EXAMINATION
OF WITNESSES
(QUESTION NUMBERS
60-66)
KEITH BARTLEY,
MICK BROOKES,
DR JOHN
DUNFORD, MARTIN
JOHNSON, CHRISTINE
BLOWER AND
JOHN BANGS
16 MARCH 2009
Q60 MR PELLING:
In terms of the school report card, is it a possibility for schools
or teachers or the community to grab back what some witnesses
have described as the centralisation of power, despite the pretence
otherwise that education policy is about devolution of power?
If used properly, could it be used as a means of strengthening
accountability to the community and working with the community?
DR
DUNFORD: Yes
it could, provided, as John Bangs says, it fits properly with
the rest of the accountability system. We see what we can get
rid of, as I mentioned earlier, and we actually design it so that
it complements other parts of the accountability system. In particular,
if the report card says what needs to be said about the data,
we can have a quite different kind of Ofsted inspection.
Q61 MR CHAYTOR:
Picking up on Martin's point, we hear from time to time from different
witnesses about the narrow differences between achievements in
schools. Surely that is a powerful argument for the school report
card, because the consequence of introducing a report card that
makes a judgment on a broader range of indicators would be precisely
to deliver a set of results which, for most schools, would probably
be good. You would get far less differentiation than you do now,
when judgments are essentially made by league tables dominated
by one single raw statistic.
JOHN
BANGS: Exactly.
MR CHAYTOR:
You have put up a very good argument for the report card as I
see it.
JOHN
BANGS: Yes,
only if you get rid of all the other junk that compromises it.
KEITH
BARTLEY: I think
schools would have far more ownership of the report card if the
consultative process that has been launched genuinely engaged
them and gave them some opportunity to have the kind of debate
that your questions are prompting. But we have to see it in the
context—no one has mentioned this—of the two significant
conclusions reached by the House of Lords Merits Committee's report
last week. It argued for less government reliance on regulation
in order to leave greater room for the professionalism of practitioners
to deliver against the outcomes for improving education. That
was part of your question just now. Shouldn't our focus be on
what we do to improve the actual practice of teaching in our classrooms?
As Martin said, everything tells us that is what actually makes
the greatest difference for children. The House of Lords Committee
report stated: "We call on the Department to shift its primary
focus away from the regulation of processes through statutory
instruments, towards establishing accountability for the delivery
of key outcomes." Engaging schools in how that can be measured
and presented could be a rich way forward.
Q62 MR CHAYTOR:
On the question of the single descriptor, which some of you have
objected to, what makes a school different from a hospital, a
primary care trust, a local authority or a police authority, all
of which are now allocated single descriptors, whether 1 to 5,
A to E, excellent to poor? Why is a school different?
DR
DUNFORD: I don't
find the single descriptor useful in any of those respects. If
I want to go into a hospital for a knee operation, I want to know
what the hospital is like for knee operations.
MR CHAYTOR:
But you can find that out as well.
DR
DUNFORD: That's
good. Similarly, if I'm going to stay in a hotel, I do not particularly
want to know that it is a three-star hotel. I want to know what
the facilities and rooms are like, and so on, which points to
separate grades for different aspects of school performance, and
not to a single, overall grade, which, incidentally, the colleges
have at the moment under Framework for Excellence, and I understand
are looking at getting rid of.
Q63 MR CHAYTOR:
But the two are not mutually exclusive. The concept of the report
card is to provide an overall, broad assessment, and to include
much more information as well. So if you want to know about knee
or ankle operations, or performance in year 11 or year 7, CVA,
raw stats, progress, well-being, it's all there, surely.
DR
DUNFORD: That
would be good, and I think we should encourage parents and other
people interested in these things to look behind the single grade,
but the single grade would be an obstruction to them looking to
the other information.
JOHN
BANGS: We have
to understand where the single grade comes from. It comes from
the Government's approach to public sector reform. It is a flight
from complexity. It is about giving Ministers simple solutions
to complex problems, but, as John said, those are often wrong
solutions. A single grade does not drive up motivation for institutional
improvement. What it does is tell the best people in the institution
to leave, especially if it is a really bad grade, because it can't
differentiate between those who are effective in the institution
and those who are not. It is a crude blunderbuss approach that
can lead to the best people leaving the institution. Perhaps this
is a holy grail, but it is achievable: the key issue is to have
a simple summary of the effectiveness of the institution, looking
at the key concerns and issues, without having a single grade
bracketed into four separate tiers that actually has the effect
of demoralising individual people who are really making a difference
in the institution.
Q64 MR CHAYTOR:
Just one very final point. John, do you not think that there is
a supreme paradox here? In contrast with hospitals, PCTs, police
authorities or local authorities, schools are giving single grades
to their pupils every day of the week, every week of the year.
How can you object to the public allocating a single grade to
the school when the purpose of the school's existence is to allocate
a single grade to pupils?
MARTIN
JOHNSON: The
short answer to the question is that it is not very good practice.
Q65 MR CHAYTOR:
But I have yet to hear a teachers association or anybody within
the system argue that we should completely abandon terminal grades
or GCSEs.
MARTIN
JOHNSON: We
do.
JOHN
BANGS: What
David has opened up is a huge debate about the distinction between
the evaluation of the pupil, the evaluation of the teacher, the
evaluation of the institution and the evaluation of the system.
How you actually evaluate the pupil is essentially diagnostic.
You are identifying a point to which you believe the child should
move next through whatever mechanism you use. To extrapolate that
up and say that is the way to evaluate a complex institution is
exactly the mistake that the current Government and previous Governments
have made. You cannot use one particular set of objectives for
a pupil and then use that system—for example, national curriculum
tests—as a way of evaluating the institution. What happens
is that you strip out very much that is good, and what you have
is a single result that, as I say, often demoralises people who
have made a real difference, because they are not recognised within
that single letter or number. An issue that the Committee ought
to address is simply how you look at institutions and provide
a 360° picture of the institution that is separate from how
you look at the performance of the individual pupil or teacher.
DR
DUNFORD: Can
I add another gloss to that. In a system where institutions are
being encouraged to work in partnership with other institutions,
the whole focus, which we have been discussing for two hours,
of accountability of the single institution has to be looked at
if it is going to drive us more towards partnership working and
towards system improvement and lack of polarisation, whereas the
accountability driver, at the moment, is all towards competition
between schools and beating them in the league tables.
Q66 CHAIRMAN:
If there is any area that we have not looked at in enough detail,
from where I am sitting, it is systemic change and systemic evaluation.
Mick?
MICK
BROOKES: It
depends on the purpose as well. If the purpose of giving a single
grade is either to praise or demean, I think that is not working.
As to how parents know how to choose the school for their child,
that is a real question, and the answer is that most do not, because
they will simply opt for the school that is nearest to them. If
they do, the best way of doing that is to ask the parent and pupil
population, "What is your school like?" Some schools
will not be getting those enormous numbers of GCSEs at A to C,
but are nevertheless very good schools and are heading in the
right direction. It is about having a school which is appropriate
for the child.
CHAIRMAN: Keith,
do you want to answer?
KEITH
BARTLEY: Not
on that thanks.
CHAIRMAN: This
has been a most informative session for us. It has gone on a little,
but you have all been on sparkling form. I remember the first
time I asked the unions to come in on a regular basis to talk
to the Committee, and there seems to have been something of a
change since then—you seem quite collegiate today. It is
very refreshing. This is a very important inquiry, and I am glad
that you have contributed so freely and frankly. Can you stay
with this inquiry. If you look at what has been said today and
think of things that you should have said or of other things that
you would like to communicate to us, let us know, because it will
only be a good inquiry if you help us as much as you can. Thanks
again, and I hope that you like our national curriculum report
that will come out shortly.
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