfully if they did just spread it across the curriculum, because it did tend to disappear. The recommendation was that, in schools where it has been most successfully taught, there is a discrete core. That might be as a subject in its own right or it might be as a discrete part of PSHE. Some schools have successfully taught citizenship across the curriculum, but that is rarer and harder to do.

Q108 Paul Holmes: So you would not accept a general message, which we received on Monday afternoon, that if you are faith schools you do this anyway, and so it does not apply?

Ms Rosen: There is a particular body of knowledge which is part of the citizenship national curriculum and that does actually have to be taught. So the schools, if they are teaching it across the curriculum, would have to be auditing very carefully to make sure that they are teaching what they need to teach for national curriculum citizenship. As you know, there are three strands to this. It is not just a question of a bit here and a bit there. If they are doing that, they have to look very carefully to make sure that they are covering things, and we know there are certain areas that tend not to be covered.

Q109 Paul Holmes: In your report you said that there was insufficient reference to local, national and international questions of the day and how politicians deal with them.

Ms Rosen: Yes.

Q110 Paul Holmes: Over the 22 years that I was a teacher I did a lot of citizenship before the term was ever invented, but under different headings. There was always a pressure from heads, governors, LEA advisers and all the rest of it, not to be political - because they cannot be seen to be controversial and indoctrinating and everything else. Whereas, when the Committee went to Dublin, we saw very open civics or citizenship lessons, where they were encouraging their kids to write to Tony Blair about radioactive pollution in the Irish Sea; to write to the Taoiseach about cuts that had just been made in charitable funding in Éire, for example. That was very up-front, whereas in this country we seem to back away from that. So your report would agree with my version rather than----

Ms Rosen: Yes, I think that it goes back to the need for specialist teachers, because specialist teachers who have been trained in this area are much more confident in dealing with political issues of the day, with controversies, with resolving conflict; whereas teachers who are out of their comfort zone, because in fact they have been trained in something else, may find that very difficult to deal with.

Q111 Chairman: So you would like to see more specialist teachers in schools trained in citizenship?

Ms Rosen: I have made the point that there are specialist teachers who are not being employed to teach citizenship. It is not just an issue for the Government, therefore; it is also an issue for schools.

Q112 Chairman: But is it a fact that there are fewer being given the full, one year of teacher training this year than last?

Ms Rosen: There has been a gradual improvement in the number of specialist teachers available. That needs to continue. Schools need to think about how they take the specialist teachers on. There has also been an improvement and an increase in the continuous professional development available for teachers. That is important.

Q113 Chairman: Unlike you, Miriam, you are dodging and diving a bit on this one.

Ms Rosen: I am sorry?

Q114 Chairman: Uncharacteristically, you are dodging and diving a bit. Do you think that there is a need for more, properly trained specialists in citizenship or not?

Ms Rosen: Yes, we did say that there should be more; but I am trying to make an additional point, which is that they need to be employed to teach their specialism.

Chairman: They need to be kept on their subject rather than taken off.

Q115 Mr Carswell: A quick question about Creative Partnerships. I saw some very good evidence in Clacton about the role that Creative Partnerships plays in making pupils more creative, more ambitious, more aspirational. I am afraid that I have not had a look at your report. Could you elaborate a little on the importance of Creative Partnerships in raising standards? If there is a danger of reducing the Creative Partnerships programme because of a loss of funding, how serious would that be?

Ms Gilbert: I had seen it as a sort of pump-priming programme. I would stress that the report is based on probably the best practice that we were seeing, because these areas were identified. I would not feel confident, therefore, on the work that I have done, to say that is more important than funding something else. I think that the report was giving licence, if you like, to some flexibility within the curriculum; that you could increase standards and still have this going on, in terms of the broader curriculum. That was the main message for me on reading the various reports - in particular the last one - and the very focused, practical examples that were given which schools could find ways of doing, or local authorities might find ways of doing, to increase that. Examples are work experience placements and those sorts of things.

Q116 Fiona Mactaggart: You say in your annual report that the phrase Every Child Matters is central to Ofsted's mission, and indeed it is clear from the way you structure your report. But do you think that Ofsted actually adds value to the Every Child Matters agenda? If so, how?

Ms Gilbert: I suppose the fact that we are inspecting in terms of the five outcomes will mean that the schools look more closely at the five outcomes, and that those five outcomes feed into the school's self-evaluation is key. I think that would be the major thing: that we are going to be shining a light on that area and the school's contribution to those areas. It is not something that they can do next year or the year after, therefore - or they can, but they would not get a very positive report if the progress of the children had not been good in terms of those areas. I think that is the most important element. Over and above that, we will then be reporting more generally on how we find progress in those outcomes, at a general level through an annual report process. That is just the first year that you see before you.

Q117 Fiona Mactaggart: Do you think that our traditional emphasis on academic achievement, examination results, test scores and so on, has meant a diminution of the emphasis in school settings of being safe, the emotional outcomes for children, and so on?

Ms Gilbert: I do not, because I think that the very best schools have a holistic view of the child and do not just look very narrowly at literacy, numeracy and test results. If you look holistically and you are worried about the child's safety or health, and make sure that you do what you can to support in those areas, the results of the enjoy-and-achieve part would improve too. So I think that it is a whole picture that is very important.

Q118 Fiona Mactaggart: You spoke earlier about the importance of parental support in terms of what happens in a school, and the difference in different areas. That is obviously true for different children within a school: that there are some children who do not have that network of support beyond the school, which is so significant to a child's self-confidence and success in future life. How can you, in your inspection, identify whether schools are dealing equally well with children with different sets of experiences?

Ms Gilbert: One of the things that the new framework is doing is asking schools to look at the different groups within their schools and reflect on the progress of those different groups. That might do some of what you are suggesting. One of the things that we are conscious of is that we do at the moment ask parents about a school. We think that we might be doing more in this area over the next few years, engaging parents more in what is going on in the school. The difficulty of course is engaging with those parents who are most difficult to engage with, if you like. We need to find some more imaginative ways perhaps of doing that. That is why the four organisations coming together into one does give us a fresh focus, and a look across to see what other organisations are doing to try to engage parents more in the whole process.

Q119 Fiona Mactaggart: We all know that there are various predictive factors which signal that a child is at risk in terms of their success and their development; for example, children who are in the care of the state do shockingly badly. I am wondering whether you have thought that, in your new Ofsted role, you might look at settings and ways of tackling the needs of groups of children who those predictive factors are depressing, and those settings which actually help those children to outperform what was predicted for them. Do you have any plans to look at that and to provide guidance for other settings on what works well?

Ms Gilbert: One of the things it is important to do, and we have done it in the report, is to identify things that make all of us feel uncomfortable - so our responsibility. We all have a responsibility in some way to look after children and for their progress. We have been working too with the DfES on some of the recommendations set out in their Green Paper in this area. I think that it is always important to look at areas that buck the trend, if you like, and for people to find out more about why those things are happening, to see if the lessons are transferable. Sometimes they are not transferable. We have been talking about Creative Partnerships. One of the fascinating things there is that people did find it quite difficult to transfer the skills they had gained in those areas more broadly across the curriculum. It is whether we can identify areas, schools or places where that is happening, and we can write it up. This is where the theme approach is really important - the three-year programme that we are looking at. So the debate with the DfES should help identify some of the sorts of things that you are asking us to address.

Q120 Fiona Mactaggart: Will you be able to look at alternative ways of dealing with these young people's needs? Things like Kids Company and other voluntary settings who are providing for their needs, educationally and otherwise?

Ms Gilbert: I guess our focus would be on what is happening with these young people within the school setting and so on, to see if some of the things that you have just identified are making a difference. The look would be that way round, rather than looking at the organisation and doing it that way.

Q121 Mr Pelling: How important have the Joint Area Review and Annual Performance Assessment been to the Every Child Matters agenda?

Ms Gilbert: I think that it has been very important to that agenda. The Area Focus has been important too, because it is a local community, in effect, being responsible for the children in its area. It is changing and evolving, and the process that we are adopting is shifting slightly; but the focus on more vulnerable groups, low-attaining groups and so on, is really key to what we are doing. So I think that it has been very important.

Q122 Mr Pelling: You are obviously satisfied with the way things are working so far. Do you support the end to this practice of these Joint Area Reviews and the Annual Performance Assessments over the next couple of years?

Ms Gilbert: The Joint Area Reviews only ever had what was described as a three-year life or programme; they would then need some sort of review. We have begun to review that, particularly in the context of the White Paper and the focus down on the narrower focus in some ways, but I think also a very constructive focus in some ways. So I think that they are changing and we are talking now about how they are changing. However, they are really key to developing the agenda more broadly. I would not see them disappearing completely, therefore, but they may look different from how they look now.

Q123 Mr Pelling: Moving ahead to the new arrangements that will be put in place, do you think that they will adequately deal with the inspection and concern of children's services?

Ms Gilbert: I think that one of the great benefits of bringing the organisations together is that it would allow us to look more holistically. Part of the evaluation we did with local authorities told us that our inspectors, the CSCI inspectors and the Ofsted inspectors, were not joined up, they did not seem one; whereas they were joining them up locally - and that was a lesson for us. Post-April, we will be one organisation and so we have to be joined up. I think that will be positive, therefore. I am sorry, I have lost the thread of the question. Was that----

Mr Pelling: That is fine. Thank you very much.

Q124 Chairman: Chief Inspector, we are coming to the end of this session, but could I ask you one or two final questions? We are very conscious as a Committee about our responsibility for scrutinising the Every Child Matters programme right across a number of departments. We are the lead committee. I do not know if we really think that we do it well enough. Of course, you share that with us. You have a very large, new responsibility, and so we have that in common. Do you not agree that, in terms of many of the outcomes, they are wonderful and they are motherhood and apple pie? There is nothing attached to it that says, "In order to achieve this, there must be this kind of progress or this kind of agenda". Do you think that there is a danger in having these rather nice, fuzzy outcomes?

Ms Gilbert: I think that the outcomes capture the whole child and the holistic importance of the child's development in the round, if you like. Some are supported by a number of indicators possibly better than others, and we need to do some work on that. It is therefore easier to make judgments in some areas than it is in others. I think that we are finding our way with this, as our particular areas. It is why I think that the schools' judgments about their performance in each of these is so key. We will learn from that as we are inspecting, either the schools themselves or through the Joint Area Reviews.

Q125 Chairman: In the early years' sector, are you aware - I am sure that you must be aware - that a lot of the research is pointing to the fact that, if we are to tackle underperformance of students, we have increasingly to focus our attention on the three to fives, and perhaps the five to sevens? It is increasingly apparent that, whether we do it in much more structured, creative play or whatever, that is the way. A lot of the research has shown that is the way we tackle those kinds of challenges. How are you equipped to evaluate that sort of practice?

Ms Gilbert: When I spoke to the outstanding providers last week, I used this as an example of the key thing that joined them all together. In the room there were people who were child‑minding three children and who had received an outstanding provider award; there was a principal from a college with 4,000 students. What the Every Child Matters themes do, it seems to me, is to capture the whole person - whatever words we use. I like them because you remember them easily and you are not reeling off two phrases for each. They are catchy enough, but they capture the whole child and the focus on that, and how important it is to get all of those things working to generate the sort of development and improvement we want. What Ofsted did some while ago was to use the Every Child Matters themes for the framework of the inspections that go on. I do not know if there is time for Dorian to say anything about that, but that has already gone on within Ofsted.

Q126 Chairman: We are minded to have a Committee sitting just on Every Child Matters with you at some stage, so Dorian will get a chance to come back to us. But if three to five is crucial, does not the quality of training and pay of those very people who are intimately involved in the development of our young children of that age worry you? It is a pretty appalling lack of qualification and poor pay generally still, is it not?

Ms Gilbert: You do not mean inspectors; you mean the people providing----

Q127 Chairman: Not the inspectors; the people actually providing. You might know something about the inspectors that I do not know. You know what I mean. It is poor qualification, very few qualified teachers, and not much above minimum wage in many areas.

Ms Gilbert: What I have looked at is the evidence of progress over the last few years. I have been really struck by the improvement in provision in the early years in the childcare sector, as demonstrated through the annual reports and other reports. Some of the main ones are captured in the findings. There has been improvement there. I agree with you about the importance of that age group; it really is fundamental. However, it seems to me that there has been some really impressive progress there over recent years.

Q128 Chairman: We will have that conversation again. Lastly, we always ask this - well, I certainly always ask this - of the Chief Inspector. This whole notion of an inspection is a very special one from the inspectorate to the school. What we sometimes feel very frustrated about, both as members of this Committee but also as members of Parliament, is that when you pick up - and you must pick up - a kind of systematic failure in an area, in a town, in a part of the city or whatever, you do seem unable to respond to that, to draw the threads together, and to say something about systemic failure rather than just individual evaluations of a school. Do you still think that is a weakness of Ofsted?

Ms Gilbert: I thought that was what we were trying to do in the annual report.

Q129 Chairman: All your predecessors have said, "That is not our job".

Ms Gilbert: In the commentary in the annual report I am addressing system failure in some parts of the country. The points that I am making about inadequate schools - that is a failure of the system to address those schools, and we all have some responsibility. We have a responsibility in identifying it and, as I said earlier, making people feel uncomfortable about this. Other people have their part to play in generating improvement around those. So I do see that we have a role in highlighting. That is why, presumably, the Chief Inspector is asked to report annually on the state of education and care in the country.

Chairman: Chief Inspector, it has been a very good first meeting with you. May I thank Robert Green, Miriam Rosen, Dorian Bradley and Vanessa Howlison too? All of you did get a chance to say something. Chief Inspector, it has been a pleasure to meet you for the first time. We look forward to a long relationship.