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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