UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 353-iv

HOUSE OF COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE THE

CHILDREN, SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES COMMITTEE

 

SCHOOL ACCOUNTABILITY

 

WEDNESDAY 29 APRIL 2009

 

ANNA FAZACKERLEY, PROFESSOR JOHN MacBEATH and ANASTASIA de WAAL

DAVID BUTLER, CLARE COLLINS and DEBORAH ISHIHARA

 

Evidence heard in Public

Questions 190 - 264

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

1.	This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.
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4.	Prospective witnesses may receive this in preparation for any written or oral evidence they may in due course give to the Committee.

 

 

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Children, Schools and Families Committee

on Wednesday 29 April 2009

Members present:

Mr. Barry Sheerman (Chairman)

Annette Brooke

Mr. David Chaytor

Mr. John Heppell

Fiona Mactaggart

Mr. Andy Slaughter

Mr. Graham Stuart

Mr. Edward Timpson

 

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Anna Fazackerley, Policy Exchange, Professor John MacBeath, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, and Anastasia de Waal, Civitas, gave evidence.

 

Q190 Chairman: Can I welcome Professor John MacBeath, Anastasia de Waal-her name is hidden from me but I know her well-and Anna Fazackerley, also well known to the Committee in terms of her contribution in this area? We are in this rather different environment, the Ramsay MacDonald room. We were just commenting on the fact that it would make a good school essay to compare Harold Wilson with Ramsay MacDonald-the Harold Wilson room being the one that we normally sit in. We are not asking you to answer that question.

We usually get started by saying that we are doing an inquiry into school accountability. It is a part of the way that we are looking at the three major reforms affecting the education and school sector, going back 20 years. You know that we have done testing assessment and the national curriculum, and now this is the third of them. We want to make this a good inquiry. If we do not get good evidence and we do not listen, we do not produce a good report. We want your help, so let's get started.

We will use first names because it aids us with the problem of lords, knights and professors and cuts it down. Is that all right-no titles?

John, is everything all right with accountability? Should we leave well alone and write a report that says, "Fine. Touch a little here, touch a little there, but basically everything is all right"?

Professor MacBeath: You could theoretically write a report like that, but no. I will not go as far as saying it is all wrong. One of the things that I worry about is the terminology and the co-option of language that we are now faced with. I do a lot of work with a lot of other countries, and when we talk about accountability in an international forum with, say, the Italians or the French, they do not understand, or they do not have a word for that notion. Trying to explain it actually gets quite difficult. You have to explain something about the politics and history of what has happened in the UK. I was going to say in England but I think that the same thing is true in Scotland where I also do a lot of work. Some people are quite mystified by the extent to which the situation is so top-down in England, particularly, and the extent to which, as the Dutch have said, there is a lack of reciprocity. That is where I would put my emphasis on accountability.

Of course, accountability is something that we need and aspire to, and we want to do it well, but there is a lack of reciprocity in the system between schools and Government, or between schools and local authorities. I know we will come to things like school improvement partners and so on. But do schools evaluate Ofsted? Do schools evaluate Government? Do schools evaluate the pressures that are on them, which are very much top-down pressures. It is that pressure-down, accountability-up that I think we have got wrong and needs to be addressed.

Q191 Chairman: Thank you for that, John. We shall probe that a little further later, especially that reciprocity argument. Anastasia, is all well, or should there be some changes?

Anastasia de Waal: There need to be some drastic changes. Criticism of the two main forms of accountability that we have at the moment-testing and the inspectorate-tends to say, "Well, let's just do away with both of them." I do not think that that is the solution at all. Testing has a place and it can be effective-it can be beneficial for teachers and for pupils, as well as a good accountability mechanism. An inspectorate is vital, and I think that a good inspectorate, which looks thoroughly at schools, provision and where there are strengths and weaknesses, and which works on a progress route as well as an identifying and judging route, is incredibly important. I would say that, rather than getting rid of either, we need to overhaul them, to the extent of probably renaming Ofsted and definitely renaming SATs. It would need to be more than an exercise in rebranding.

The problem at the moment is not with either testing, inspection or even the system of inspection per se, but with their role. What is happening at the moment is that the role of accountability is not working-it sounds a little trite, but I suppose we should be thinking more along the lines of being accountable as teachers and schools to children. What I have found is happening with the accountability system at the moment is that teachers and schools feel much more accountable to national targets and government pressures. Because of the pressures sometimes to create improvement when there has not necessarily been organic improvement, accountability has had a distorting effect rather than a beneficial one.

That is the key problem at the moment: what is happening with these accountability methods, rather than with the accountability methods per se.

Chairman: Thank you for that.

Anna Fazackerley: To take a slightly different angle, although I agree with quite a lot of the points that have already been made, if we bear it in mind that we might well in this country be moving towards more of a market in education-certainly that is something that Policy Exchange would advocate and has advocated strongly-then accountability becomes more and more important. While we believe in the importance of markets, we think that a market in education cannot function properly without some real accountability. The holy grail, which all countries are or should be questing after when it comes to accountability, is to achieve the difficult balance between allowing schools the freedom to innovate and also having some proper oversight. In this country, we do not think that we have it right. We would not say that we have the accountability bit right, but we also think that we are trying to control things too much from Whitehall.

Looking at Sweden as an interesting example-we are hearing lots about the fact that we are supposed to be following the Swedish model now-one thing that people are perhaps less aware of is that, although Sweden has been very successful at introducing a truly demand-led system, which is exciting and has lots of benefits that we can learn from, the problem is that schools are simply not sufficiently accountable. It is a problem that they are beginning to be aware of. John mentioned the language issue, and Sweden is one of the countries that does not have a word for accountability. There are big gaps there, which I can talk to you about in a little more detail, if you like.

To pick up on Anastasia's final point, I would agree that, yes, of course we have to be accountable to children, but for us accountability is about information being provided to parents. An accountability system that works is a system that has the right information available easily to parents-information that they understand. We think that a lot of the information that is out there at the moment is pretty incomprehensible as well as perhaps being misleading.

Chairman: Good. That gets us started. Let us get into further questioning.

 

Q192 Annette Brooke: I want to start with what Anna has just touched on. It is not a usual starting point for me, looking at market forces and to what extent accountability can come into the framework with market forces. We often talk about people choosing between supermarkets or products and, clearly, if a product fails then changes take place. To what extent can we apply a market model? I ask you also to consider-given that there will be limitations with market failure-what sort of framework should we be building around a market model to make it work that way?

Chairman: Do you want to start with Anna or do you want all the panel to answer?

Annette Brooke: All the panel.

Chairman: Let us change the order. Anastasia, you start please.

Anastasia de Waal: I am not a big advocate of a market in schooling because I think parents and children want a local school. One reason we have turned to a market system or market ideas is that there are not enough good schools. It is a lack. School choice in that sense is portrayed in a positive way but if you need choice, it is probably-and we are not talking about specialisms but basics in primary school-because you need to look to find a satisfactory school. In that respect, I am not going to try to sell a market system to you because I am not an advocate. Civitas has produced a book, "Swedish Lessons", about how good a Swedish system would be, but I am not necessarily an advocate of that. It is interesting that the Conservative Government have said, "We will turn to a market system."

Chairman: Conservative Government?

Anastasia de Waal: Sorry, a prospective Conservative Government have said that they would want to implement a Swedish-based or market-based system, which to me suggests that they would not, as a Government, be able to run schools. My bottom line is, if Government cannot run a state school system, then it is going to be very difficult to run any other public services. Looking at other countries and other examples, that is not a huge task to ask. In some ways it is a cop-out.

Chairman: John?

Professor MacBeath: The notion of a market system is highly problematic. We currently have something in between a demand-led, kind of quasi-market system and that is one of the problems-that we are trying to run a quasi-market. We know from data over the past decade or more that the gap created by informed parent choice-parents who have the background and the wherewithal to make the choice-has not narrowed at all. It is partly parental choice that allows a school not far from here to be drained off by Westminster school, for example, where there is huge demand and a very informed supply line.

All our work with schools in disadvantaged areas looks at how much they suffer from a quasi-market system, partly due to parents lacking information or the right kind of information to make the right choice. We have a problem at the moment with a market system that is working to the detriment of the most disadvantaged. In some Utopian world we might have a demand-led system. That would be very nice in theory, but how do we get there from where we are now? I think we have to address what Jonathan Kozol called "the savage inequalities" in the current system.

Anna Fazackerley: You are right that there is not enough information, so considering the idea of a market now is quite alarming. I hope that one of the things we are going to do today is work through the sort of information that we ought to be providing to parents to get them to a point where they can make an informed choice about schools. At the moment, obviously, schools are terrified of failing and that failure is generally driven by league table performance and, as the Committee knows well, there are real problems with national assessment tests such as SATs. Those are areas we might want to touch on in a little more detail.

I will refer back to the Swedish system, because I think it is useful to look at evidence rather than just talk about the theory of markets and whether we like or dislike them. One of the problems in Sweden at the moment is that, while there is obviously an exciting variety of schools, the Government are thinking about toughening up the inspection system and about introducing more regular national assessment so that the inspectors have something a bit more real to work with. But right now, if parents want to find out more about schools and the quality of schools, pretty much the only way that they can do that is by going to a recruitment fair, which is obviously extremely unfair and means that if you have a big marketing budget or sexy sounding courses that do not actually have very much merit, you can attract business. So one of the things that I would like to discuss in a little more detail with the Committee is the idea of a record card, which is something that Policy Exchange has suggested.

Chairman: We will come to that later.

Anna Fazackerley: Well, I hope that that would provide a wealth of information for parents, and that it would be the sort of information that would allow people to make an informed choice, rather than simply being led by perhaps misleading assessment data and league tables, which as we know are compiled by newspapers that want to sell themselves.

 

Q193 Annette Brooke: I am quite annoyed that I am getting stuck with the market side, but never mind. If I could just follow on from that, Anna, you referred to the information that parents would need; could you expand on that? And John, you referred to the crucial issue, as far as I am concerned, of inequalities. Would it ever be possible to empower all parents, even with the information that Anna is going to suggest they should have, to follow through with those choices?

Chairman: Anna has just had a bite, so let's go to John and then back to the other point.

Professor MacBeath: This is a big, big issue-can you provide the kind of information to parents that helps them make an informed, rational choice about the welfare of their children? This is a bit ironic, because the day before yesterday I gave evidence to the Scottish Government on a report we have just done for them. One of the things they said was, "We would like you to take some of the very strong language about what is happening in deprived and disadvantaged neighbourhoods out of the report." One of the quotes from a head teacher was, "These children crawl out of hell to come to school in the morning, and a granny says to me, 'Don't listen to their mother; she's better off out of this life.'" That is at the extreme end, and is the kind of thing that the press will make hay with, but I should add that it is not a purely Scottish thing either.

Where we work with schools in very disadvantaged areas, the big challenge is getting to parents in those fractured, disadvantaged and alienated communities, which we have written an awful lot about. That is the challenge for schools, and the schools that are at the leading edge of trying to address it have sought all kinds of ways to bridge their relationship with parents through inter-agency work, for example with community workers. For one of the schools in our research project, 50% of the staff were actually parents, local community people, social workers and others who were helping to be the vicars or the advocates for parents with the school. So it is not just a case of how we get to the parents, but of how we get to the people who act as advocates and supporters for parents to make the bridge between some of the arcane things about school that totally baffle parents.

Many parents just do not want to go through the school gate again, because it brings back the memory the horrible experience that they had at school. They attend a parents' evening and sit on a little seat at their child's desk while the teacher sits behind his or her desk. As Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot has written in her book "The Essential Conversation", schools are saturated with immaturity, and parents often find that coming in is just too redolent of all the things that they went through. I am of course talking about the parents who left school early, who were the low achievers and so on. Other parents know the conversation, the language, the ritual, and how to deal with that. That is unless, of course, you are a professor of education, because when you want to go to your child's school, they say, "Don't you dare go up there because I know what you will say to them!" So there is a little bit at that end as well, but parents are an incredibly important-hugely important-and complex aspect of this whole area of accountability.

Chairman: Annette, who do you want next?

 

Q194 Annette Brooke: I want Anna to comment just briefly on what information she thought should be made available.

Anna Fazackerley: We can supply some more serious detail on this if that would be helpful, but just as a starting point I would say that a good accountability system has to include an indication of progress over time, rather than just a snapshot of performance in a given year. I think that that is something that parents really care about and it then means that schools cannot coast-there would be an incentive, even for schools that are doing very well, to keep improving. I think that parents ought to want to see performance indicators beyond academic results in national assessment tests.

It is important to make it easy for parents to compare schools with similar sorts of students clearly. At the moment, I do not think that it automatically happens that you can make a fair comparison of schools-by comparing schools with similarly difficult student populations, for example.

 

Q195 Annette Brooke: Can I just tease out-clearly we have different indications of parents needing some accountability-which bits of the school, or which part of a school's work, you think the school should be accountable for in the parent set-up? Apart from some accountability to parents, what other accountability routes do we need, given the sort of situation that John described?

Anastasia de Waal: There needs to be a much more holistic approach to accountability. At the moment it is very heavily focused at primary level on SATs results, which look at only literacy, numeracy and science-literacy and numeracy are eclipsing science to quite an extent. There also needs to be an emphasis on the other subjects that are being neglected.

One of the issues with inspection is that parents think that inspection, as a form of checking up on schools, is giving an alternative to the SATs results that they see. However, because of the heavy reliance on data-and results in particular-Ofsted is actually duplicating a lot of what SATs are already telling parents, and that is very problematic. We would like Ofsted to be looking at other elements as well as the academic subjects, which might be provision of extra-curricular activities and sporting activities, or pastoral care and things such as school trips-a lot of things which, in many ways, have become very much sidelined with an emphasis on accountability with literacy, numeracy and test scores.

I also think that particular interest, from a parental perspective, is on teaching quality, which is something else that an inspection system could look at much more thoroughly. It could look at not just how children progress in class-I think that that is the main priority for parents, because levels do not mean anything to them in many ways, and it is progress that actually illustrates how their child is getting on-but whether children enjoy their class and whether they are particularly interested in a particular subject. We might see those sorts of elements as woolly now, but they have very much been lost in this contracted focus on what is quantifiable. One of the dangers-one of the really knotty areas-about accountability is that we seem to be able to try to be accountable only with quantifiable elements. That is very problematic, because clearly, when looking at a whole school, many of the things that are going to have an incredibly beneficial impact on learning, never mind on the wider development of a child, will be very difficult to quantify. Arguably, things such as the report card might address that, but I think that there is a danger with what is going to happen to the role of accountability. Are we going to try to quantify everything so that it fits on this neat report card, and is that going to skew broader measures of how well a school is doing?

There are an awful lot of schools, particularly in inner-city areas, in which schooling has probably an even bigger impact on children's life chances than in some of the leafy suburbs. We are hearing from quite a lot of frustrated teachers who put a huge amount of effort into creating a very rich learning experience, but find that that does not necessarily equate to very high SATs results. They are getting penalised for that, and then they probably have to take the option of narrowing their approach and focusing on results, to the detriment of the school experience.

Professor MacBeath: I cannot disagree with any of that, except the ambiguity about levels. You said that parents do not understand levels; that is true for some, but others talk about them, saying, "Well, my child is a level 2," or, "My child is a level 4." I am never quite sure which level is better because Scotland has it the other way round. Libby, at the Institute of Education in London, has written about the detrimental effect of the whole notion of levels that label a child as a 2 or a 4. In our ESRC study, "Learning how to Learn", we looked in depth at a number of case studies of schools and found head teachers who could say, "I can go into any class in this school and I can ask any child what level they are at, and any child can say to me, 'I'm a level 2,' or, 'I'm a level 3.'" That is how they define themselves. I think that this tyranny of numbers runs through the whole of the system, from classroom assessment to school accountability, local authorities and Government.

I agree entirely with Anastasia about the marginalisation of all the other things-drama, music and art-that can be far more life-enhancing than some of the core curriculum. The Government say, "Okay, we recognise that these things are important, therefore let's find ways of quantifying them," but some things defy quantification. For example, with the five "Every Child Matters" outcomes, which I have a problem with right away, their view was, "Well, if we want these to have equal status with the core curriculum-maths and literacy, numeracy and English-we need to find ways of putting numbers on them." At the level of language, the notion of outcomes has been so corrupted that to justify things such as excellence and enjoyment, we talk about them as outcomes. Are they? Are these five "Every Child Matters" outcomes absolutely crucial aspects of children's life and learning? Are they outcomes, or are they something much deeper than that? Because we have the language of outcomes and the language of quantification, the big challenge is to go back seriously and look again at the other qualitative aspects of children's life and learning for which we have to be accountable.

I will talk about Hong Kong, because I have been working there now for 10 years. They are worried there about this performative and accountability pressure on narrowly defined outcomes, so they have just brought in something called "other learning experiences"-OLE-meaning that 15% of children's time in secondary schools has to be spent on other learning experiences. I am going next month to Hong Kong to start the evaluation of how these things become embedded and are given as much status as the core curriculum. I do not like the term "other learning experiences" because I think that they are vital learning experiences. They are the things that Anastasia refers to, which tend to get marginalised when we go for the so-called core curriculum.

 

Q196 Annette Brooke: You have touched on lots of the points that I was going to raise. I think that you have all indicated that the current system is punitive, and that there is perhaps not enough support and challenge in it. We will put the school report cards on one side for now, but do you have any alternative models of accountability that could involve more support and challenge?

Chairman: There is a section of our discussion on school report cards, so bear that in mind. Otherwise, members of my Committee will sulk that their questions have been taken from them. Apart from on school report cards, do you want to respond, Anna?

Anna Fazackerley: To pull in one more international model, I would say that there are some interesting examples from Canada in Ontario and Alberta. They are absolutely clear that they are not interested in the big stick approach to accountability. Accountability is very important to them, but for them, it is all about helping schools to improve and having conversations with them about how they can do that. We are probably far too much in the direction of the stick, and we ought to be thinking more about working with schools to improve them.

We would like Ofsted not to inspect everybody-we do not think that there is such a need. However, if we are going to bring Ofsted in to inspect the schools that are not coming up to scratch on report cards, for example, it ought to be involved much more in an ongoing process of improvement. Key to that is the point that Anastasia just raised-I do not think we can over-emphasise it-that we have to concentrate on the actual quality of teaching. It is something that Ofsted is not very good at looking at, as we all know.

 

Q197 Chairman: I thought that Anastasia said that we have to concentrate on the quality of learning, because she wanted it to be much more child-centred.

Anna Fazackerley: I think that she also commented on the importance of the quality of the teaching. I would be very surprised if Anastasia did not agree with that. I think that that has been clearly proven to be right.

 

Q198 Chairman: I am just trying to get the emphasis. What was your emphasis?

Anastasia de Waal: Well, I think they go hand in hand. An emphasis on learning means that the teachers have to be responsive to the pupils.

Chairman: So I misinterpreted that.

Anna Fazackerley: Simply, I think that if a school is perceived to be weak, one of the things that we ought to be looking at is what is going on in the classroom.

 

Q199 Mr. Slaughter: Let us carry on from where we are-you are allowed to mention report cards.

We are talking about methods of accountability. I find that these discussions just go around in circles all the time, because everybody you ask has a different opinion. I wonder if that was how the system was developed over the last 15 to 20 years-that we keep bolting extra things on, or saying, "Well, that does not give the picture, so perhaps we will do that as well." Perhaps the report card is a refinement of that, where you are now trying to pull everything together in a way that is digestible, but not open to the criticism that you are only measuring one item. Looking at that, and including the report card, you may start off by saying-I think somebody said this-"We should look not at mechanisms, but at what we are trying to test." But we do have to have mechanisms, because that is the practicality of how the system is going to work. What is your faith in the system for doing this, and do you think that the report card is achieving that?

Chairman: Let's start with John and move across. There is a lot of material to get through, so could all of you be quite punchy with your replies?

Professor MacBeath: The language of report cards immediately sends shivers down my spine-too many things riddle into my own school experience. I would like it to have a different kind of name, if that is going to be the case.

To address the question of which model, I have advocated for a long time a very strong, rigorous school self-evaluation, complemented by an external review-I am not necessarily talking about an inspection-that looks at how rigorous the school self-evaluation is and how it takes into account things such as the quality of learning, teaching, and the culture and ethos of the school in the long term. All the things that we have talked about are part of school self-evaluation.

I know that other people have talked about this in previous Committee reports but, in lauding the fact that Ofsted have moved to a system of self-evaluation, it is still not what I mean when I talk about something that is deeply imbedded in the day-to-day work of teachers and young people. It is not an event that happens once a year when you fill out something called a self-evaluation form, and it is not something that happens when the inspectors arrive, but it breathes through the whole culture of the school, and people-the students and pupils themselves-have the tools to look constantly at the quality of their learning and are sophisticated enough to do so because they understand how to account for it. I would put the quality of learning before the quality of teaching, with our ex-chief inspector's remark in mind. In his book, he writes, "Teachers teach and children learn. It is as simple as that", but it is not as simple as that. It is far more complex, because the bulk of children's learning is out of school. I think that part of the issue for self-evaluation and accountability is looking at the learning that takes place in and out of school.

Chairman, I am aware of the time constraints, but may I add a quick plea for the work going on with the Children's University, which will be launched in the House of Lords in June? Children who take part in out-of-school activities-the kind of activities that Anastasia has been talking about-are absolutely vital to feeding back into what happens in the classroom, so we cannot have an accountability or self-evaluation system that does not look at learning in school and outside it-with the family and in the neighbourhood, community and so on.

Anastasia de Waal: As I have already said, I do not think that we need to overhaul the principles of the system, so we do not need to replace an inspection system or replace testing. I think that we could have much less testing, in the sense that we could just have testing at the end of primary school. One set of tests at primary school is definitely sufficient. John mentioned the problem of things being an event, and I think that is the big issue at the moment. There is huge pressure around inspection and testing. They should be by the bye processes that check out the quality of the school and the levels of the pupils. A lot of criticism about testing has talked about the pressures and difficulties that it creates for children and the terrible stress that they are under. I do not think that testing is actually problematic per se for children. Children quite like a test; it is quite exciting to be able to show what you know.

The problem is that schools are being coerced into trying to demonstrate progress that they have not been able to make, and in many cases that is perfectly legitimate. They may be doing a fantastic job but, because of circumstances, they are not reaching the benchmark. One of the problems at the moment, and why that is happening, is because of the terribly standardised approach to children and the teaching situation. We are only talking about homogenous entities. We tried to address that a bit with things such as contextual value added but it has not really had an impact, and I think that the same applies to inspection-it is about very rigid and narrow criteria. If you are doing fantastic things that do not fall within that remit, quite frankly, Ofsted does not have time now to look at them. A lot of inspectors feel very frustrated that they cannot look at the great things that schools are doing; they just need to look at their criteria.

The important thing is that testing actually tests what the pupils know, and it needs to be done in a randomised way. To do that we need to sever national testing, accountability and how the Government are doing in education policy from school-level accountability. How Johnny at key stage 2 in class 6 performs in his SATs test is different from how the Government's education policy is doing. The problem at the moment is that they are inextricable, which is leading to all the distortions.

The same applies to inspection. There is a lot of emphasis on getting schools to a certain inspection level so that the local authority can make sure that it is hitting its target and we can say that schools in this country are doing better than before. But that is not beneficial to schools, and it is one of the reasons why there is a climate whereby people feel that teachers do not want to be accountable, do not want to be told when there are weaknesses and do not want to improve. I disagree with that. They do, but the problem is that the interventions are not actually helpful in the long term. They are short-term interventions, which will help them reach a superficial level. That will get a better result, but not necessarily improve learning and teaching.

Anna Fazackerley: We would like a system with a report card. In fact, the report card was our idea last March.

 

Q200 Chairman: This is interesting. You are speaking for your organisation-for your think tank-rather than as an individual?

Anna Fazackerley: I am happy to do both.

Chairman: It is actually useful when you say "we", not "I". That was not a criticism.

Anna Fazackerley: To be clear, Policy Exchange is very much behind the idea of the report card, which was our recommendation. We are pleased that the Government have taken that on board, but I wish to highlight our few concerns. Given that we are short of time, Chairman, perhaps I can send you a note with the six suggested measures of accountability that we have recommended for our report card.

Chairman: That would be very useful.

Anna Fazackerley: For now, let me just say that the importance of the report card is that it measures progress over time and looks at performance indicators beyond just the results in national assessments.

Let me point to some of our concerns about the direction in which the Government are moving. Obviously, the report card is still a bit up in the air so, for example, we do not know what weightings different criteria will have, which will be quite a big issue. We are concerned that attainment seems likely to include SATs and GCSEs, and the Committee is well aware of the problems if that is the case. We are also worried that there may be some unfairness, in that some measures will be tilted by the amounts of funding that different schools get. For example, the wider outcomes measure that the Government are suggesting is likely to include extra activities outside school and, as the Committee will know, funding really varies across the system for that sort of thing. The report card does not mention drop-out rates or absences, and we want both of them to be included because they matter and parents care about both issues.

Finally, we envisage a system in which schools are not inspected automatically. If they performed badly on the report card, Ofsted would inspect them but, if they did not perform badly, they would not be inspected unless parents complained-as is the case now. That provides much more of an incentive for schools to do well. At the moment, Ofsted will be included as an element of the report card, but we do not think that that is necessary. It should not happen.

Mr. Slaughter: Have I got more time?

Chairman: You have more time, but I want you to get through the questions on the inspectorate.

 

Q201 Mr. Slaughter: Okay, I shall be brief. My preferred answer is B. Self-evaluation and an external review of that sounds a bit like the trouble with the banking system. The report card does sound complicated. Surely testing and inspection are concepts that people, including parents and legislators, understand. Yes, there are problems with the current systems, which you have identified very well. Would it not be better to try to resolve those problems and improve those systems rather than just move on again, simply because everyone is not going to be happy? This is the problem that we get into all the time-there are lots of critics-and I feel quite sorry for any Government here, because they are trying to get it right, to address both the individuals and the Departments concerned. Are you not just looking for a whole new elaborate system to put in place, which will simply mean that we shall have more years of uncertainty?

Chairman: Anna, what do you make of that?

Anna Fazackerley: Briefly, yes, I agree that everything has to be simple. If a report card was complicated, it would have failed, so parents have got to be able to understand it. Secondly, I also agree that we should not be throwing everything out and starting again. A lot of the things that the Government are trying to do at the moment, such as contextual value added and looking at progress over time, are along the right lines. A report card would simply be refining that process and making sure that it was a little bit clearer. If you take CVA as an example, the average parent looking at a league table in a newspaper, do you really think that you would understand what on earth CVA meant, even if there were an asterisk saying "contextual value added"? Would that mean anything to you at all? I think not. So, you are right, we need to clarify these things, which is what I am suggesting we should do.

Professor MacBeath: Can I come in on self-evaluation as a soft option? Absolutely not. If the banking system had a rigorous process of self-evaluation and external review, it would never have got into the mess that it is in. I think that the notion of self-evaluation is widely misunderstood. Self-evaluation is an evidence-based, highly rigorous internal approach, which takes parents, students and teachers-all the stakeholders-as well as the evidence base for how well our school is doing. The external review says, "Look, you have identified these kinds of things, the strengths in your school, and you have also identified weaknesses or areas of development, and we need to know how you are going to address those."

If I can have a short plea for Hong Kong, because I have been working there for a long time and evaluating its system. What the Government in Hong Kong have been very receptive to is evidence from research. When I have said, "You've got to get rid of this numbering system, one to four", they did it. When I said, "You've got to stop putting things on the web, because it is demotivating", they did it. I said, "What you need is a system of proportional review", which we have been talking about, and they are implementing it. It is rather scary actually that that Government is listening to what researchers say on the basis of evidence, because when I did a report on Ofsted here a number of years ago, it went straight in the bin and never saw the light of day.

 

Q202 Chairman: I think you might be extrapolating from one particular experience, John.

Professor MacBeath: But I think that we need not the sort of mechanistic self-evaluation that a lot of people are seeing in terms of the self-evaluation form and so on, and that very ritualistic approach, but something that is intrinsic-embedded-to what good schools have to do. They have to be evidence-based and they have to be challenging, supportive and open to an external eye-view on how well they are evaluating themselves.

 

Q203 Chairman: John, you are the proponent of self-evaluation. Anna, I am going to characterise you as the proponent of simple school report cards. I am not sure about you, Anastasia-yet-but that is not a negative comment. Implicit in all this is the failure of the inspection system, which we shall go into in some detail in the next section. But, to finish here, are the two compatible? Is your self-evaluation compatible with the report card system, John?

Professor MacBeath: Well, self-evaluation is a form of sophisticated report card, in a way. I would not argue against report cards, apart from the language, if they are in-depth enough and give a genuine qualitative, and quantitative, profile of the strengths and areas for development within a school. The danger is when you reduce things, the reductionist approach being simplification-we give a set of numbers, with schools being given this single label, "outstandingly good" and so on-which I have real problems with, because most schools are curate's eggs and are much more complex than that. Profiling of a school I am totally in favour of, but I would worry that the report card just gets too simplistic.

Anna Fazackerley: I would argue that self-evaluation would be a natural consequence of introducing report cards because you would be evaluating performance and progress over time. As a result there would be a continual pressure on schools to improve. They would have to be looking at their own processes and evaluating them themselves, because parents simply will not accept a lack of improvement over time, if that is made clear.

Q204 Chairman: Anastasia, do you see a happy synthesis between these two?

Anastasia de Waal: My point-and this is why it is probably slightly confusing-is in the middle, literally. I feel very strongly that we are constantly looking to have a revolution because we have problems. We do not need more change. We know where the problems are-it's dull, it's mundane. We need to sort those dull and mundane problems out rather than come up with new initiatives. That is one of the reasons why I think we need to just keep testing, but change the problems, sort out the issues. It is the same with inspection, and it is also the same with the fundamental element, which is the structure of schools. That is why I do not think we need to turn to a market system, because schools do not have enough autonomy-let's give schools autonomy. I guess that is why I find it slightly frustrating about all these new ideas, because they constantly move on from the problems, and all we have is the next stage and new problems. It means that we never consolidate and use the knowledge that we have from experience, because we have already dropped it.

Chairman: Thank you. John.

 

Q205 Mr. Heppell: I am wondering what you see is the value of inspection. Since 1992 it has always been fairly controversial. I understand that some research shows that where there is higher or lower than average achievement, inspection actually means a slight improvement in the school's GCSE results, but there is also lots of research that shows there is often a negative effect. I know that in 2004 a report by the Institute of Education and Ofsted said that "inspection is neither a catalyst for instant improvement in GCSE results nor a significant inhibitor", which suggests that it does not really make it better or worse. Do we really need an independent inspection regime if that is the case? Do we need them? Why do we do it if there is no benefit at the end of it?

Chairman: Anastasia, that is for you. You were saying that it just needs to be sharpened up and improved.

Anastasia de Waal: I think that there is a huge difference between an inspectorate that is successful and the current inspection regime. I think that we have seen Ofsted address many of the issues. They have moved away from a very standardised approach to what is acceptable, so if you stray from what the diktat is at the time, it is not acceptable. Part of the reason for that is because they are now very heavily focused on results. In a way, it does not really matter how you achieve those results. If your results are okay, Ofsted will back off. A big contributor to that has been the need to cut costs. The need to cut costs means that the inspection system is very much more desk-based now, which has led to a lot of people feeling that judgments are made before the inspections.

 

Q206 Chairman: Hang on. Do you mean that poor old Ofsted is being slashed and cut-its budget cut? It is a massive budget.

Anastasia de Waal: Well, it has a massive budget and a massive remit, but now that inspectors have very little time in schools, it is very difficult for them to be able to gauge what the school provision is like at all-hence their understandable reliance on what they feel is the only reliable data that they have, which are test and exam results. Never mind the principle of whether test and exam results that are reliable give you an accurate picture of what a school is like. We have an awful lot of evidence that the results are not reliable. So, in fact, what Ofsted is doing is building an awful lot of its judgments on not sound data, which is clearly highly problematic.

Why I am talking about the budget cuts is that I think that an effective system of inspection would be thorough, and thoroughness involves professionalism, and professionalism and time are going to be expensive. I think that the last thing we want to do is scrimp when it comes to inspection, because inspection is ultimately the best way that we can gauge what schools are like.

I think that what needs to fundamentally change is the role of the inspection, which has much too much emphasis on crisis management at the moment. Going into schools and identifying things-particularly with the move to a more proportionate system of inspection, which is about schools that seem to be failing on the basis of test results-is not looking at all at the rest of the provision. That is very difficult. The independent sector's system is much more peer-based, so you have practising inspectors. It is by no means perfect, but there are good lessons to be learnt from it; it is much longer, and is expensive and thorough. They do not just look at academic performance, and they definitely do not just look at a limited range of subjects when it comes to academic performance. The reports are much lengthier too, so an awful lot more information is given.

I think that inspection can be very valuable, and that one of the reasons why schools currently feel so antagonised by inspection is that they feel that it does not come in to help them or to identify weaknesses, but that it comes in to tell them why their results are not good enough if that is the case, and if their results are good enough, it tells them what they already know, particularly in relation to the self-evaluation form. I think that an awful lot of schools would like to see an inspectorate also working on improvement, because what is the point-again, this comes back to budgets-of having a group of people come in to identify the problems and then go away? Why then get a local authority group and more money spent on trying to identify solutions?

Chairman: Okay. John?

Mr. Heppell: Does anyone else want to add anything?

Chairman: Anna? I am going to start rationing you all.

Anna Fazackerley: Well, I agree with Anastasia that Ofsted has become too focused on auditing, but I disagree that it is know thinking solely about results. One of the problems with inspections is that Ofsted is motivated by looking at processes rather than outcomes, which I think it should be focusing on more. I think that there is room for inspection and that we need it, but, as I have already said, I do not think that we need regular inspections across the board; we need inspections for schools that are shown to be performing less well. As we have already discussed, I agree with Anastasia that Ofsted ought to be involved in the improvement process for those schools, rather than simply outsourcing it to local authorities to outsource to somebody else to sort out.

 

Q207 Chairman: Can I push you on the emphasis on processes rather than outcomes? I often hear that, but do not really understand what it means. Give me an example of what processes, rather than outcomes, they are obsessed with.

Anna Fazackerley: If you look at Ofsted reports, you will see a big section on leadership and management, but there is not enough about what is actually happening in classrooms; it is all about the style of how you are assessing your leadership. I think that it is just not driven enough by actual performance.

 

Q208 Chairman: But Anastasia's point would be that the outcomes are the wrong ones, because they rely on the test data.

Anna Fazackerley: Yes, that is one of the problems; inspectors have already decided what they are going to look at when they go into schools based on pre-obtained data, which is performance data that can obviously be misleading. The data will also have been submitted by the schools themselves on their assessment processes, so our argument is that the inspectors already have a very pre-conceived remit.

 

Q209 Chairman: Is it really pre-conceived? I have seen an inspector sit in a car reminding themselves not just of the test outcomes of Key Stage tests, but also of the number of free school meals and SEN. They have a range of data, but they would not be doing their job if they did not do that, would they?

Anna Fazackerley: Of course, you want them to have data, but as I said earlier, what I would want them to do more than anything else is sit in classrooms for longer and spend more time looking at the teaching that is actually happening. If I were a parent, that would be what I cared about more than anything else.

Chairman: Okay. John wanted all of you to come in.

Professor MacBeath: There is an old joke: "I'm an inspector, and I'm here to help you." This morning, I told an Australian colleague why I was coming to the House of Commons, and he said, "Of course, in Australia we got rid of inspection." I said, "Well, actually, you didn't-you didn't get rid of a quality assurance system, but you got rid of something that people didn't like, called inspection, and all the connotations that has. But what you did put in place was a system of more self-evaluation and external review. But you didn't drop the hard edge that you need from an external viewpoint to come in and look at the quality of what the school is doing." I think that we need something, but it is not necessarily in the current mode.

Some of the things that I found most interesting internationally are, for example, in Rhode Island in the US, where school staff will be trained and developed in how to review another school, and those school staff will go, on a reciprocal basis, to another school, spend a week there, and have really challenging conversations with the staff in that other school. Now, that is almost, in a sense, a cost-free system. Obviously, you need cover and so on, but it does not involve the huge machinery of Ofsted. It benefits the school that is doing the review, because it begins to understand much more about what are the criteria you look for and what is the evidence you look for. It also benefits the school that is being reviewed, because it is a much more collegial kind of atmosphere, and you get a conversation where people are willing to expose their weaknesses, not to hide them in a cupboard and sweep everything under the carpet before the inspectors come in. As we know, there is lots of research about this here with Ofsted: plant the daffodils, paint the coal and tell the children, "If you know the right answer, put up your right hand; if you don't, put up your left hand," etc. So I think that there are alternative models out there that we should be looking at.

 

Q210 Mr. Heppell: Just following on from that, Anastasia was saying that you would not want the inspectors to become involved in finding the-I think that the word was-solutions. Before 1992, the inspector would effectively just go and find out what was wrong with the schools, and had nothing to do with putting it right; they just reported to the Secretary of State. Local inspectorates working for local education authorities were seen as something different. They went in, and when there was a problem, they talked through the solution as well.

One of the things that people found frustrating, not now, but just a few years ago, was the inspectors coming in, telling them something was wrong, and when you said, "Yes, but how do we deal with that?" the reply was, "Well, that is your problem." I can remember heads telling me that "We have this problem. I don't know how to deal with it, but I keep getting a bad score off Ofsted every time. I ask them what I should do about it, and there is no answer." That seems mad as well, but I wonder what the role should be for the Ofsted inspection. Should it be to just identify, or to put it right?

The putting-it-right bit sometimes causes controversy as well. When a school gets designated as a bad, failing school and we give them all sorts of advice, that is seen as something very negative. Should we have split roles for the thing? Should we see that Ofsted goes in and identifies the problem, and it is up to the local authority, the governors and the parents to sort out what that problem is? Is the balance right now?

Anna Fazackerley: I think that there definitely ought to be more post-inspection support, and I do not think that the balance is right now. I agree with you that it is a pretty poor state of affairs if a school actively wants some advice on how to put things right and is being quite open about those problems, but there is no advice forthcoming.

 

Q211 Mr. Heppell: But do you say that Ofsted should be doing it?

Anna Fazackerley: Yes, I do.

 

Q212 Chairman: Can I add to John's question? I have just seen some of the figures for how much you pay a SIP-a school improvement partner. Very often, they are £1,000 a day to go into a school-£1,000 a day, I'm told. We have the national strategy people coming in-that's Capita, isn't it? They come in to help National Challenge schools at enormous fees as well. In a sense, can we put the question in the context of, "Yes, Ofsted comes in, does its stuff and then walks away."? Is that because of the Department's policy-that SIPs and the National Challenge people in some schools come in to put it right? Explain that to us. Is that the thinking? Does it work? The question is-John is quite right-what should they do, but in the context of, "Come on, there are other players here!"

Professor MacBeath: That has been an ongoing issue back and forward: should inspections, should Ofsted help to improve schools or should it simply conduct an evaluation and then leave it to others? I put that question to David Bell when he was chief of Ofsted-he is now Permanent Secretary. I said, "What about your strapline 'Improvement through inspection'?" He said, "Frankly, we don't." He said that inspection does not improve schools; on occasions, it is a very good catalyst and can help schools to rethink, but that is not the function of inspection. I tend to agree. Once you have had an inspection, there are other people-local authorities, school improvement partners, critical friends or even universities-that schools can then work with over time to address those issues. I do not think that you can do both the accountability and the improvement within one body, such as Ofsted.

 

Q213 Chairman: Who introduced inspection in its present form?

Professor MacBeath: Ofsted was under the Thatcher Government.

Chairman: Was it Ken Baker? I can't remember.

Professor MacBeath: It was 1992.

Anastasia de Waal: Yes, Major.

 

Q214 Chairman: He thought it was going to improve schools, didn't he? They didn't bring it in for the sake of it. He brought it in to improve schools and standards, didn't he?

Professor MacBeath: Obviously, he did, but the evidence says, "Well, you got that one wrong."

Chairman: So, that's your answer, John, that he got it wrong.

Mr. Heppell: I am not that sure I've got it right.

Chairman: Do you want to come back on that?

 

Q215 Mr. Heppell: There is a difficulty with somebody doing an inspection that is supposed to find all the answers. I can understand the frustration of heads and so on. I wonder whether we should not be much clearer in saying that we need to draw a line and let people know the rules, to whom they should go for advice and who is supposed to put the problem right. At the moment, I just don't know. That is the difficulty, and I suspect that many people in teaching and education don't know who is supposed to provide the solutions.

Anastasia de Waal: One issue at the moment with inspection being only about judgments is that it shows that it is all about accountability; it is not about improving schools. It is a tremendous amount of money to spend just on accountability when surely the point of this game is improving learning, children's lives and school provision in this country. As I mentioned before, it is woefully inefficient to have a bunch of people coming in and identifying the problems-people who you hope would be professionals, well equipped to identify issues and presumably have the solutions. Frankly, if they don't have the solutions, I don't think they are equipped-

 

Q216 Chairman: But, Anastasia, you are avoiding my plea to put this in the context of the Government saying, "This is the state of this school." If it is bad, which we will know because it has had its inspection, in come SIPs-at £1,000 a day some of them, I understand-and in come the National Challenge advisers, in comes Capita, and I doubt it does it free or low cost.

Anastasia de Waal: Unnecessary. Let's get Ofsted to tell us what the problems are in the school. It is superfluous. We do not need somebody trailing teachers for six weeks. It is not that we are asking Ofsted or the new inspectorate to stay in school. We are asking them to identify how they make progress. We know anecdotally that a lot of HMIs are preferred because they do just that. They do not just say, "Here is the wreck of the school that I have created for you. Goodbye." They actually come up with solutions.

 

Q217 Chairman: So this is the "golden age" argument. There was a golden age when we used to have HMIs and everything was all right.

Anastasia de Waal: No. This is HMIs now. As you say, the remit before was not about improving; it was just about inspecting. It is HMIs, the argument seems to be, because they are very well qualified professionals. There is definitely a preference at the moment for your inspector to be an HMI. Were Ofsted to be about improvement as well as identifying problems, it would not be seen as the major disruption it is today. It is not seen to be constructive or beneficial. Were it something that was going to help, I think that teachers would feel a lot less antagonised by it.

Anna Fazackerley: I would just say that the expensive advisers are not working. They are not providing their money's worth, and so a system in which Ofsted is at least part of the improvement process has to be better than that.

 

Q218 Mr. Stuart: Does the inspection regime sufficiently identify poor practice, and does that lead to action? John says that what we need is tough, high-quality self-evaluation. You then have the external review, both to see whether that self-evaluation is tough and effective and, just as importantly I would have thought, to find out whether they have done anything about it. What is your analysis of that?

Professor MacBeath: I didn't understand the last bit of the question.

 

Q219 Mr. Stuart: I asked whether the regime identifies poor practice. There seems to me to be two levels in evaluating the school. One is about leadership, the ethos and the rich learning experience, and the planning for that, and the second is about the individual staff members who are in front of a class. In a great school, you can get a really rubbish teacher for the sixth form. I remember getting a rubbish teacher in my sixth form. They completely turned me off the subject for two years and I didn't follow that subject into university because of them. So, there are two levels: you have the institution and its structures, but you also have poor practice, and if you are going to have a proper system of accountability you need to be identifying poor practice. Where I am going is towards extirpating it, which I don't think happens, but I want to know your opinion on that.

Professor MacBeath: I guess that part of the ambiguity in the understanding is what we are defining as core practice. But I absolutely take your point about "rubbish" teachers. I think that that is a real issue and that is why this is very difficult. However, good, rigorous school self-evaluation does not single out individual teachers; it says, "We have an issue in this school with some of our staff who are not effective enough. We have to address that issue, and this is how we are trying to address it". We may have to think about how we send those individuals to the departure lounge, or about the time for them to be cancelled out because they are damaging the lives of children. I have seen good self-evaluation; it can do that, and the external review then comes in and says, "Well, you've identified a really difficult issue here and how you are going to handle it. In what ways can you get external support for that?" Getting rid of poor teachers is one of the biggest problems that schools have, but it can be addressed through that process of self-evaluation.

 

Q220 Chairman: I see that Anna is nodding, but when we went to Ontario, we saw that one of their problems is that they can't get rid of anyone. You seemed to see that as an exemplar, with 100% one-union control.

Anna Fazackerley: No, I don't think that I am on record saying that Ontario is perfection. I was simply saying that there are good and bad things that we can learn from all systems. They have at least sorted out the report card-

Chairman: Okay. We have recently been to Ontario, and so we learned some interesting things.

 

Q221 Mr. Stuart: Do we need an accountability system that leads to the dismissal and removal entirely from the education system of more teachers who are not up to scratch? I am the chairman of governors of a failing school, and we turned it around. We got those individuals into the departure lounge and got them out, but they were not removed from the profession; they went somewhere else to ruin the educational opportunities of another bunch of kids. We have a system of accountability that does not have the courage to identify someone who is probably a fantastic human being but is just not very good at teaching and inspiring kids. It seems to me that we do not have a system that gets rid of them. Am I wrong?

Anna Fazackerley: I think that you are right. I don't think that we have a system that gets rid of them, and I am not sure whether we have a system that spots them either. That is a big problem, and it is something that we have already highlighted today. It is very important.

 

Q222 Mr. Stuart: How is that possible, when we spend so much money? There are all these people crawling all over schools, coming in from every angle and appearing from every new acronym. In that school that was failing-a little primary school with eight classrooms-you could not believe the panoply of people who piled in to advise, help and consult us. All we needed to do was to remove the teachers who were rubbish, help the ones who were not doing well enough but could, and congratulate and support the ones who were doing a good job. Once we had done that, the school turned around.

Chairman: Graham, perhaps you could marry that to the question that came up on Monday. You couldn't come on Monday, I know, but we were talking about licence to practise: should there be for teachers a licence to practise that is renewable? Fiona was pushing the witnesses on Monday about that. I don't know if you see a problem. Do you want to come back to that, Graham?

Mr. Stuart: Anna answered; do Anastasia and John agree that despite this huge system we are not identifying poor practice and removing it from the system altogether, or doing enough to support people who need to be supported to come up to the levels that they can achieve?

Anastasia de Waal: Personally I think that there is a staggering lack of emphasis on actual teaching and teachers, and partly that is because of results, because we know that you can produce pretty good results without being a good teacher, but partly there is not nearly enough-this is just on an inspection level-emphasis on classroom observation.

Now, thankfully, that is coming back a bit more, but the mere idea that it was going to be completely sidelined is extraordinary, when clearly that is the big impact. In a climate with so much about management-speak and management style, it has almost come to the point where we see teachers as technicians; we do not see them as professionals or as having a big impact themselves. It is all about the leadership and management structure. Clearly that is not the case, and it is one of the big reasons why the status of teaching suffers enormously. The criteria for entry into teaching are very low, and I think that also has a detrimental effect. So I think we are not identifying poor teaching because we are not particularly interested in teaching at the moment, which is very worrying and a huge problem.

Chairman: John, do you agree with that?

Professor MacBeath: I do. I am kind of attracted to the renewable licence, actually. Certainly in some countries-Germany, for example-head teachers get voted on for a couple of years and if they don't like them after that they have to move on or return to the classroom, or whatever. There is something in that. Of course, we have a probation system at the moment, but maybe the probation system is not good enough for that.

We are addressing a really knotty and very critical problem here in terms of ineffective or incompetent teachers and how a system deals with them-how it gets the knowledge. I would say that to some extent Ofsted does that already. Certainly a former chief inspector was very good about talking about the numbers and saying that we had 25,000 incompetent teachers in this country; there was all that sabre-rattling, and unfortunately that had a big backlash from unions and everyone else. I think that the NUT-I know you have taken evidence already from the NUT-would be supportive of this if they could address that history of the way we have dealt with teachers who are not up to scratch. I don't have an easy answer to that one, but I do recognise that it is a big problem.

 

Q223 Mr. Stuart: Yes, a former chief inspector did come out with that quite a lot, and, as you said, it led to a bit of a backlash. Perhaps it was overstated-I don't think that the facts were overstated, but perhaps the style wasn't right. Do you have any data on how many people are removed from the system each year as a result of being found to be incapable of being improved through capability, or whatever it is?

Anna Fazackerley: I am sure that something came out quite recently from the DCSF; I can find out.

 

Q224 Mr. Stuart: Listening to Anna and John's evidence it seems that both the main party Front Benches are in pursuit of what John says would be great in a perfect world, where you have informed parents taking a close interest and able to exercise choice, and a true demand-led education system; but John was suggesting that it was simply impractical. I just wanted to ask you, Anna, really, why you are so convinced that choice and parental information can take us to that nirvana.

The more you talked about the report card, the more I just thought, "This isn't going to work." We want it to be simple, yet it must be comprehensive. It must be both in-depth and yet easy for a parent, even one who is not that keen or that educated themselves, to follow. All we would be doing is altering it every six months or every year to make it longer or shorter.

Anna Fazackerley: I disagree that introducing different, new indicators-information either that parents want or that we think they should want-has to be complicated.

 

Q225 Mr. Stuart: You use phrases such as, "ought to want to see performance indicators", which perfectly illustrates how you are straining to create a world which doesn't exist and isn't going to exist. However, you have this concept and you think it ought to exist. John agrees that it ought to exist, but I am not convinced that you can make it happen.

Chairman: Give Anna the chance to answer.

Anna Fazackerley: As a Committee, you have identified that the national assessment testing is not working; you are very worried about it. That is pretty much the only information that is available to parents at the moment, unless they want to look up an Ofsted report. I am just saying, from a very simple starting point, that I don't think that is very fair. I don't think that is satisfactory. You are probably right that not every parent is going to want to look up information about a school, but that does not mean that we should not bother to provide accurate information. If you make it very clear to schools, teachers and parents exactly what schools will be judged on, then surely that will drive performance.

I add that I do not actually think that the report card is going to be complicated. Some aspects of the system at the moment, such as CVA measurements, are confusing. That is a bit jargony and I don't think many people would know what that means, but a report card done properly does not need to be at all difficult. It just brings in some things that parents are likely to care about, as well as some of the issues that we are looking at, at the moment. As I have said, I will send you a list of all of the things that we want to look at. I could read them out to you now.

 

Q226 Mr. Stuart: Have you created and market-tested the perfect report card? When you have, and shown it to 20 schools and all the parents and they say it is great, perfect and exactly what they want, then I will back down a lot of the time.

Anna Fazackerley: I doubt very much that you will back down and I am very much enjoying your robust questioning. What we have done is look at two existing report cards: one in Alberta, which was introduced in 2004 and is working very well, and one in New York. They are quite different; they look at different criteria. We have looked at bits that are working and evidence that they are working, so we have got a serious evidence base behind this. Just to take one small example, one thing that is quite nice about the New York system is that they have extra credit for schools that are improving the very weakest students. That is a pretty good idea. I doubt very much, even with your professed allergy to report cards, that you would think that that was a bad or a nasty idea. This is not about making things more complicated, it is about trying to make things simpler, actually, and about providing more information for parents.

Chairman: We have got to end it there. David, over to you.

 

Q227 Mr. Chaytor: I want to ask to John a question about self-evaluation. You are very critical about the tick-box approach, because you say that it should be a continuing process of reflection. How does anyone know that this continuing process of reflection is taking place without some written record? Do you see my point? We need some evidence. What form should that evidence be presented in?

Professor MacBeath: We currently have the evidence reported in the SEF, the self-evaluation form. That is one way of telling the school's story, the narrative; it is their version of a report card, if you like. But it has been made very clear in Ofsted guidance and reiterated by Christine Gilbert, chief of Ofsted, that we do not require schools to use the SEF. In fact, David Bell used to say that we would much rather that schools were telling their story in a much richer way and not relying on a SEF form, because it actually constrains the way schools report. A school in Sheffield, a primary school, has made a wonderful DVD with the children and the secondary school-people working together to produce a DVD that brilliantly tells the story of the quality of learning, the school culture and leadership. I have shown it at a number of conferences. It is a brilliant example that goes so much further than a SEF can with tick boxes and so on. When the school has genuine ownership of self-evaluation, it thinks much more creatively and visually, with photographs, video and written accounts from children, which give a rich profile of what the school is about.

 

Q228 Mr. Chaytor: So if a school ditches the SEF form and produces a DVD, a report or a portfolio, it is not going to be in any way-

Professor MacBeath: No, and Ofsted are very happy.

 

Q229 Mr. Chaytor: A question to Anastasia and Anna: on the broader issue of school improvement, is that the right focus or should we be more concerned with system improvement?

Anastasia de Waal: I think that it is about addressing the weaknesses in the current system, rather than shaking up the system and coming up with a new one. We know where there are clear problems. One of the key issues, and why school choice is appealing for many, is the lack of autonomy that teachers and schools have. They have a lot of financial autonomy, which in a way is the worst of both worlds, but not enough pedagogical autonomy.

One of the big issues that we are seeing now and, I feel, one big reason why the achievement gap has not been impacted on as it might have been is that teachers cannot respond sufficiently to the needs of the pupils in front of them because the approach is much too standardised. I think that that is the key issue. Another issue is the one that I mentioned of teacher quality. That has a lot to do with entry requirements into teaching. Obviously testing is another big one. In other words, they are issues that, at the moment, are really crippling the system, but that does not mean that the system has to change; it means addressing those inherent distortions.

Anna Fazackerley: I would agree wholeheartedly and simply say that we are always trying to change the system and to do everything with the system as a whole, rather than looking at things on an individual school basis. It has to be about improving schools, but implicit within that is improvement of the system.

 

Q230 Mr. Chaytor: And what should be the key criterion for deciding that a school needs a school improvement programme?

Anna Fazackerley: I would say a poor performance on the report card. If you got low scores in the different areas, you would need an inspection. There should be an additional criterion that if parents complained, as is the case now, you would be inspected. Finally, both of us would like a system of randomised inspections as well-inspectors coming in and performing spot checks on schools. The inspected school should not have any nasty follow-up from that inspection; it is simply a useful way of getting a glimpse of how the system as a whole is working. I would like to see that.

Anastasia de Waal: And I would say issues identified by holistic inspections-not within the current process, but when inspections were carried out in schools and things like teacher turnover or performance in relation to a much bigger picture were identified. This is not necessarily about test performance but about whether pupils are progressing and achieving. It could also be about things such as facilities. I think that it is very narrowly based on the curriculum at the moment. We also need to look at whether there is enough playground space and that kind of thing. That could well be impinging on the quality of school provision, so it needs to be holistic.

Chairman: I have to call a halt here, but only because we have another session. I implore you to keep in touch with us. We are only as good as the information that we get in the Committee. Will you go away, think about what we asked you, and whether we asked you the wrong questions and should have given you more stimulating ones? Come back to us and say, "You should have asked this because we believe this." Please help us to make this a good report. We are very open to all of your views. Thank you.

I have delayed a little because that was a very interesting session and I also knew that one of our witnesses for the second session was delayed.

 

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: David Butler, Chief Executive, National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations, Clare Collins, National Governors Association, and Deborah Ishihara, Advisory Centre for Education, gave evidence.

 

Q231 Chairman: I welcome Deborah Ishihara and Clare Collins to our deliberations. David Butler will join us imminently. You heard my introduction when I said that we are very grateful for your help in the inquiry. You represent two sectors that are most important to us. I hope that you will bear with us in the sense that we are trying to cram a quart into a pint pot, so we are going to bombard you with questions. We are looking at the accountability of the education system. We are where we are. You heard what the other people said in the previous session. Do we need change, Deborah?

Deborah Ishihara: Do we need change to what is presented to parents? Yes, in that sense, we do. In our view, there is not enough emphasis on compliance. Education attainment seems to be the main criterion at the moment. That doesn't give enough information to parents. We get calls every day about all sorts of other issues, such as bullying, exclusions, SEN and so forth. We hear from parents that they need more information of different sorts. What they are really interested in is whether their children will be happy at a school and whether they will be supported at a school. The information that they have to hand doesn't really address some of those issues.

Clare Collins: Do we need change?

 

Q232 Chairman: Are we happy with the system as it is?

Clare Collins: No, we need an incremental change. We need to strengthen it. I represent school governing bodies. It is absolutely crucial that we clarify the role of the governing body as an accountable body for schools. If we do that and strengthen governance, we will strengthen accountability, and that will be a good thing for schools.

 

Q233 Chairman: It is interesting that, in the previous evidence session, they hardly mentioned governing bodies.

Clare Collins: It is not just interesting, it is quite worrying. Not only did they not mention governing bodies very much-

Chairman: Welcome, David Butler.

David Butler: Thank you, Chairman.

Clare Collins: Doing my homework, as I obviously did for this, I read the other submissions. There was a huge number of pages of dense text, with no mention of the governing body.

Chairman: Thank you for that. David, are you getting your breath?

David Butler: I am, yes. I have just run up from Black Rod's. Thank you very much, Chairman.

 

Q234 Chairman: Do we need an inquiry? Do we need to write a report on this or is everything in the garden lovely?

David Butler: No. Several things could be said about this. I welcome the opportunity to present evidence to the Committee. We have sent in a written submission. I only finished it last night at the office, but you may have got it this morning.

Chairman: David, we have got it. Don't worry about it-don't repeat it.

David Butler: Fine. I am really happy to take any questions on it or any additional questions that you might have.

Chairman: That is what we have got you here for.

 

Q235 Mr. Stuart: Governing bodies are supposed to hold the head teacher to account for the school's performance, so should we have all the multiple layers of other levels of accountability? Is that confusing the situation and stopping a more effective accountable system that is based on governors?

Clare Collins: We agree that we have multiple accountability, but it needs clarifying. We have other aspects of the system. If it was made clear that they fed their information to the governing body, that would bring a focus to the role of the governing body, which would mean that you could streamline accountability and make it more effective. Listening to the last submissions was very interesting. Ofsted and the school improvement partners programme role are vital in looking at different levels of information, with people coming in with different expertise. That builds a picture so that you can ascertain whether the school is providing a good basis for the children's learning and whether they are making progress.

 

Q236 Mr. Stuart: Deborah, is a good and effective governing body regarded as a peculiar bonus, rather than as something that can be taken for granted? Are all these other structures are in place because no one relies on governing bodies to do their job?

Deborah Ishihara: I would not say no one relies on governing bodies. It is very useful when you have a good, independent check and balance on the school through the governing body. That does not always happen, but we advise parents daily that if they have a problem with the school, they can go and talk to the school, but if that has no effect, they can go to the governing body and ask it to act as a check and balance on what has happened. We strongly support the role of governors in terms of accountability. In our submission, if we talk about schools, we are really talking about the governing body and its role as a check and balance on the school, and we very much support governing bodies.

 

Q237 Mr. Stuart: Do you think that governing bodies are effective, David? In particular, do they fulfil their role of putting out tentacles into the local community, genuinely grounding the school and making every school a community school? Are they working?

David Butler: In the main, governing bodies are working. Clearly, like anything else, you have examples of really excellent practice, but you also have examples of practice that is not so excellent. In regard to the line of questioning that we are having at the moment, I would say that our research, which was probably submitted to you just this morning, suggests that parents are interested in public accountability. There is also evidence from our research that they would like to see some, let us say, cross-comparators-in other words, some form of national basis on which they can examine schools and make sure that things are accountable. That would predicate in favour of something that is beyond the governing body. The governing body can do an excellent job locally, but if you want to go beyond that, you may need something else.

 

Q238 Mr. Stuart: In practical terms, what can governing bodies do to improve school performance? Clare?

Chairman: Clare, can you reposition yourself slightly in front of the microphone, because your voice is not coming over quite so strongly? Remember, those microphones were used by Gladstone.

Clare Collins: Sorry, are we talking about what governing bodies can do to hold schools to account?

Mr. Stuart: To improve school performance.

Clare Collins: In terms of improving school performance, the governing body is there to challenge, focus and use the information that is available to it. It is there to influence and, in terms of putting out tentacles into the community, it can perhaps broker support between the school and the local authority or whatever to make sure that the school has what it needs to do the job that it is supposed to be doing.

 

Q239 Mr. Stuart: With the previous panel, I described two levels of accountability. One was about the institution-the school-and involved leadership, the ethos and planning for a rich learning experience. There is also the individual teaching quality. Is the governing body equally effective at ensuring that we have a high-quality institution and at challenging poor teaching so that we have high-quality teaching?

Clare Collins: There are about three levels to that question. First, in terms of understanding what happens with the institution, the governing body has what it needs, with everything else that is coming in. Governing bodies should get reports regularly-at least termly-on the quality of teaching in the school. What the governing body does in response to that to make sure that the school follows through is problematic, and there are real issues about responding to poor teaching and about what is out there to help you deal with that. Risk-averse local authority HR departments can make things difficult, and that is extremely frustrating for governing bodies when they are sitting there saying, "This teacher is still performing poorly. We are still looking at yet another intervention. We want something to happen."

 

Q240 Mr. Stuart: Leaving aside the institutional level, we need excellent teachers, and we need to remove those who are below an acceptable standard. Do you think that governing bodies are effective in trying to ensure both those things? Do they need additional powers? What would help them to be able to challenge risk-averse local authorities and get the powers to take action?

David Butler: Governing bodies are already an effective tool at a school level and also, to a degree, at a community level as well. Remember that part of the responsibility for some schools now moves into the area of extended services. If you look at governors being, let us call them, the board of the school, they are the people who are ultimately responsible for the strategic vision. It is their job to ensure that what is in place will actually deliver what parents want, if you like, from my perspective, which is an effective piece of teaching and learning for the children at that school. Yes, they can do that, and yes, they have the powers to do that, but as Clare has already cited, there are instances where sometimes local authorities may not be quite on stream with the governing body, which just makes it a little bit more difficult for them to perform their role. I suspect that the powers are there, and it is not a question of saying that we should give them additional powers.

Chairman: Fiona wants to come in on this point.

Fiona Mactaggart: No, I wanted to come in on the point about governing bodies generally as soon as Graham is finished.

 

Q241 Mr. Stuart: Deborah, can I follow up on that, particularly focusing on being able to tackle teaching underperformance?

Deborah Ishihara: That is very difficult. From what we hear on the telephone lines, if a parent has an issue with a teacher because of things that are going on in the classroom, that is almost our most difficult question: how to get at the school to address that without completely destroying the relationship between the parent and child and the school. From our perspective, what we need to see is the ability of governors to act independently, as I have said before, as a check and balance on the school. Very often they can do so, but there are occasions when they can't. For instance, with exclusions, I have heard of governors who make the decision to exclude a child along with the head. In which case, when parents want to go and make representations to the governors about the exclusion, and they worked together with the head in coming to that decision, it is not a proper independent process.

I have also heard on the lines about cases where the governors are completely circumvented. I heard of one case a few weeks ago where a year 11 pupil had been excluded for allegedly kicking another boy, but his father said that he had reason to believe that his son had not done it. He was excluded for an indefinite period until a meeting could be held. Then, when the meeting was held, they said, "You can come back to school for one hour a week, indefinitely," which was not exactly an education. The parent said, "I want to complain to the governors about this," and the head said, "No, you can't. I'm a governor, and I've made my decision." I was completely horrified by that.

Chairman: Can you repeat that?

Deborah Ishihara: "No, you can't complain to the governors. I'm a governor, and I've made my decision." The head was on the governing body, which is fine-the head can be on the governing body-but not saying, "I'm the governor, and I've made my decision." As I said, I was horrified by that. I have to say that at ACE, we hear about poor practice day in, day out, so we come out with a skewed vision of the world. I know that there is a lot of good practice out there, but equally, we do come across things that need to be addressed.

 

Q242 Mr. Stuart: The requirement to produce an annual report was phased out, and many governing bodies seized the opportunity not to produce one. If governing bodies do not publish their views on the performance of the school and share them with the parents, is it any surprise that they are perceived, not least by Ofsted, as being less important in the overall accountability system?

David Butler: If I may be so bold, that is perhaps a red herring. I think that there were a number of reasons why annual governing reports disappeared. I dare to suggest that part of the reason why they disappeared was the considerable lack of interest from parents who wanted to attend a particular annual meeting. I have served my time as governor and gone along to such meetings to find that the governing body outnumbered the parents. Let us not lose sight of the fact that parents want good information and accountability. We must find what is effective today rather than say we should simply bring back the annual reports for governors. That is one tool, but perhaps it is not the most appropriate one. There are other things that we could do today and we should concentrate on that.

 

Q243 Mr. Stuart: Such as?

David Butler: We have heard hints that a school report card should be introduced. Our research that we put before you last night shows that there is substantial parental favour for that report card.

 

Q244 Mr. Stuart: But that doesn't empower governors, does it? It seems to further sideline external people who come in.

David Butler: I don't think so because it becomes part of the overall accountability process. It would not be fair for us to look at single segments of accountability; there are many things that we can look at. Ofsted is one, as are governors' impact, school report cards, exam results and so on.

Clare Collins: I want to clarify that what we seized on was the discontinued requirement to have an annual meeting. There were a lot of governing bodies in schools that were very happy to carry on producing a report of some sort. It was long and unwieldy, and most of us are in favour of the school report card as a replacement for that. Much of the stuff that has been reported on by the Government's reports is reported on elsewhere.

Chairman: Deborah, respond to Graham and then I shall move on to Fiona.

Deborah Ishihara: Not having an annual report by the governors is a bit of a shame because they produced a lot of very good stuff. In our written submission, we looked back at what governors were supposed to produce and thought that it was very good and included some of those things. I am not sure whether the report card will replace all that, but we are clear that a lot more detail needs to be produced for parents.

 

Q245 Chairman: Are you based in Cambridge?

Deborah Ishihara: No.

Chairman: Where is your base?

Deborah Ishihara: Islington.

Clare Collins: One of the things that fell out when the annual report died was any financial reporting.

Mr. Stuart: It was killed-it didn't die.

Clare Collins: That is a personal view. It is a shame that there isn't a public report every year on the school's finances.

 

Q246 Fiona Mactaggart: In your submission, you used ACE's experience in representing children and parents in dispute with schools to suggest that some of the reports will not include things that are important to parents and schools. If we had a report card, it would not necessarily include those things.

Deborah Ishihara: We wanted to add two categories-parental complaints and regulatory compliance. We think that those two things will work together well. If you are talking about accountability, you can talk about educational attainment, but that is only one aspect of it. From our perspective, it is about regulatory compliance, but that is difficult to pin down. It is easy to say to schools, "We will produce something that explains how you are complying with the law." However, you also need a parental complaints section in which you can see if there are any discrepancies. For example, a school will say-as sometimes happens on our phone lines-"There is no bullying issue here. We have no bullying in our schools." If something such as that is expressed in a report card on the part of the school and yet there are several complaints about bullying from parents, then you have something you can use to say, "There is clearly a discrepancy here." Ofsted could use that and make a comment in its reports about regulatory compliance. It is difficult to get a handle on the issue, but that would be one way of doing it.

 

Q247 Fiona Mactaggart: I was struck by what you were saying in response to Graham, which is that you tend to see the hard end. Because you represent people when they are in dispute with a school, you tend to see the system when it is in failure. I am concerned that, at present, we do not have sensible enough mechanisms to deal with those schools that, for example, turn too quickly to exclusion or expulsion, or where the governors are in the pocket of the head teacher and always back that decision. I don't know about the case that you were talking about, but I can think of a school in my constituency where it is quite probable that the whole governing body would say, "Oh yes, our head teacher is absolutely right and that child can happily be educated for an hour a week." One of the things that I have found-this is a school that is very successful in its results-is that is it difficult to find any mechanism that can hold that school to account about that issue. It educates the children-it educates fine- but guess what? The children that the head teacher doesn't like-it sometimes feels like-get picked on, excluded, and the whole thing is silenced. I am interested-not just for the general report of the Committee-in how we could have a better system of accountability about things like that.

Deborah Ishihara: I think that you have hit on a very good point here. The better that schools do in educational attainment, sometimes the worse they are doing in these other factors. A rebalancing is needed here. It is very easy for schools, say with something like SEN, to concentrate on getting good educational attainment and therefore be less happy to deal with children who don't fit that mould or who are vulnerable in some way. So you get very skewed emphasis on schools, which means that in some ways the better a school is doing is perhaps, for some children, the worse it is doing. That is the kind of information that it is very difficult for parents to get at, which is why I think you need a whole range of factors to be made clear, and to be put in one place as well, which is why the report card would be good-via the report card, you could access all this information. What you find is that most parents are happy to have a few fairly simple overall marks to do with the school, but other parents, who have a child with SEN or is vulnerable in some way, would need something much more detailed.

Exclusions are a very good example; they are often linked to SEN. The other day we had a case in which a boy with SEN was officially excluded for three days, which was all fine-he had a proper letter etc.-but at a reintegration meeting he was then told that he could only come in from now on in the mornings, between 9 am and 11.30 am. There was nothing in writing and no end point was set. It is not just a matter of how proper exclusions are done; it is how we get a lot of informal-therefore, illegal-exclusions. It would be very difficult to hold a school to account for that. As I said, we think that you can possibly do it by making a public statement about what you do in a range of circumstances: how you comply with the law, which is asking the school by implication to state publicly that what it says is true, but also to have some other checks and balances in the system, including the governors, but also parental complaints. So, you can get in there in some way.

 

Q248 Fiona Mactaggart: Does the school have a duty to record and report to governors all parental complaints?

Clare Collins: Yes.

 

Q249 Fiona Mactaggart: Do all schools do it?

Clare Collins: It is formal complaints.

 

Q250 Fiona Mactaggart: Does a parent know what a formal complaint is?

Deborah Ishihara: Not necessarily.

Clare Collins: And governing bodies don't. It is one of the difficult jobs that a chair of governors often has to do, which is to make the decision that a complaint goes formal-you are almost looking for the worst to be put in front of you, for the parents to say, "I am making a formal complaint." A lot of parents don't know. You give them the complaints procedure-every school has to have a complaints policy-and point out to them, which is what I do as a chair of governors, that this is the process and ask at what point each side would want to make the complaint formal. I would then set up the process to make it happen, and my clerk would make the process happen. However, what you are looking at is actually a quite sophisticated level of process and of judgment-making. I started this evidence session by saying that strengthening governance means that you need to have better training for governing bodies and for chairs of governing bodies who are having to make such tricky decisions. It is important that the decisions are right.

Chairman: Do you want briefly to give me an answer on that one, David?

David Butler: I am conscious that this echoes some of the points that we put in our own submission about the accessibility of the complaints processes generally. Our submission makes some comments in relation to the Ofsted complaints process, for example, but it applies here as well. It is difficult sometimes for parents to access, understand and know the process. I am struck by what Clare is saying. Where good governance works, it can help parents to understand the process, but that is only when you have very good chairs of governors and very good systems.

One of the factors that could make things more accessible is making the language more straightforward. That would be very helpful.

Chairman: We are hard against time, so I call Edward to take us through to the next session.

 

Q251 Mr. Timpson: David, could I pick you up on the submission to which you just referred? One of the striking findings from your questioning of parents to get their view of the current system of school accountability was that 96% say that they have a greater demand for schools to be assessed on a wider range of measures. That it is extremely high-you don't need me to tell you that. What wider measures are parents looking for from schools to ensure that the performance of the school that their child attends is at the level that they want it to be?

David Butler: We initially asked them whether they find things like exam and test results helpful as a measure of accountability. The answer was yes, they do, but that was about 75% or 76%. We went on and asked whether they would appreciate a wider range of measures on which they could judge the school, which is what is proposed in the school report card, and there was, if you like, near universal agreement.

One debate to have is on what those wider measures should be. Our suggestion in our submission is that a good starting point would be the various factors that we have in the documentation on "Every Child Matters", but, as we heard earlier from Deborah, it is possible that we should introduce an additional feature.

I do not think that the debate on what should be in the school report card has ended-there is still a lot of debate to be had-but we are seeing that parents are very interested in having that more holistic view, rather than just a single public pronouncement of exam results.

 

Q252 Mr. Timpson: There are two different angles from which parents may be coming at this. First, if their child is already at a school, they want to know how that school is performing as the child goes through it. Secondly, some are looking to send their child to a school and making a choice. What type of information do parents want when they are looking to choose a school, as opposed to when they are looking at the accountability of a school that their child is already at? Is there any differential?

David Butler: I would go back to my point about that wider range of measures. I will give the example of when we were looking at an appropriate secondary school for my son. To a large extent, we put to one side the issues of effective learning and teaching because he presented as someone who ought to do reasonably well, but he had a strong interest in music. We were therefore looking at what music offerings available schools had and at how he could best access them. That was us making a decision for our child. If you have two or three children, you might be looking at two or three different things, because they are not all the same, as we know. You are then looking at what you might call the additional features. How do schools encourage sport, extra-curricular activity or art and drama? How is the child's health and well-being looked after at school? We have got a high level of encouragement and favour for the school report card because it gives those measures.

Deborah Ishihara: We hear every day that it is very individual, actually. Obviously, educational attainment is one aspect. However, you may have a child, for example, who you know is very sensitive and who has had difficulty with bullying in their primary school. Therefore, you want to know what sort of things a secondary school would do to address that problem. Does it have good supervision, or a good, strong anti-bullying policy? What does the school do if there is a problem, and how supportive is it? That is just one example, but there are many different cases where individual parents come to us and say, "How do I find out about this?"

Clare Collins: Absolutely, parents are concerned about attainment levels in school and we hope that they are as concerned with progress levels. Those levels will be the next thing that parents will focus on, as there is more data about it and parents become more familiar with that data.

In our experience, however, parents are incredibly concerned about behaviour in school. Certainly, schools get a "name" for behaviour and a "name" for dealing with bullying, or for not dealing with those issues, as the case may be. How decisions are made on those sorts of issues is, I think, quite complicated. We would also say that the profile of the school is important for parents when they are choosing a school.

Above all, however, we would say that a lot of parents don't have a choice of school and the school that they need to be good is the one that is down the road. Every child in this country should have the right to go to a good local school.

 

Q253 Mr. Timpson: I want to go back to Deborah's point that each parent is perhaps looking for something individual for their child and they are concerned about what the school has to meet those needs. Given that, how do we go about encapsulating all those separate views and all those different levels of engagement with the education system that parents have?

Deborah Ishihara: That is why we support the principle of having a lot of information available. For instance, if you have a report card, whatever way it is set out you might have a simple front page where there is quite simple data, but parents would need to be able to drill down to what exactly it is that they as individuals are looking for. That is why we suggest that approach.

Chairman: We are getting some good information here.

 

Q254 Mr. Timpson: One of the points that was raised in the previous session was that children learn as much, if not more, outside of school as they do in school. Some schools are very good at engaging children with after-school clubs, school trips and other activities that are generated by the school. How would that sort of information be made readily available to parents in a report card, if a report card is the type of model that you are all advocating? Perhaps I should have asked before if that is the type of model that you are all advocating, but I know that both David and Deborah have spoken about a report card in a positive sense. So, should that type of information about activities outside school be available to parents too?

Clare Collins: It should be quite easy to capture that information; it is already captured in school prospectuses. What is more important is that we don't just capture certain children. There will always be the A team, who will play football after school. What you are looking for is whether or not you are capturing those kids who are the C team. They like to play football, even though they will not represent the school, and it will do them good to play football and be part of the school, or whatever; football is a simple example. If you can't capture that information, then we might as well all go home.

Chairman: Excellent. I like that.

 

Q255 Mr. Timpson: I would just like to put two more short questions.

I know that we all have our individual cases, but from my perspective the relationship that you have with your child's teacher is extremely important. That goes back to Graham's point that you need to have good teachers, because the type of information that they can give you as a parent is much better than anything you can get that is written down on a piece of paper.

However, teacher turnover is something that a lot of my constituents complain to me about, in that they have to engage with a new teacher almost on an annual basis and sometimes with two or three teachers within a school year. Is that type of information something that we would want, as a progressive part of the child's education, so that the school's turnover of teachers can be taken into consideration by parents when they are choosing a school?

Deborah Ishihara: I think that we have actually put in as one of the categories in our written submission that staffing arrangements should be reported on.

David Butler: If you have a good school, a good institution, you rely on your leadership team to deliver a good experience for the children who attend it. Teachers will leave; they might progress and go on to another role at another school, and I think that it is important that the leadership team recognises that. There comes a point when we have to be able to trust some aspects of the system, so I am not sure whether we want to micro-manage too much, but I recognise that if you have a school where every teacher seems to stay only for a term, that gives cause for concern.

I want to return to the issue of information flow and how we can ensure that we get information to parents, as well as what information they want to base their selection on. This relates to what you have talked about regarding teachers being able to tell parents about their children. I know that there is progress and I am pleased to see it in terms of making more information available electronically, which I wholly support. But I would not like to see-I do not believe that parents would like to see this either-that replace the opportunity for parents to talk to their child's teacher. Previous research, which is not contained in this submission, has told us that what parents value most is the opportunity for a face-to-face discussion with their child's teacher, because that is when they learn about their child.

 

Q256 Mr. Heppell: I think that I agree with your point about parents, but surely the new technology is very valuable. I remember that what really frustrated me in relation to my own children was finding out that things were wrong only when I had a face-to-face meeting at the end of each year, when I would be told about something that had been happening for nine months. I like the idea of being able to tap into something where I can look and see what is happening with behaviour and homework. As parents, we have all had the experience of asking our children, "What homework have you got?" and the answer being, "None." That can go on for weeks.

David Butler: I would absolutely support that, but what I am really saying is please do not make that the only thing available to parents. You are quite right that if you have a good school, a doorway is opening into the information system-most of them now have very good information systems-whereby parents can get answers to questions about whether the homework been given in, what the homework is for next week, and how a child's attendance and behaviour is. That valuable information should be shared, but please don't remove the opportunity for parents to talk to teachers at the same time.

 

Q257 Mr. Heppell: I think that I accept that, but I don't want people to be dismissive of new technology. There is an idea that parents will somehow not be able to manage it, but everybody of a younger generation texts and uses the internet all the time.

David Butler: I wish to put in one caveat, which is that while I believe the ability of parents to grasp such information has grown enormously, when we start to bring this in, let us please encourage those who are delivering it to ensure that it is accessible and that all parents, particularly those in disadvantaged areas and those whose first language might not be English, can understand it.

Chairman: Okay, we are going to move on.

 

Q258 Mr. Chaytor: Can I ask Clare and David specifically, in terms of the identification of schools for school improvement programmes, do you have any evidence of situations where governors or parents are utterly outraged by the choice of their school? That is to say, is there ever a conflict between the perceptions of governors and parents on the one hand, and the criteria established by Ofsted for school improvement programmes on the other?

Clare Collins: Are you asking whether, if Ofsted puts a school in a category, for example, that surprises people?

Mr. Chaytor: Yes.

Clare Collins: Absolutely; there is evidence of that.

 

Q259 Mr. Chaytor: I want to try to assess the scale of the problem. There are always going to be isolated instances where some governor says, "Our school isn't that bad," and so on, but what is the scale of the mismatch between the perception of governors and parents, and the perception of Ofsted?

Clare Collins: I cannot give you hard figures. In my local authority there have been some very nasty surprises in the last couple of years-that should not be happening at this stage of the game-but there is also the other end of the spectrum where the data are so sophisticated that schools that are, in effect, coasting schools are being identified. I think that we have had our first grammar school being put into an Ofsted category, and there has been shock, horror on a lot of faces. I have to say, though, that we have got to welcome that, because it is not just that the poor schools have got to get better; but that the good schools should be even better.

 

Q260 Mr. Chaytor: But what is your assessment overall of the criteria that Ofsted are using to determine the schools that need to improve?

Clare Collins: Are you asking whether the Ofsted criteria are sound?

Mr. Chaytor: Yes.

Clare Collins: There was a survey of governors' views in the TES about a month ago. One question was whether they were happy with the Ofsted view of their school, and there was an 85% positive response. So, in essence, the answer is yes.

 

Q261 Mr. Chaytor: Are there ways in which, when a school is identified for a school improvement process, that is either too punitive or too lenient? What are the issues around how you tackle this? Is naming and shaming the right way forward, or is a softly, softly approach more effective?

David Butler: I think that it is, to some extent, the concept of a little bit of shock, horror. We have heard Clare say that she has seen one or two peculiar shocks in her own local authority. I think that even if you take that across all schools, if they are presented with a situation where their school has been deemed to require some form of improvement, you are going to get the inward drawing of breath, because probably they thought everything was fine. If you then look at the other side of that, I believe that parents will welcome the fact that these issues have been identified, because it then opens up a number of doors whereby other measures can be put in to help to return that school to the level of performance that everybody would want. I think that you have got these two stages.

Clare Collins: Naming and shaming is a really tricky issue, but sadly, the shock tactics work. There is an element of, "Oh, my God, we'll put all the resources in and we'll make something happen." The danger is that you will go for quick fixes and not for longer-term sustainable system change.

The real issue, though, is that a lot of parents out there know that the school is not great, but they don't have a choice-they don't have a voice either. The least advantaged communities don't have the power, the voice or the mechanisms, while the leafy suburbs will shout and scream until something is done. It is absolutely vital that there is a protective mechanism out there to make sure that things happen for those schools, because these are the children who need the most help.

David Butler: I was just going to add to that. I think that is why we put in our submission the need to ensure that parents understand the point at which they can trigger a concern, for example to Ofsted. We are even suggesting that perhaps Ofsted could do a little bit more to make it clear among parents what that process is so that they can actually voice their opinion. As Clare said, and I believe even Ofsted would agree, if they come in and find something-if they can dig-they often find that parents were aware of this in advance, and that is what we want to try and get to. Can we actually have that earlier intervention, because that is what we want? If you are going to have longer inspection periods, you do not want the thing to fall off the end of a cliff in the middle. You want them to be able to jump in and make sure we can do something and return the effectiveness as soon as possible.

Chairman: An effective empowerment of parents.

 

Q262 Mr. Chaytor: That was my final question really. Is there more that could be done once the process has started to engage parents in the whole school improvement process?

David Butler: The fairly simple answer to that has to be yes, but the way that there is now a trend towards opening to the doors for parents to be able to flag concerns is really effective in its own right. We now have schools wanting to engage with their parent body much more, and our research tells us that there is more and more of that going on. That is to be encouraged and promoted, because they can become partners in that process.

Clare Collins: Again, building on where I opened about strengthening the system, you have now got the school's own self-evaluation, you have the school improvement validating that on at least an annual basis, and you have Ofsted coming in every three years, and that is coupled with shed loads of increasingly good-quality data that identify small groups of children, types of groups and so on. There are fewer and fewer hiding places for schools. Now if that is all captured on the school report card in a meaningful way, and Ofsted propose to risk assess using the school report card data, I think that we are going to get that.

 

Q263 Fiona Mactaggart: I am still interested in the difference between the presentation of a school and the reality for some of the participants in it. I am anxious that none of the things that we have come up with identify ways through that clearly enough, because a school can be a great school for lots of children, but not for some of the children. How, in an accountability system, can we surface that issue, which is really difficult, but absolutely essential?

Deborah Ishihara: One way that we could do that would be to ask Ofsted, when it comes in, to drill down to a greater depth. If the school has a particular profile and certain sorts of vulnerable children-Travellers, for example-and takes a sample of various groups of children, and then talks to the parents and child and sees how that child's needs are or are not being met by the school, it would use that level of drill-down data to produce a comment on its reports. That would be one way, instead of headline figures, to try and actually drill down to a great depth.

Clare Collins: I would like to say that Ofsted is in my primary school at the moment. The pre-inspection briefing report identified a small group of children in the very way that you are talking about. It won't talk to the parents, but it will, I imagine, talk to the children, because they are identified as a group that is perhaps not making the progress that it should be making. A lot of this is down to Ofsted.

David Butler: I am conscious that you have had to compress the session. I merely want to say, before you bring it to a close, that if there are additional questions that the Committee is interested in us addressing-

Chairman: David, I always finish by saying this is a get-to-know-you session and we will continue the relationship until we write the report.

David Butler: I am very happy to do that.

Chairman: One word from Graham before we finish.

 

Q264 Mr. Stuart: Do your groups think that accountability would be improved by academies and, as with the other day's Conservative Front-Bench proposal, primary academies? Do you think freedom from local authority control and greater independence is actually going to improve accountability? Yes or no is all we have time for.

Deborah Ishihara: No, we don't think that is a good idea, unless academies are brought under the same rules of accountability as other maintained schools. They have quite a lot of freedom now to make their own rules now, so it is harder to hold them to account. We often get calls along the lines that indicate poor practices going on. They are allowed to make their own rules. In theory, that should be fine, because they are accountable to the Secretary of State, but in fact sometimes the rules they make don't take into account the rules of natural justice and fairness. It is much easier if everybody has to follow the same rules.

Chairman: Clare, do you agree with that?

Clare Collins: The National Governors Association has huge issues about the accountability of academies. I am sitting on a transition body for a school that is going from a community school into an academy and it is a complete mystery to me, so no.

David Butler: Deborah is absolutely right. We should have a common system.

Chairman: Well, Andrew Adonis and Michael Gove might disagree with that, but we shall see. Thank you, everyone.