The role and performance of Ofsted - Education Committee Contents


Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers 348-385)

Carol Glover, Head of Inspections, CfBT Education Trust, Tony Stainer, Director of Inspections, Serco, and Janet Tomlinson

12 January 2011

  Q348 Chair: Good morning. Thank you very much for joining us today to give evidence on the role and performance of Ofsted. If you are comfortable with it, we shall use first names; we try to keep things fairly informal. This is a fairly short session. I hope that we can get as much useful information out of it as possible. May I begin by asking what the impact will be of the financial context on Ofsted and the quality of its inspections? Tony?

  Tony Stainer: Do you mean the final impact on Ofsted, or—

  Chair: I'm talking about the financial pressures in the system. In every other area of public service, there are concerns about reducing budgets and what the possible impacts will be on the front line. Are you picking up risks in that regard, as far as inspection is concerned, and if so, which areas might particularly be threatened?

  Tony Stainer: Okay. I'll start by saying that budgets at the front line should be protected because, from my point of view, the teachers in front of the children are the most important commodity. In terms of inspection and Ofsted, I would say that inspection does aid improvement; that's a strong belief I have. I think if you were to reduce inspection for some schools, that would have a very serious negative impact on those schools, particularly those that are graded satisfactory and are perhaps stuck and coasting. As long as the budgets are aligned and proportionally used across the different types of providers and of inspection outcomes, that will protect the regulation of schools and standards.

  Q349 Chair: Carol, do you think that quality of inspection is going to be maintained or improved?

  Carol Glover: I think so. One of the critical factors for us, certainly as inspection service providers, is that we depend heavily on a freelance work force, as you'll be aware, and it's incredibly important, as Tony says, that we can attract the best to the world of inspection. That means that we're competing with, for example, head teacher salaries and so on. Therefore, the spend on the front line is critical if we are to continue to attract the best into inspection. One of the advantages of the current model that we operate, though, is the amount of co-operation that we've been able to generate between the three providers and Ofsted, which in itself has generated economies of scale—for example, through sharing development and training programmes. Now that the relationship is mature, as we move into the second and later years of our contract, having more of that activity gives us the opportunity, as Tony said, to protect the front line, but also to protect quality through co-operation.

  Q350 Chair: So what have the barriers been to greater co-operation?

  Carol Glover: Fortunately, on this contract, I don't see any. There is a great advantage, I think, to having three contractors, all with a very similar mandate. Two of us are long-standing providers to Ofsted. The relationship with Serco has been built very rapidly in the last year. I don't think we see a barrier. There is competition, inevitably, but co-operation has been at the heart of everything we've done.

  Q351 Chair: So Carol's very positive. Janet?

  Janet Tomlinson: I feel similarly positive. In answer to your original question, we have noticed that volumes have reduced, in terms of outstanding schools, because we're no longer inspecting those. I think that's right. Something that we would probably all like to see in the future is an emphasis on those schools that are bubbling along in the satisfactory category but are never really getting any better than that. We would certainly like to see the focus of inspection shift towards helping those schools to improve rapidly.

  Chair: Thank you very much. Lisa?

  Q352 Lisa Nandy: I suppose this question follows on from that. In the written evidence that you provided, you said that "the route from inspection to improvement" was "not always clear". Where do you see the balance lying, with those two factors?

  Janet Tomlinson: I am happy to start on that one. I think the difficulty is that when you are inspecting, you want that person and that team to be totally separate from the school. When you have inspected a school, have really got to know it, have understood what needs to happen to improve it and have started working with it, if you then go back to inspect it, you are inspecting your own work and are no longer independent. You are already part of the fabric of that school and emotionally connected with it, so if you are going to have a system whereby the people who originally inspected a school then gave advice and helped it to improve, you would have to have a different team of inspectors who came at a later stage and gave their independent view of whether that school had improved sufficiently.

  Q353 Lisa Nandy: Is that something you would agree with?

  Carol Glover: I think so. There are some very good examples set out in our paper of where we see opportunities for improvement, in terms of feedback to a school at the end of the inspection, so that there is more of an emphasis on guidance and advice before we leave the school. That is an area where we could perhaps strengthen the impact of the current model. There are elements in the current inspection framework—for example, the work we do with grade 3 schools and the follow-up monitoring visits—which seem to us to provide a very well tested template that could be rolled out further when the new framework is introduced.

  Tony Stainer: I think the current framework has a significant intensity, with a very short period for the inspection to take place. That doesn't give the lead or the team members enough time to explore the issues, or to help the school really understand those issues and be part of that dialogue. I think that having more time and more frequent visits—as with special measures schools, for example—would enable that dialogue to develop and enable the school to have a focus that is much clearer than when it gets its inspection report and Ofsted goes away.

  Q354 Lisa Nandy: Some of the evidence that has been submitted to the Committee has suggested that Ofsted is building a culture of negativity around school inspections. I am interested in your response, because although I take the point about trying to separate out the two regimes, some of the people and organisations that have submitted evidence to us have said that if Ofsted inspections were more focused on improvement and if there was a better dialogue from day one, that would reduce some of the stress and burden on the schools. Do you accept that?

  Janet Tomlinson: Partly. The evidence that we get from the feedback from the schools that we inspect is overwhelmingly that they see it as a positive experience, and value the inspection, so we think it is a small minority that feels negative about the process. However, when the framework is simplified, and inspection teams can focus on what really matters, that might help the dialogue with schools to progress, because there won't be so many peripheral items taking people away from the real focus.

  Q355 Lisa Nandy: Do any of the other panel members have any suggestions for how we might improve the process and alleviate that stress? I take your point; from your perspective, it is a small minority of people, but for them it is very real. Do you have any suggestions for how the process could be improved?

  Carol Glover: I think it's true to say that, particularly for small schools, it can be a whirlwind experience—a very short time and a very small team. Inevitably, the school wishes to be seen at its best, and to show to the inspection team just how well it is doing. It is difficult to take all stress out of an inspection process. It is almost an exam for the school, which wants to pass with flying colours. One area where there is an opportunity, perhaps, to do more is in encouraging more serving practitioners who have been head teachers to share their experience of inspection, and more practitioners becoming engaged in the inspection process—-we are trying to do that at the moment—and sharing that experience. Also, perhaps those who have been through the experience should become more of a mentor for schools coming up for inspection.

  Tony Stainer: I agree with Carol. The targets for increasing the numbers of practitioners who are inspectors will be very helpful to the system, because it begins to demystify the whole process of inspection. Originally, I think there were something like 12,000 inspectors nationally, back in the 1990s. There are a lot fewer now. Because more practitioners were actually engaged in the act of inspecting, they understood what inspection could offer and took that benefit back to their own school, which led to faster improvements in their own school, where they were working. So I agree with Carol.

  Q356 Lisa Nandy: Finally, we have heard concerns about the abolition of the SEF—the self-evaluation form. Does that concern you? Do you feel that the new framework is going to improve the dialogue? Is there scope for the framework to do that?

  Janet Tomlinson: I think the framework will help to improve the dialogue, for the reasons I set out earlier: because the focus will then be on what really matters, and schools will be clear about what really matters, as will inspectors. As I said earlier, I think that most schools find inspections fairly positive, but if they are free from having to produce the SEF, that will take away a lot of worry and bureaucracy from them. Having said that, head teachers I have spoken to recently have all said, "We're really glad that we haven't got to fill in this form, but can you give us guidance and headings for when we produce our new ones, because we don't just want to write a free essay in case it's the wrong thing?". So there's a balance there somewhere.

  Lisa Nandy: That's a really important point.

  Carol Glover: I would also say that whether it's a form, a template, a checklist or an essay that people are producing, most organisations today are used to a self-evaluative process in order to drive their own continuous improvement, and schools are no different. If we abolish all formal forms of self-evaluation preceding the inspection, the amount of time that we currently spend on inspection on site is certainly not going to be adequate.

  Tony Stainer: Similarly, some clear guidance on what should be in a good self-evaluation is needed. The Ofsted framework has to judge capacity to improve, and part of that judgment has to be around the school knowing itself and having strategies in place to build on its strengths and address its weaknesses. I think if you don't have something around that, it will make that judgment very hard to make.

  Q357 Lisa Nandy: What do you think would be the consequences of not having clear guidance?

  Janet Tomlinson: Schools would find they spent much longer working out what it was that inspectors wanted to see in self-evaluation, and there would probably be a proliferation of all sorts of outside bodies and consultancies providing different types of forms that schools might like to use. It would be much more confusing for inspectors as well, when trying to compare.

  Lisa Nandy: That's helpful. Thanks very much.

  Q358 Nic Dakin: You talked about the value of having more practitioners involved. At the moment, what proportion of your inspectors are serving head teachers?

  Carol Glover: In terms of our schools work force, the target we are working to is 20% serving practitioners. The majority of those will be head teachers. Some will be deputy head teachers. Some will be faculty heads in a very large institution. In the learning and skills arena, we are aiming for 50%, which obviously is a significant dominance of the work force.

  Tony Stainer: Currently, around 10% of our work force are practitioners, but a target for five years down the line is to have a third of them as practitioners. Across our learning and skills remit, about 40% are practitioners. The target is the same as Carol's—50%.

  Janet Tomlinson: Our figures are similar to those. With learning and skills, it's easier, because you've got colleges that are so much larger that it's easier for staff to be released to go on inspections. For very small schools, it can be difficult to release people. Also, we find that serving practitioners, particularly from smaller schools, are reluctant to leave their school too often in a year. Maybe they only want to leave to do one or two inspections, and then it's hard for them to keep up to speed with what's going on in the inspection world. It's harder for them to write the reports quickly—to do whatever they need to do quickly—because they are not accustomed to doing it that often. Again, there is a balance to be struck that we have to bear in mind.

  Q359 Nic Dakin: You are committed to increasing the number of practitioners; it sounds, from your answers, as though there are certain challenges in that.

  Janet Tomlinson: Yes.

  Q360 Nic Dakin: How are you going to address those challenges?

  Tony Stainer: Training programmes are one key method that we have. The three of us have been working together on a consistent training programme across the country that is also accredited. We are working towards an accredited programme at the moment. The other thing that we do is have regular conferences, updates and briefings for our inspectors. We make sure that practitioners who are, perhaps, not engaged as much as others are not put on to inspections that are so complex that they would become a liability to the inspection, rather than an asset. So it is about how you match the experience and knowledge of those individuals to a particular inspection type.

  Carol Glover: One of the most successful routes that we have found for attracting serving practitioners is through the inspection programme itself. We identify those who have taken an interest in the inspection of their own establishment. Those people might have been identified as a warm lead to us, either by our own inspectors or, particularly, through Ofsted colleagues, who work predominantly in some of the larger schools, where it is perhaps more easy to attract somebody. We also offer terms and conditions that are customised to the needs of a serving practitioner—a smaller number of days as our minimum expectation; more peer support, as Tony says; and signposting people to inspections that it is practical for them to achieve and to get satisfaction from.

  Janet Tomlinson: We have done exactly the same kind of things. We have also offered taster courses, so that head teachers or deputies who think they might be interested can come and do a day's course and see whether they think it is for them, and whether they will be able to step out of their school on that number of occasions.

  Q361 Nic Dakin: One of the things that have come through very strongly across the evidence base, from all areas, is a concern around the perceived inconsistency of Ofsted, particularly where additional inspectors who do not have a lot of involvement are concerned. That picture is coming through fairly strongly to us. I am not reassured by your answers to date that that will not be the picture in future. Can you give me a bit more reassurance? Are we picking up a fair picture, and what do we need to do about it?

  Janet Tomlinson: Are you talking about the difference between HMIs and additional inspectors?

  Nic Dakin: Yes, in particular.

  Janet Tomlinson: One of the things that our inspectors find, in schools particularly, is that schools are not really aware of who are HMIs and who are additional inspectors—they get very confused. We find—sometimes to our embarrassment, sometimes to Ofsted's—that schools get confused between what is Ofsted and what is Tribal. As far as they are concerned, they are having an inspection; they do not always mind or care who is doing it, as long as those people are doing it well. Certainly, in all the evidence that we get from school feedback forms, there is no discernable difference between the performance of HMIs and additional inspectors.

  Q362 Nic Dakin: In the evidence that we have had, that is the challenge that has been presented. The evidence from the teacher unions, the practitioners and the head teachers who have come to see us suggests that they have much more confidence in HMIs. It has come through to us that they would have more confidence if every inspection were led by an HMI for consistency.

  Tony Stainer: I have had a look at the feedback that we get from inspections, and I can tell you that 94% say they are satisfied with the inspection quality; 50% strongly agree; and 97% said that they would use inspection findings to move their schools forward, in terms of teaching or school improvement activity. Certainly, the feedback that we get demonstrates a high satisfaction rate for the AI-led inspections. We get very few complaints that are upheld, regarding either conduct or quality of inspection. It seems to me that there is high satisfaction and good feedback, in terms of the impact that those inspections are having.

  Carol Glover: In the comparative data that we collect on AI and HMI performance, against the main surveys, the difference is less than a percentage point in every case in the 13 questions in the survey. In the majority of cases—certainly in the north—the majority of those are in favour of the AI, with that difference of less than a percentage point. We conducted some slightly softer research recently with a group of school governors in the north, because I take the point that, anecdotally, there is a perception of difference. Of the group of school governors we surveyed, none was aware of whether they had had an inspector from HMI or CfBT, or indeed whether CfBT had organised their inspection, so there is a very seamless view of RISPs and Ofsted working together in that case. I think that it is very hard to find quantitative evidence that supports the anecdotal view, to be honest.

  Q363 Chair: Sorry to interrupt, but could you send the Committee the results of those surveys? It would be interesting to include that in our evidence.

  Carol Glover: Yes.

  Q364 Nic Dakin: Obviously, there is a conflict between what you are saying and what we have picked up across a range of people—and not simply anecdotally, but through surveys by teaching unions of their members, and things of that sort. They suggest a level of inconsistency and particular concerns around additional inspectors. That doesn't mean that there aren't very good additional inspectors, but the concern about consistency has come through very strongly. I think you are saying that we should not be concerned about that.

  Janet Tomlinson: That's what the data suggest. Our data come from all the schools and institutions that are inspected, so they come from as wide a constituency as possible, if you like, and not just from one particular group.

  Q365 Nic Dakin: Or does it mean that when somebody says to you that this is satisfactory, they are also saying to another audience that they are unhappy?

  Carol Glover: I think that's an interesting thought. Certainly, if you look at the number of complaints that we receive about inspection, which is where you would think those data would come through, the number of complaints about inspection that are formally investigated are, again, in the very low percentages—1%, 2% or 3% a year.

  Q366 Chair: It's a brave head who complains about Ofsted.

  Nic Dakin: Absolutely.

  Carol Glover: No, I think not.

  Q367 Chair: Do people feel entirely free to make formal complaints about Ofsted, without any fear of that costing them in any way?

  Carol Glover: Yes, people do.

  Nic Dakin: People do, but generally speaking, talking to head teachers whom I know, there is a disincentive in the system due to costs and time commitments. They would rather get on than go through a complaints process in which they largely do not have huge confidence. That would be my anecdotal observation.

  Q368 Chair: Based on many years' experience. Before we move on, you said that everybody is happy with the quality of inspectors, and that there's very little difference in the objectively assessed opinion on HMIs and your inspectors, and yet you all have targets massively to increase the number of active practitioners. If everything is so marvellous, why on earth do you need targets that are so different, and numbers that are so much greater than the number of active practitioners you have today?

  Janet Tomlinson: I suppose it's because we think it would be a lot better if we had more practitioners.

  Q369 Chair: So it would be a lot better if you had more? In other words, things are significantly worse than they ought to be, because you haven't got them. It can't be the case both that it's all perfect and that you want to be significantly better—and with a satisfaction rating of 94%, or whatever it is, it is quite hard to imagine that you can get any better.

  Janet Tomlinson: Well, 94% is not perfect, and I guess that we are aiming for perfection. We want to be the best, and we would aim for 100%. We may be happy with 99%, but we are not happy with 94%. It would be a lot better if we could get more serving practitioners. That doesn't mean things are bad; it means that there could be an improvement. That would particularly help schools' perception, which is one of the key things.

  Q370 Chair: Our evidence is that an awful lot of inspectors feel quite distant from the school experience. Talk about the inspectors who are furthest away from classroom experience. How far away can they be, however you want to express that?

  Carol Glover: That's an interesting question. Inevitably, inspection is something that you do in the latter years of your career, whether you are a practitioner or a self-employed member of staff. The criteria for becoming an inspector, as laid down by Ofsted, are quite strict in terms of the senior management experience that you have to have had, and the experience you have to have had of running a successful institution—not just any institution. People will therefore increasingly come to us, as Janet says, through the serving practitioner route, doing this as part of their continuous professional development. They do a few days a year with us for a few years, with a view, when they retire or downsize their career, to perhaps building that up to more of a full-time job, normally along with other school improvement activity. It's very rare to have an inspector who doesn't have a portfolio of other work, either through their day job or as a consultant, that strengthens their work as an inspector. I think the kind of people we attract are intended to be the best. It's not an easy ride becoming an inspector; it's a year's training programme with us, validated by Ofsted. We have a very high benchmark and fortunately, therefore, a very high final success rate. I don't think people move into the world of inspection lightly.

  Tony Stainer: Similarly, we have very strong quality assurance procedures across all three of the RISPs. For every inspection, the report is read and the feedback on inspectors is received. We look at the quality of the writing—

  Q371 Chair: When is the feedback received in the process? When do you ask for it?

  Tony Stainer: The inspectors feed back on each other at the end of the inspection process. That comes back in to our managers, who would then be sharing and discussing that feedback with individual inspectors. Similarly, we would look at how the reports were graded for a lead inspector to ensure that they were of high quality. If inspectors were not performing well during those inspections, that would certainly lead to a very strong discussion with an individual inspector. Because we have a freelance work force, we can quickly decide not to keep engaging an inspector. Overnight, I can just—

  Q372 Chair: What is the longest time that one of your inspectors might have gone since they actually taught a class in a school?

  Carol Glover: That is an interesting thought. I think that's probably a figure we would need to come back to you with.

  Janet Tomlinson: You could think of an average. You could think of somebody who may have taught all their life, who may have ended up being a head teacher and who may have joined inspection in their early 50s, perhaps. When they retired, they may have continued to inspect on a part-time basis, so that could be 10 years.

  Q373 Chair: Twenty? Thirty?

  Janet Tomlinson: It could be 20 years since they were a teacher, but maybe 10 since they were a head teacher.

  Q374 Chair: But it could be 20 years plus since they last actually taught a class themselves?

  Janet Tomlinson: It could be.

  Q375 Charlotte Leslie: A lot of the evidence to this inquiry, and I think some of yours, says that the inspection regime has got more complex and intricate. Do you think the complexity has had a negative impact on your relationship with the professional work force that you are dealing with and also the wider public, perhaps including parents?

  Janet Tomlinson: I think that parents find it harder to understand what happens in inspections the more complicated those inspections are. Parents understand that you need to look at teaching and you need to look at how the schools manage pupils' behaviour; are they safe and are they achieving? Parents understand that, but in some of the more complex areas I think they get confused if they are not dealing regularly with those kinds of aspects. Then it's harder to have a dialogue with parents. I also believe the feedback we get from our inspectors suggests that the more complex the framework becomes, the harder it is for them to inspect and to focus on the things that they believe matter.

  Carol Glover: I think it's true of all frameworks that they start off being simple to understand and cohesive, and are designed carefully. Inevitably, with the passage of time and political imperative or policy developments you end up with more and more bolt-ons, and therefore the seamless transparency and cohesiveness over time can be lost. We would hope very much that the next framework has a longer shelf life and is left with its original integrity for longer in order for people to understand it and to grasp it. I think people don't quite understand why the frameworks are constantly changing, and therefore the sales job—the promotion of each framework—is perhaps to the detriment of actually getting on with the business of inspecting.

  Tony Stainer: What I am about to say poses a bit of a dilemma, really, because the two-day notice period for notification of an inspection enables the inspectors to see the school in its real state, but it makes it harder for parents and governors to engage in the process. That's a real dilemma that has to be balanced in one way or another. In my previous role, when talking with governors they would express to me their frustration about wanting to go in and meet the inspectors and to be around, but they are busy; they are working, they have meetings, or they can't get back from whatever they are doing that day. So in part the framework has distanced the engagement in the inspection process, but not necessarily in the improvement processes within schools, with which governors are heavily involved. There is a real dilemma about getting that balance right and helping them feel part of the process.

  Q376 Charlotte Leslie: Where on that scale are we at the moment? Have we got it about right, or are we getting the worst of both worlds? Have you any suggestions as to how it might be improved?

  Tony Stainer: From a governor point of view, it is difficult because very often the chair of governors would want to be there and to be fully engaged, but can't. Perhaps there needs to be some kind of advice and guidance on how governing bodies could be better engaged in the inspection process. The process has to be understood. It is not something that happens and goes away; it is part of an improvement process. I don't have an answer to your question without sitting down and doing a lot more thinking, but it's a real dilemma that we've inadvertently distanced people by trying to take a true snapshot of a school or a provider at a moment in time.

  Q377 Charlotte Leslie: On a systemic, fundamental level, do you think that the user interface—I hate that word—of Ofsted with the outside world, in its website, for example, is as good as it could be? Is that unnecessarily exacerbating communication problems? Do you see that as an area for improvement, or do you think we have got it about right?

  Tony Stainer: I have quite strong views. I have worked in a very deprived area in which not all families have access to the internet. Interestingly, last year we piloted an online questionnaire for Ofsted, and we found that very few parents wanted to submit their questionnaires online. There is something about being able to sit, think something through and write it down that is very different from ticking boxes on a website.

  Q378 Charlotte Leslie: And then the page expires.

  Tony Stainer: Yes. I think Ofsted's website is well set out. I can navigate my way around it very easily—I haven't found any problems with it at all—but we are talking about our more socially deprived communities and how they access information. If we have already distanced those communities in the inspection process with the short notice and because they are not using modern technologies, we need something that builds in between that. I don't know what the role of the local authorities might be, but they will be experiencing significant cuts. Most will be doing away with their local authority inspectorates and their advisory groups, or at least minimising them. The national strategy staff are going, so, again, there will be a lack of engagement there. So there is a potential void that needs to be thought through.

  Carol Glover: The only other point that I would make is that, as Tony said, the website is very easy to access. It is a testament to the work of Ofsted that many parents depend on surveying the Ofsted reports for prospective schools before they buy a house and select a school. There is perhaps more work to be done—we have proposed this in our paper—in enabling parents more easily to access comparative data, rather than having to review perhaps 10 or 12 different reports for the area in which they live. Having a quick search that would, for example, flag up those schools in their postcode area, or those that are outstanding for a particular feature, is something that we could further develop.

  Janet Tomlinson: I agree. The Ofsted website is fine, and it is easy to navigate. One of the things that I have learned from my previous work is that there are many parents who don't want such a degree of involvement. They are busy and want to leave the professionals to get on with it, but they want to be reassured that the school their children are going to is a good school. They want the report that comes from an inspection to be in an accessible format and to address things in a way that they understand, rather than in jargon. That is probably one of the most important things that we could do to inform parents properly and clearly.

  Q379 Chair: I am taken aback by your difficulty in engaging governors. It is being made to sound as if it's a cherry on top of a cake. The governance of a school is critical to its performance. If you are unable to engage, to inspect effectively and to make some assessment of the effectiveness of the governors, surely your assessment of the school is fundamentally weakened. Isn't that true? Isn't that something that urgently needs to be put right?

  Carol Glover: Reporting back—that's only anecdotally—from talking to a group of chairs of governors, they, as Tony said, will make the time to meet the team. They would expect no less, despite the fact that often, evening opportunities are more limited than they were, with the current time fame. Perhaps where there are opportunities is engaging with the wider governing body in a large school. For example, governors may have a particular lead role or a specialism, and again, if you only talk to the chair of governors, perhaps you're not picking up all of those nuances. Within the time frame that we have at present, it is very difficult to see how you could engage every governor or the whole governing body without something having to give.

  Q380 Craig Whittaker: Evidence so far to the Committee shows that there is systemic concern about mediocrity, particularly in terms of those schools that are grindingly satisfactory year on year. The evidence that you've submitted shows support for the Government's two-tier system to split into two grades. From the White Paper, what do you think will be the issues in making that happen under the new Government's policy?

  Janet Tomlinson: I think one of the issues from the White Paper will be outstanding schools and the need to establish criteria to do a desktop exercise annually just to check that something has not happened that could mean that those schools are no longer outstanding. We put some suggestions to that effect in the evidence that we submitted, and I think it would be an important check to make sure that institutions don't slip through the net because of leadership changes, a sudden plummeting in exam results or anything of that type. That is one aspect of the White Paper, and as long as that safeguard is built in, it's absolutely right that we don't regularly look at outstanding institutions. We just need to make sure that they don't get out of that category.

  Q381 Craig Whittaker: What about, in particular, the schools that are satisfactory year on year, which currently slip through the net? What are the issues involved in ensuring that the standard of those schools improves on inspection?

  Tony Stainer: What we do with schools that go into a grade 4 category—the workshops and the monitoring visits—helps focus exactly what those schools need to do to improve. I think if we had a similar process for "stuck" schools—for want of a better word; all those schools that have hovered around the national standards for the previous few years, where they do appear not to be making rapid improvements—there would be a better opportunity to be a critical friend rather than just a critic of the school. I think that is what happens with special measures for a noticeably improved school, where different people go back to look at that institution and to help it understand the issues that it faces. I think that it is the professional dialogue that comes from all of that that is missing for those grade 3 schools.

  Carol Glover: I think we welcome the proposal to split the satisfactory grade into two and have a customised twin-track approach. I feel that there is still some difficulty, in public perception, with the use of the term "satisfactory". Is "satisfactory" okay? Is it just good enough? Can everybody be "good"? As Janet said, if you take the outstanding schools out of the system, you are automatically ratcheting up the benchmark for the other grades. So I think it may be timely to look at the term "satisfactory" itself. Many parents are happy with schools that are satisfactory, and I think we need to do some educating with parents and other stakeholders in the process—governors—about what the difference between a satisfactory and a good school may be. I agree with Tony about the opportunity to have more leave-behinds from the inspection process for those schools and to perhaps set more finite time scales for improvement, which was the case in the past. But that doesn't mean that Ofsted's role as a critical friend may therefore tend far more to the critical, and less towards being a friend of those schools.

  Q382 Craig Whittaker: Going back to Janet's point on outstanding schools, if we are not inspecting them ongoing, how do we know where the best is in the system and how do we link those into improvement for satisfactory schools in particular?

  Janet Tomlinson: I think that is a concern, and it is certainly a concern that inspectors have expressed to us. At the moment, because they have been seeing a lot of outstanding schools, for example, then they have a very clear idea about what outstanding schools look like and they carry that with them as they look at other schools. Once those are removed and they are not regularly seeing outstanding schools, they are concerned that their own standards may start to slip, or that they might lose that feeling of what an outstanding school is like. We need to build into the system a way of making sure that outstanding schools are still looked at in some way or other, and that inspectors can still carry that view of an outstanding school in their head.

  Q383 Craig Whittaker: But how do we link them into helping those satisfactory schools, because that is important?

  Janet Tomlinson: I think if you are regularly seeing different types of school and you are regularly experiencing all those elements that make a school outstanding, then if you are helping another school to improve, you carry that vision with you. Ofsted has been incredibly successful, and the whole inspection regime has been successful, in lifting up the baseline. We have got far fewer schools that are in special measures and having serious difficulties. But it is those schools that are at that bottom end of satisfactory, which have been at that level for a very long time, where I think we should all be putting our energies in the future.

  Tony Stainer: The role of the local authority, as well, is the role that I would look to for ensuring that outstanding and good schools are engaged appropriately in supporting others. Ofsted's role isn't to start saying, "You should be networking there and have you looked at practice over there?" But actually, with the outstanding schools, when we get the annual report from HMCI, there still needs to be something about those outstanding schools in the report, otherwise we will get a very one-sided view of what progress in learning is like across the country. I think that poses some problems and that is about how you do desktop exercises and maybe sampling on a year-on-year basis. So I agree with the others. I don't think we should just leave them alone and assume that because standards are high the teaching has remained at a high level.

  Q384 Tessa Munt: I want to touch on a couple of points that have come up. Janet, you said that most parents want to be reassured that the school that their children is going to is a good school. I just think that there is a bit of a conflict. When we look at splitting "satisfactory" into two grades—and if I broadly paraphrase that as schools with a chance of improvement and schools that are stuck—the danger or threat, as I understand it, is that effectively they might be judged as inadequate at some point and that that would be the beginning of a downward spiral for a school that is probably delivering education that is somewhere between just okay and okay, and very okay, but not brilliant. How might you manage that process so that we do not end up with a downward spiral?

  Janet Tomlinson: Going back to some of the things that we said earlier, if we start adopting a similar technique for those schools to the one that we use with schools that are failing at the moment—we give more support, or we go back and visit and give extra help in that way to the school—I think if parents are reassured that the school is just satisfactory, but in recognition of that it will now be receiving this additional support so that it very quickly becomes improving, that is the kind of reassurance that parents want. I think you are right. If we just say to them, "Okay, well it's satisfactory, but it's not good enough", that is not very helpful to you as a parent. But if you have that message plus, "These extra resources are going in to help it improve quickly", I think that is more reassuring.

  Carol Glover: Also, we were talking about the way that feedback is given to parents. Parents would always wish their local school to be better if there is an opportunity, I'm sure. By making sure that we tailor the feedback to schools and the feedback to parents in a way that parents can identify with the areas for improvement, understand them and help to drive them through their engagement with the governing body and so on, I think that that's an ideal opportunity. Perhaps we miss a trick at the moment in spelling out in reports just how a school can improve—not necessarily giving direction, but giving a clearer steer on sharing information, as Tony said, on how other people have done it. There is a tremendous track record, as Janet said, of schools moving from inadequate to satisfactory, and from satisfactory to good. There is a huge mine of information that we should be using and beginning to share with these schools, because the ultimate sanction is being stuck, and therefore not improving the lives of their local communities.

  Tony Stainer: It can take some schools a long time to shift the standards from where they are to where they want them to be. Standards do not only means test results—this is about how inspection aids the improvement of standards, as well as the whole child. Very often, you can get wound up in mediocrity, because the school sees that broader whole child, but forgets one element of challenge. It is then about how you go back to a system that works through the school. Systems can take a long time to change and have an impact on learners. For me, in stuck schools it is about ensuring that teaching is strong, engaging and challenging. That is a long process.

  Q385 Tessa Munt: I want to ask you for a one sentence answer to my final observation, which is that we then have the possible upheaval of a different set of measures. For example, I was speaking to one of my local head teachers. She has been the head of an outstanding school. Her observation was that if her school was measured against the English baccalaureate under new criteria and if you looked at measuring language, her school would have been failing by now. When you change the criteria, how are you going to manage the process of not saying to every school, "Oh dear"?

  Tony Stainer: In our paper, we rehearsed the whole notion that data are one thing, but professional judgment is another.

  Janet Tomlinson: In terms of changing the criteria or changing the framework, if what you are doing is simplifying what you already have, you are not actually changing the benchmark. You are simply making it easier for inspectors and schools to focus on what really counts.

  Carol Glover: The other secret is the investment in the briefing, the guidance and the understanding of head teachers before a new framework is introduced, so that people understand what they are being inspected against.

  Chair: Thank you all very much for coming this morning; it has been a useful session.



 
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