Examination of Witnesses (Question 200-219)
ANNA FAZACKERLEY,
PROFESSOR JOHN
MACBEATH
AND ANASTASIA
DE WAAL
29 APRIL 2009
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 judgements
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
judgements 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 head teachers. 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 now 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 judgements 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 invest the
time for them to be counselled 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.
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