Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300-319)
CHRISTINE GILBERT
CBE AND MIRIAM
ROSEN
6 MAY 2009
Q300 Fiona Mactaggart: Talking
about conflict of interest, there is an element in which people
perceive Ofsted as a judge in its own court when there is a complaint
about an Ofsted report. On how many occasions, following a complaint
from an inspected school, has Ofsted changed its judgement about
that school?
Christine Gilbert: Interestingly,
I was just looking at the last complete year, which was 2007-08,
in which there were about 300-odd complaints. About 3 or 4% of
those would have been upheld, and slightly more partially upheld.
Of the 3 to 4% of complaints, about 30 will be upheld in some
way or another. Are those figures right, Miriam?
Miriam Rosen: We would have to
check those figures.
Christine Gilbert: They are roughly
right. I can send you the details.[6]
One of the things that I have done as I have talked to schools
up and down the country is tell them not to suffer in silence.
They are to use the responses that the contractors issue at the
end of each inspection, but they are there to complain if they
feel that an inspection has been conducted badly or if the judgement
is wrong and so on. We use them to learn about what we are doing
and to improve.
Q301 Fiona Mactaggart: Let
me give you an example of what the complaint process means in
practice for a school in my constituency. In a previous report,
it was identified as a very good school. It was then inspected
in December, during Eid. In Slough, we have two different mosques.
You never quite know when Eid is going to be, because one has
it on one dayas you will know from Tower Hamletsand
another has it on another day. The school was slightly disrupted
at the time of the inspection, and it felt that that had not been
taken into account at all, and that there were areas of assessment
that the inspectors had done that were just plain wrong, so it
challenged the inspection. We are in May and the inspection was
in December. As far as I can work out from talking to the head
teacher, we have not got the next bit of the review; it is still
happening inside the private company that conducted the inspection.
The process seems to be a bit like the way in which the police
conducted things before we set up the Independent Police Complaints
Commission, which gave an independent element to such investigations.
Eventually, we will get to a more independent level, but at the
moment the investigation of the report still does not include
any element outside the original inspecting body.
Christine Gilbert: The time scales
do not seem right to me. It seems as though we are out of time
with those, and I will look at that case and write to you separately.[7]
There is a process in which the contractor looks at the complaint
and it then goes to a second stage. Only about 10% move on to
that stage. There are not many complaints, and not many of those
handled at the first stage move on to the second stage. We take
them seriously. You will have read about the case of a school
in Lincolnshireit was much reportedin which I voided
the inspection because of a number of factors. We do take the
inspections very seriously. The response that we get from schools
is that they are surprised at how seriously we take them. The
vast majorityway over 80%think that our judgements
are right and fair.
Q302 Fiona Mactaggart: I am
sure that in most cases they are. I do not doubt that, but I am
concerned that in the present systemI think that your plans
for more classroom observation will improve itit is possible
to get it just wrong. If it is possible to get it just wrong,
even if that is for only a small minority of cases, there has
to be an independent, transparent process of challenge. You know,
Chief Inspector, just as I know, that this is a big secondary
school with a confident head teacher who has been in place for
a long time. He knows that his school is good, and his local authority
knows that his school is good. He has the confidence to challenge.
A small primary school will probably just think, "Let's get
on with teaching the children rather than complain." There
has to be a simple, straightforward way to get something properly
examined, rather than this process, which seems to be full of,
"Well, there was no one else there, so you have to take my
word for it." That is part of the tension going on in this
particular dispute, and I imagine it goes on in many.
Christine Gilbert: I don't pick
that up. As I said, people write to me, and then the letter is
either dealt with informally or goes through the complaints process.
I had one yesterday where they are still not agreeing, but we
have looked at the thing in great detail and so on. There is a
process beyond the initial contractor. This has not even got to
that stage.
Q303 Fiona Mactaggart: No,
it does not appear to have done so. It went to your officer or
whatever, it was sent back to the contractor and the contractor
has responded. We have gone through all that. As far as I can
work out, the school is now putting its case for the next bit.
That seems very laborious, and not very satisfactory, because
the school has not had its inspection report published yet. I
think that it has had an impact on the self-confidence of a school
that the local authority and I rate quite highly. We have secondary
modern schools in Slough, and that secondary modern is doing well.
Christine Gilbert: I am surprised
that it has not had its report published, because one of the complaints
that I get is that we publish the report while the complaint is
going on.
Q304 Fiona Mactaggart: Maybe
it has been published, but then the school is even more depressed
by a report that it thinks is wrong. I suspect that it is wrong,
too. I do not think that that is a school that has declined in
quality. I have fairly good relations. I used to be a teacher,
and I used to educate teachers. I think that I can tell whether
schools are sustaining quality, although not in the kind of detail
that an inspection ought to be able to. This is one that I feel
confident on. I do not think that the process is sufficiently
swift, I do not think that it is sufficiently transparent and,
above all, I do not think that it is sufficiently independent.
Of the three reasons for inspection that you declared, two involve
accountability: accountability to parents and accountability to
Parliament and Government. We have to expect accountability from
you. One of our witnesses suggested that the motto for Ofsted
should be "Never apologise, never explain". I am not
following that route, but I think that in the minority of casesI
accept that it is only a minoritywhere there is real reason
to challenge inspection findings, there needs to be greater transparency
so that we can make sure that "Never apologise, never explain"
is not seen as the slogan for Ofsted. I do not think that you
have got there yet.
Christine Gilbert: I will look
into the case and get back to you.[8]
Q305 Fiona Mactaggart: Will
you look at whether you could have an independent adjudication
system much earlier on?
Christine Gilbert: We are looking
at reviewing complaints for September. What I will do is check
what we are proposing to see whether that would have addressed
what seems to have gone wrong with this case. There is an independent
complaints adjudicator at the third stage, as I said.
Fiona Mactaggart: But by then, a number
of schools have lost the will to live and think that it is not
worth pursuing. If you had that independence early on, I believe
there would be much greater confidence in what happens in Ofsted.
Q306 Paul Holmes: Can you
just explain a bit more about the independent adjudicator who
comes in at the third stage? Who are they and where do they come
from?
Christine Gilbert: As I say, there
was a change in the summer, when the contract came up for renewal.
I guess that the thing goes out under ordinary advert and the
appointment is made through the DCSF, which interviews and appoints
people. We enclose details of the complaints process and at every
stage when we write, we explain what the next stage is. Certainly,
we have not had much experience of the new adjudicator yetI
have just seen the first coming throughbut the previous
one looked at cases in enormous detail and had very positive responses
about the way that she had gone about things, even when she did
not uphold complaints. She used to issue a questionnaire about
how complainants thought that she had handled the case, and so
on.
Q307 Paul Holmes: How comparable
would you say that adjudicator is to the Local Government Ombudsman,
a Central Government Ombudsman or the IPCC? Are the adjudicators
as independent as those bodies?
Christine Gilbert: They are certainly
independent from us and we wouldn't dream of interfering with
the process; the previous adjudicator would never have allowed
us to do that either. We have the option of accepting or not accepting
the recommendations that she made. Actually, when I was chief
executive of a council, even when we got something back from the
ombudsman, you would be foolish in those cases not to accept the
recommendations. I suppose that, because they were published in
an annual report, I feel that the Local Government Ombudsman would
have had more clout. That is going back to the point that has
been made about real independence and being seen to be independent.
Q308 Fiona Mactaggart: And
the Local Government Ombudsman has an independent capacity to
investigate in some cases, don't they?
Christine Gilbert: They are going
to have that capacity; they will have new duties in terms of individual
complaints, and so on. However, I have been talking about the
independent complaints adjudicator, and it would be at the final
stage that, if a complainant was still not happy with the process,
they could go through to the Parliamentary Ombudsman. I understand
that that is the route, not the Local Government one.
Q309 Paul Holmes: But in terms
of clout, for example, the ombudsman on Equitable Life has again
really had a go at the Government this morning, saying that they
are ignoring her report and criticisms. There is nothing really
like that with Ofsted. As someone who taught in Derbyshire for
a long time and as an MP in Derbyshire, from time to time I get
head teachers or teachers, who come to me from all over Derbyshire,
saying, "How do we complain? We cannot complain. Where do
we go from here?" They still perceive the process as being
very internal and that there is nothing they can do. If Ofsted
says, "Well, tough," that is it.
Christine Gilbert: We have really
tried to publicise the complaints process. I think that I might
have said this before to the Committee, but initially people seemed
nervous about complaining, in case it led to another inspection
sooner than they would have wanted. I have tried to tell them
that that wouldn't happen. So, we have really tried to say that
the complaints procedure is here, so please use it. As I say,
we actively use the complaints and their outcomes to learn about
what we are doing and we feed those lessons into what we are doing.
Chairman: Let us move onwards and upwards.
Derek, you wanted to ask about the frequency of notice of inspections,
and I will call Andy on this question too.
Q310 Derek Twigg: Good morning
to you, Chief Inspector. What hard evidence do you have that inspection
of struggling schools leads to real school improvement?
Christine Gilbert: Inspection?
Derek Twigg: That inspection of struggling
schools leads to real school improvement.
Christine Gilbert: The evidence
of schools being placed in the category of concern is really strong
and has been strong for a number of years. If you look at the
speed with which schools now go into special measures and come
out of special measures, it is quicker than it ever was. In our
surveys of head teachers, schools in special measures come absolutely
at the top of the list on how effective the support from Ofsted
has been. They say that they find the monitoring visits very helpful,
not just in keeping the pace of progress going, but in helping
them to be sharper about assessment, evaluation and so on. Our
evidence shows that, as does the work done by the National Foundation
for Educational Research.
Q311 Derek Twigg: So you have
figures on the number of struggling schools you have inspected
and where they are today, a year or two after the inspection?
Christine Gilbert: Yes, we have
that.[9]
Q312 Derek Twigg: I would
find it useful to have thatperhaps you could provide it.
On the frequency of inspections, would you like to say a few words
about your concerns over them being every five years rather than
every three? You look at SATs and GCSE results to see whether
there is a decline in the figures. If someone got rid of the Key
Stage 2 SATs, how could you determine whether a primary school
was getting into trouble, particularly if you had not inspected
it for five years? Have you been asked about your views on removing
SATs? What are your views?
Christine Gilbert: No, I have
not been asked my view specifically. Miriam sits as an assessor
on the expert group. My view depends on what would replace Key
Stage 2 tests, were they to be removed. The Key Stage 2 results
mark the end of an important phase of education. A few minutes
ago, Miriam described the system that we will use to select schools
from September. Those results are important. A dip in the results,
particularly over two years, would start to ring warning bells
for us. It would be difficult if there were no SATs results, but
it would depend on what replaced them.
Q313 Derek Twigg: So you think
that having data on the performance of children at that age is
essential in giving an indication of the quality of the school
and whether an inspection should be done?
Christine Gilbert: I think that
it is important to have that at that stage, yes. I was very relaxed
about the removal of Key Stage 3 tests. I am not so relaxed about
the removal of Key Stage 2 tests.
Q314 Derek Twigg: Okay. When
inspections go from every three years to every five, how can parents
be reassured that the school has not got into trouble? For example,
a head teacher leaving could affect a school's performance. As
a former head teacher, you know that the head is a very important
person for the future of the school. What will parents be able
to do?
Christine Gilbert: Interestingly,
when we began the consultation, it was parents who we were most
concerned about. Although there was a very good response to the
consultation, parents were not as strongly represented as head
teachers, governing bodies and so on. Parents were very nervous.
At that stage, we were proposing six years. We have done two things
as a result of that. Even before we went out for consultation
formally, we picked up the anxiety of parents about six years
being far too long. That is why we came up with the notion of
having a health check at the three-year stage. That would be a
formal Ofsted-endorsed document that referred to the previous
inspection result, as Miriam mentioned, and to key sets of data.
Q315 Chairman: Is the health
check paper-based or based on a visit?
Christine Gilbert: Generally,
it would be paper-based. Some of the information might have been
influenced by a survey visit, because we write a very detailed
letter to the school that is placed on our website, and often
on the school's, about what we are seeing. Essentially, it would
have been data. We think that there would be text to accompany
that. To some degree, the data would be overtaken by the score
card, so initially, when the end of Key Stage 3 and the score
card were announced, we thought that we would not be doing it,
but the time frame is such that we think we need to do it. Parents
were telling us that six years was far too long for their child
to go through the school without any inspection, so we came up
with that notion and discussed it with a number of parental focus
groups, which were positive about it. They still felt that six
years was too long, which is when we came up with the proposal
to move to five years.
Q316 Derek Twigg: But if there
were no test results for 11-year-olds, how would you go about
the health check?
Christine Gilbert: We had not
done any detailed thinking about that. As I said, we would need
some information about what is going on with the school. It would
depend a lot on what was replacing test results. I do not think
that people are saying, "Nothing at 11," but there seem
to be a number of debates about what would replace test results,
which would be very serious for us.
Q317 Derek Twigg: My final
question is about the no-notice inspections. My local authority
has generously offered itself up as one of the first authorities,
which has gone down really well with head teachers. On that specific
issue, a lot of head teachers have told me basically that they
should be there when the no-notice inspection, which is such an
important event, is about to take place. They worry that there
might be a school trip and that half the school will be away.
I am sure that that practicality will come out in the early inspections,
but a large number of people being out of the school is a real
concern that has been expressed to me by head teachers.
Christine Gilbert: When we consulted
on this, one of the reasons why we put no-notice inspections in
the consultation document that we issued is that parents, often
of looked-after children, were keen to have no-notice inspection.
There was a strong reaction against it by head teachers. We piloted
itwe have got another half-term of pilots to gobut
it is interesting that the head teachers who have experienced
it have been generally positive about it. It has not produced
insurmountable difficulties, even though there have been some
difficulties. Parents have complained about it. They are saying
that they did not know the inspection was on and that it was over
before they knew about it, and so on. Governors have complained
about it because they have not been able to get into the school.
We are going to have to evaluate the pros and cons before we come
up with a proposal for what we are going to be doing for September.
Q318 Derek Twigg: Is there
any early indication at all from the early pilots that no-notice
inspections are showing anything different from normal notice
inspections?
Christine Gilbert: I don't know
that we've got enough numbers in the pilots to give you a proper
answer to that. I don't think we have, have we Miriam?
Miriam Rosen: No, I don't think
we can make that comparison.
Q319 Chairman: How many have
you done?
Miriam Rosen: We did 17 inspections
last term that were fully no-notice.
6 See Ev 141 Back
7
See Ev 141-42 Back
8
See Ev 141-42 Back
9
See Ev 139-41 Back
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