Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
438-483)
Lord Hill of Oareford CBE and Tim Loughton MP
2 March 2011
Q438 Chair:
Good morning. It is a great pleasure to have two Ministers of
the Crown with us this morning to discuss Ofsted, and I welcome
you both. The Education Bill, which is in Committee at the moment,
has elements that affect Ofsted. Would it be fair to say that,
so far, nothing has come out of Government on Ofsted, other than
to do with education? And if not, why not?
Lord Hill: The Education Bill,
as you say, sets out proposals on the education aspect of Ofsted.
Tim Loughton: On my side, on children's
social care, it is very much a subject of Professor Eileen Munro's
review. I think I raised it in Committee before, Chair. It is
the subject of some of the work she has been doing and some of
the recommendations she is likely to come out with, which I shall
talk about in more detail. She flagged that up in the interim
report back in January as regards serious case reviews and the
work Ofsted has been doing on children's homes. In fact, Ofsted
has produced a report today that is influencing our work around
looked-after children. There has been quite a lot of interaction
between my side of the Department and Ofsted, but given that Ofsted's
future is part of the review that we are conducting in the Department,
and that this Committee is part of that inquiry, obviously there
is a lot more to come.
Q439 Chair: As ever with Ofsted,
it feels as if everyone understands it to be an education inspectorate
and they do not really have much feel for its other roles, despite
the fact that education is a relatively small part of its overall
remit. The impression given by Government is that they seem to
be as confused by Ofsted's broad remit as everyone else.
Tim Loughton: I don't think that
confusion is coming from us. I think you know that I have been
quite vociferous in my analysis of Ofsted's capacity to inspect
children's social care, particularly as regards the way it handles
authorities when they go wrong, the way it handles serious case
reviews and the way it handles CAFCASS as well, because that is
another role. CAFCASS is another big challenge our Department
is facing at the moment, and another review going—
Q440 Chair: But I wrote to you,
Minister, asking you about the fact that outstanding schools were
going to be inspected on a less frequent basis, and whether there
was an implication there for other settings outside of schools.
I received a holding reply, further adding to the sense that the
Department hadn't quite got round to thinking about anything other
than schools.
Tim Loughton: With respect, Chair,
you would have got a holding reply pending the Munro review, because
that is pretty central to what Eileen Munro is doing. I can't
remember the date of the holding reply, but a copy of Eileen Munro's
interim report in January may have been attached to it, so you
would have had some clear steers about the role of Ofsted in terms
of frequency of inspections; about whether it is a universal service
or more tightly focused; about whether we should have only unannounced
inspections, as Eileen Munro has clearly indicated, and about
whether Ofsted should have an oversight of serious case reviews,
on which Eileen Munro has also given clear indications. I don't
think it would have been appropriate for us to say definitively
what we were going to do.
There have been some strong steers in the interim
Munro report, but it is only the interim report—we will
have the full report at the beginning of May. I think that our
minds will be quite easily made up at that stage, and we can then
take some of those recommendations forward, with big implications
for Ofsted.
Q441 Chair: Do you feel that Ofsted
is doing a good job on settings outside schools at the moment?
Tim Loughton: That brings us to
the nub of the question. The immediate answer is that I don't
know. It is difficult to tell for two reasons. First, it could
be that Ofsted is doing a fantastic job. Some very good inspectors
are producing some very good and useful reports, which are being
gratefully taken up by the various settings of care that they
are inspecting. But are they inspecting the right things? Ofsted
can inspect only the national standards and guidance issued by
national Government—its whole inspection framework is set
around that—and my concern is whether we are actually asking
Ofsted to inspect the right things. Is it a quality-based inspection
rather than a processes and structure-based inspection? That is
where I have some serious questions.
I will give you one example. I have been doing
a lot on adoption recently and, last week, we published radical
and strong new guidance on adoption. I think that that will now
play very strongly into the way in which Ofsted inspects adoption
services as part of its children's social care inspection. I think
it will have to change its approach. As it stands, almost three
quarters of adoption services in this country are rated "good"
or "excellent," which is disproportionately more than
the underlying children's services departments, but I do not think
that the adoption system in this country is excellent or even
good. There are some examples of some really good and excellent
practice, but it is very patchy.
Where the figures show that adoption has been
falling, where there are serious problems around inter-ethnic
adoption, and where we are failing older kids getting to adoption
and so on, the results of the Ofsted inspection are not a reflection
of where I think the system is going. It may be that those inspections
are a good reflection of what they are supposed to inspect, but
I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in improving the inspection
system, and I want an inspection system that enables us to identify
the weaknesses and improve the quality of the system overall.
I am not convinced that we have that.
Q442 Chair: Do senior management
in Ofsted reflect the breadth of the remit?
Tim Loughton: There has been a
question in the past—and I was quite vociferous some years
ago in opposition—about the fact that there was no social
worker on the board of Ofsted. I think that Ofsted itself admitted
that. It only took over those functions from CSCI in 2007, but
I think it took a while before it made sure that it was recruiting
some senior management people. Obviously, it took on a lot of
people from CSCI with a social work background and expertise.
John Goldup, whom you have had before you already, was the first
senior person at director level to come in with a very experienced
background in social work, but I would like to see more of that.
You say that inspecting schools is a minority
consideration within Ofsted. Certainly, the ethos gives the impression
of being rather more schools-focused.
Chair: It certainly does.
Tim Loughton: We had a discussion
in the Department earlier and I think that inspecting children's
social care is a far more complicated and discretionary area than
inspecting schools and exam results and so on. It needs a broad
range of expertise of all those different areas outside schools
to inspect. More could be done.
Q443 Chair: Can you tell us what
the non-executive board does?
Lord Hill: The board that sits
over the whole of Ofsted rather than the executive board?
Chair: Yes.
Lord Hill: Its job, as one would
expect from any non-execs, is to hold the chief inspector and
Ofsted generally to account.
Q444 Chair: It feels very different
from a normal non-executive, doesn't it? Aren't its powers rather
prescribed?
Lord Hill: Its powers are prescribed
in the sense that it can't intervene in specific inspection issues
and all the rest of it, but in terms of its general duty to make
sure that Ofsted is delivering its key role, I think that is its
primary function. As Mr Loughton said, the opportunity is for
strengthening both at the executive board level and at the main
board level. I think there is an opportunity for extra members
to be appointed to the board, which might address some of these
issues.
Q445 Nic Dakin: Welcome, both
of you, and thanks for coming today. According to PISA data, Finland
outperforms the UK consistently and has no Ofsted inspection and
nothing similar to it. Is that not an argument for getting rid
of Ofsted altogether?
Lord Hill: I know that the Committee
has had the good fortune to go to Finland. I sadly haven't and
I would be interested to hear whether, in your experience, there
are lessons that we can draw from what is, as you say, a very
successful educational jurisdiction. When one looks more broadly
across Europe, the preponderance of countries do have some form
of inspection regime. In terms of whether it is sensible to extrapolate
from the one example that we ought to follow the same route or
not, I don't know enough about the Finnish model—it makes
a change from the Swedish model, which we hear a lot about—to
know whether it is worth pursuing. But if you take the international
example point and look at it from the other end of the telescope,
the fact that, as I understand it, quite a lot of overseas countries
beat a path to Ofsted to ask it what it does in terms of inspection
makes me think that it's difficult to draw too much from the one
example.
Tim Loughton: May I answer that
as well? I have been to Finland. In opposition, I took a group
from the children's team, in our own time, to Finland and Denmark.
We went to schools, nurseries and children's homes there. Part
of the success of Finland, Denmark and other Scandinavian countries
is due to the high standard that they require of people in early
years settings in particular, although I could point to quite
a lot of weaknesses in relation to children in the care system
there as well. They have disproportionately more children in the
care system, with all sorts of problems. So what happens in Finland
is not a universal panacea; it is just that the Finns do it differently.
Q446 Nic Dakin: When we were there,
we were looking at schools rather than other services, and I think
we would probably draw different conclusions because that's the
nature of how we are as human beings, isn't it? But certainly
it was clear that the Finns invest very heavily in their education
system. They also trust their head teachers and their other professionals.
Their accountability is very local. There is very close monitoring
locally, which seems to be a key part of their system.
Given that the Government are committed to localism,
wouldn't this be an opportunity to embed a more localist approach
in the monitoring and accountability system, based on trust and
empowering head teachers? That would probably draw on the strength
in the Finnish system. I take the point that you made, Minister,
about things not being perfect. There are things for them to learn
from us as well. So there may be elements of the Ofsted system
that we need to preserve.
Lord Hill: There are two aspects
to what you've said. The notion of trying to have more local accountability
is absolutely right. This is part of what lies behind what the
Government are trying to do more generally in terms of making
more information available to parents about how schools are doing
and trying to do that in an accessible way. One of the issues
about Ofsted reports generally is use of the English language
so that a normal member of society can read a report and understand
what is being said, rather than something being written in a way
that appears to make it harder to get to the nub of an issue.
We need more information, and more information locally.
On school improvement, I know that the Committee
has been looking at the relation between inspection and school
improvement. I very much share your view of the importance of
that being delivered locally, with schools working together and
groups of schools working together and learning from each other.
That is the way forward. Having some national system, though,
that attempts to deliver consistency—another difficult issue—so
that people in different parts of the country can have a sense
of what a particular judgment means and where their school is,
performs a useful role as well. Inspection on its own is not the
answer. It is one tool and it shines a spotlight on something,
but I see it as part of an armoury of measures, rather than a
single silver bullet.
Tim Loughton: May I add a technical
point that comes back to Finland? I am keen to challenge Finland,
because I took great issue with the previous Committee's report
on looked-after children based on what they had seen in Finland—I
thought that their analysis of the data was flawed. We can have
two views on that. It sounds, Nic, as though you are almost suggesting
that we go back to the pre-1995 level, when councils did their
own inspections. One difference in children's social care in Finland
is that children's homes, for example, are almost exclusively
run by the municipalities themselves on a very local basis. There
is not the mix of provision that there is in this country—that
is one obstacle to just being inspected internally by the council.
The bigger point, which is something we are
interested in and is an approach that I have taken in terms of
intervention in the children's services department, is that there
is a bigger scope for peer mentoring. Good councils can help other
councils that are experiencing weaknesses in certain areas. That
is an approach that the ADCS and the LGA cover. In the past, there
has been too much pointing of fingers and waving of big stick,
saying, "You have got to get it right or we'll beat you around
the head." We need to appreciate that there are problems
in this area. Some people are doing it well; some aren't doing
so well. Let's share best practice, which we are still really
bad at in this country.
Q447 Nic Dakin: I don't think
there is any desire to go backwards. There is a need to go forwards,
but local knowledge and understanding of what is going on is very
powerful. Certainly, in the evidence we have heard over the course
of this inquiry, it has been clear that Ofsted sometimes gives
over-generous reports to schools or other agencies that could
be doing better, because it hasn't levered in other local knowledge
in a more systematic way. One of the strengths of the Finnish
system appears to be that localised focus—that is the bit
I was teasing out. Ofsted has done a big thing, but where do we
go with Ofsted now? It has certainly taken us forward, but is
the way to drive us further forward by strengthening local knowledge
and local empowerment, in a Finnish way, or is it to go back to
more top-down procedural stuff?
Tim Loughton: But there are hazards
inherent in that as well. Do you want a truly independent person
coming into an area who is able to have a truly dispassionate
view based on a broad knowledge of quality thresholds elsewhere
in the country? If you are looking for inspectors to be localised
as well, they can get a skewed picture.
Q448 Nic Dakin: I are not arguing
for local inspectors. It is a more subtle argument. Lord Hill
might want to come in.
Lord Hill: I think you are arguing
about whether there should be more scope within the inspection
process for getting local knowledge and making judgments that
reflect that, rather than arguing for a system of completely local
inspection. I think that that highlights one of the tensions in
inspection and how one tries to have a consistent and coherent
system. I sat in on an inspection before Christmas and I saw very
clearly that the inspectors did a very professional and thorough
job, operating within the framework that they had been given.
The nature of that framework, though, drove them down a particular—
Nic Dakin: Cul-de-sac?
Lord Hill: Well, I was going to
say "tunnel"—tunnels have exits and cul-de-sacs
don't. It took them down particular lines and I could see how
the nature of the questions, the framework and the judgments that
they had got to make steered the conversation the whole time.
That led to less space for some of the more contextual judgments.
One point is to strip down the inspection framework. A consequence
of the current system is that there are so many things to check
with little time to do so, that it becomes more and more formulaic.
If one strips that back, I hope that will leave more space. There
is still the issue about judgment and localism and trying to get
a consistent, coherent national framework, so that there are not
different accusations of unfairness. That is an extremely difficult
balance and I don't know where it should be struck.
Q449 Craig Whittaker: I just want
to touch on Nic's point. What is clear at local level and from
the panel of experts we have had coming here, is that there is
real confusion around its purpose. Is it there to be a regulator,
an investment tool, an improvement tool? What is the new framework
going to be? You want this national, coherent and consistent framework;
it has to have a specific purpose. What is that going to be?
Lord Hill: Shall I kick off, on
the schools side? The starting point for inspection is to shine
a spotlight on a school, so that parents, the school itself and
the broader community can have a view in time of how that school
is doing. The question in some ways puts a false choice, by asking
whether it is inspection with a policeman kicking the door down
with heavy boots, or an improvement, putting arms around and helping
understanding. The starting point is inspection and finding out
what is going on. The lessons that come from that inspection should
help a school go forward and do what is necessary to bring about
improvement. That process of improvement will take a number of
forms: some will be schools working together and some will be
external support—a whole range of different things. If one
does not have the benchmark, it becomes harder for people to ask
the questions, particularly parents.
Q450 Craig Whittaker: So it is
a regulator. The core focus of Ofsted then, initially, has to
be that it is a regulator.
Lord Hill: I wouldn't use the
word "regulator". I would say that it is there to shine
a light and that is the beginning of the process. If one looks
at the terms of reference from the Education Inspections Act 2006,
the purpose of Ofsted is to be part of the system of improvement.
I don't think it is an either/or; it is a continuum. My answer
is that the starting point is that one needs to have a rigorous
system of shining a light, even though some people on the receiving
end of the light being shone around find that it is a bit bright
in their eyes. One has to start with that and work on to the improvement.
Q451 Chair: Surreal images. Do
you want to come in, Minister?
Tim Loughton: Yes, I have a little
to add to that, without using metaphors, perhaps. There are four
headlines I would apply to Ofsted. One is about accountability,
so that people know they have to account for the quality of service
they are running. Two is about transparency, so that nothing is
hidden. Even Ofsted and its inspection regime can miss a lot of
things. We have seen that some of the scandals in nurseries are
in places that are being "Ofsted-ed" out of sight. They
still happen, so the Ofsted inspection is not the be-all and end-all.
It is just one tool, as Jonathan has said. Three is about relativity,
in terms of how certain departments are doing compared to elsewhere.
That is largely about ensuring that we are learning from the examples
of the best. For example, today Ofsted produced a useful report
based on outstanding children's homes. It has analysed 12 children's
homes rated outstanding, asking how they are doing it differently
and how we can learn from them. It is very important to share
best practice.
That goes into the fourth thing, which is about
improvement as well. Absolutely, a key objective of Ofsted must
be to highlight not just poor practice but good practice, and
ensure that poor practice is improving to the level of good practice.
Without any torchlight analogies, appropriate though they are,
those are the four areas that Ofsted is focused on.
Q452 Chair: With respect, Ministers,
I don't think you've clarified much there. There is a separation,
and in the minds of senior inspectors who have given evidence
to this inquiry, there are clear differences in role. You can
try to have them fulfil more than one role, but you need clarity
about what role they are fulfilling. You have a primarily regulatory
role. You can change the whole way Ofsted works, if you want it
to work as a partner with schools: following up on the information
that it has gathered, following up with others, working in partnership
and then having conflicts, as people will say, because it has
a stake in progress, improvement and being seen to improve. Those
who work in the field are clear that they need greater clarity
about what they should be doing so that they structure and use
limited resources most effectively. I am not sure that either
of you has given that clarity today.
Tim Loughton: That's why we're
having a review. The timing of this is slightly unfortunate, in
that we're reviewing the future of Ofsted. We've made a clear
undertaking on the schools side that we're going to shrink it
down from 27 to four main areas to give greater focus and clarity.
There are going to be some clear things coming out of the Munro
review in terms of a different type of better-focused, less regular
inspection. Some of the things that Ofsted has responsibility
for in social care, such as serious case reviews, may not be part
of its remit in future.
We're in a sort of transitional period. You're
asking us to account for how we got here with Ofsted and at the
same time to identify some of the weaknesses, which is why we
are doing a review. We're trying to give you some of our ambitions
and visions for where we think Ofsted should be doing a lot better
in future.
Q453 Chair: I am trying to tease
out where you want the emphasis to be. As the system progresses,
do you see it morphing from a primarily light-shining regulator
into a partnership approach that encourages peer review and leadership?
Pat Glass: In a sense,
we are not asking you to account for how we got here. What we
are asking you to give us today is your vision of where it should
be in the future. I accept that there's a review going on, but
you must have a vision of where you think Ofsted sits within the
framework of education. That is what we're looking for.
Tim Loughton: You do education,
and I'll do social care.
Lord Hill: Forgive me if I got
lost in my own metaphors. I was trying to say—I thought
I had, but forgive me, as I obviously didn't—that I see
the primary task on the schools side as being shining the spotlight.
That enables people to see what is going on. Going forward, in
terms of how that fits into our broader thinking on school improvement,
the direction of travel on school improvement more generally is
to try to encourage local approaches, to go back to Mr Dakin's
point, and to try to encourage schools to work together and learn
from best practice.
I think Ofsted performs an effective role in
terms of publishing the 35 or so surveys of good practice that
it does each year. Mr Loughton mentioned the one on children's
homes, and there was a good one before Christmas on SEN, which
was full of extremely good recommendations and has helped shape
our thinking on the Green Paper. It is worth thinking about whether
there is more in that area that one could do. My answer on schools
would be that it is primarily inspection and seeing what's going
on. That is then just part of the broader school improvement piece.
Tim Loughton: Let me give you
a clearer example. The adoption example was perhaps a good one,
but on social worker reform and the work that Eileen Munro is
doing, it's very clear to me and to her—she identified it
in her interim report—that the whole system of safeguarding
involving social workers has become skewed by a focus on the demands
and rigidity of regulations.
We have a system now where social workers spend,
as we know, up to 80% of their time in front of computers, filling
in forms and following processes, which is not improving the quality
of safeguarding of children, and children are no safer as a result
of that. But they are being inspected largely on how well they're
spending that 80% of their time sitting in front of their computers
filling in those forms. That seems to me to be the wrong sort
of inspection, which is how I started my comments.
So what we are going to be doing is ripping
up a lot of that regulation process so that those social workers
can spend more time doing their job of being a social worker out
on the front line, and that is what I want inspectors to inspect.
Inspectors will monitor a teacher in the classroom, and it seems
absurd that an inspector inspecting a safeguarding department
does not go out with the social workers. They should go out with
them on the job to see how they are doing it, and how they interact
with those vulnerable families and how inefficient the system
is if action needs to be taken in terms of how they take that
problem back to the office, how they engage with other agencies,
etc., etc. I want the boxes to be ticked—if we have any
boxes—based on the quality of the job that the person did
and the quality of the outcome that they achieved, not the fact
that they followed all the procedures, which might result in the
child still being harmed. That is what I want to achieve.
Q454 Pat Glass: A priority for
me is that in terms of education, we are obviously looking at
a largely inspection service within a school improvement framework.
Within social care you are looking at a largely service improvement
model based upon inspection, so it is doing two different things.
Tim Loughton: It is doing two
different things to an extent. It must make sure that the system
is doing what the system needs to do in keeping up with the latest
training requirements and everything in safeguarding. It has been
a fast-moving process, and we have learned many lessons over the
last few years post Baby Peter. It needs to make sure that the
quality is there, but it also needs to make sure that the scope
for improvement is properly taken on board, and that they are
improving and learning from the best.
To an extent CSCI did some quite good things
in the past. I am not trying to recreate it, although some people
might like that. It was a critical friend, and it also had an
improvement advisory role. I know Ofsted would like to have that
sort of role if resources allow, and that could be a useful role.
The structure that Munro will try to create will be one of being
able to monitor, and also to pass on best practice. We should
have serious case reviews that reveal good practice, and are not
based just on bad practice. I want Ofsted to be part of a constructive,
positive improvement process, working with other authorities that
are also doing a good job, and trying to act as a broker to put
some of those people together. At the moment, it is too much a
matter of saying, "Look out, Ofsted is coming along; we'd
better stand up and look lively," rather than welcoming it
in many cases.
Q455 Tessa Munt: I have two quick
questions—well one is long, but I will ask the quick one
first. You've just described trying to ram this square peg into
a round hole to a certain degree, and it may become clearer with
the Munro report and all the rest of it, but as you have pointed
out, we have child care, child minders, children's homes, adoption,
fostering, prison learning, CAFCASS, adult learning, initial teacher
education, pupil referral, and all taxpayer-funded schools and
some independent schools. One just wonders whether one should
be reducing Ofsted's remit slightly, and finding some other vehicle
to do the accountability and inspection for some of these things.
I wondered what your perception was of the percentage hit of all
those different organisations nationwide that get Ofsted-ed
Tim Loughton: Part of the argument
has been whether children's social care and schools inspection
should be part of the same thing.
Tessa Munt: And all those other things.
Tim Loughton: But to come to your
point specifically, within children's social care and related
things, there is a whole load of other subsets—that is absolutely
right—not least CAFCASS, which is a completely different
form. The point I'd make is, one, there are lots of interrelated
disciplines across those different activities that are complementary
and useful to have, so when inspecting a PRU, it is not just about
why that child's educational attainment at school has not been
what it might be. There are a lot of welfare, and perhaps safeguarding
and behavioural problems behind that as well. Disciplines from
other parts of inspection can be brought to bear. We need an holistic
inspection system that is able to offer a more holistic and joined-up
approach. There is a considerable financial saving in having those
departments together, but that should not drive the activities
of Ofsted, and the system must be based on the quality of what
is being done. We do not have a fleet of inspectors directly employed
by Ofsted who are expected to be Jacks-of-all-trades. Some are
directly employed as HMIs, and some are contracted out. There
is the flexibility to buy-in expertise in certain areas, and that
is one of Ofsted's strengths. We do not expect a schools inspector
suddenly to become an expert in how the family court division
works.
Lord Hill: The key question is
whether the right people are performing the different bits of
inspection in those different fields—yes or no? If they
are, do they all sit in one big entity? Provided things are being
done properly, I personally would not be too fussed about whether
they sit in one big entity, and that would lead to the sorts of
savings we are talking about. Are the right people doing the right
job? That is the key question. For me it is less of a structural
matter. You could argue that it could be done by lots of different
organisations, or it could all be in one.
Q456 Tessa Munt: Yes, but I know
we have experience. We heard during other evidence that there
were people inspecting schools who had not taught in a school
for 20 years.
Chair: If at all.
Tessa Munt: Indeed. Some of them had
not taught.
Lord Hill: That is a perfectly
good and proper point about whether the right people are doing
inspection in different areas. It is a slightly different point
from whether it should be done by one body or not. I agree that
there are questions on my side—and I am sure on Mr Loughton's—about
whether we have inspectors with relevant, recent experience. There
is a strand of argument that states that an HMI is good, but additional
inspectors are not so good. One slight irony, however, is that
almost by definition the HMIs are those who have had the least
recent classroom experience. It is not completely clear cut, but
I know that Ofsted is seeking to increase the proportion of its
AIs who have had practitioner experience.
Q457 Tessa Munt: It is not just
about classroom experience. Who is going to inspect child minders
and education in prisons? There are all those things that we definitely
need to consider.
I want to get to my main point. I am utterly
sure that if there is a criticism of what has happened before,
it might be that we have been focused on exams and exam results,
and that is broadly how we measure schools—I want to concentrate
on the schools. It is clear to me that we should be measuring
progress, which is a completely different thing. There will be
some children who are the least advantaged when they enter the
school system—or any sort of education system, be it at
two, three, four or five years of age—right the way through
to those who are most bright, and we need a system of measuring
progress.
Having spoken to several primary school and
first school teachers, and to the middle schools in my area, it
is clear that those head teachers are completely on top of measuring
progress. Their ability to assess the progression of a particular
child, or every child, is tested when those children move to middle
school or into the secondary sector. I am not sure that there
is quite the rigour on individual progression in the upper or
secondary schools. That is when the focus automatically turns
to, "What are you going to do when you grow up? Which exams
are we going to ram you through?" Part of my concern arises
from the fact that if you look at exams, we just have exam measurement.
That means that head teachers are very bothered about putting
young people through resits, so that they get the results.
Chair: Your question please, Tessa.
Tessa Munt: Yes, this is important.
Chair: It may be important, but I still
want a question.
Q458 Tessa Munt: It is about whether
we measure quality in terms of progression and whether, in fact,
Ofsted should not be given a completely different framework by
the Government in terms of only measuring progression. That will
decimate the whole notion of just measuring schools on exams.
Lord Hill: Going back to my earlier
answer, the whole question of trying to provide more information
of all sorts about how schools are doing relates to your point
about progression as opposed to—or alongside—achievement.
In terms of setting floor standards for schools
that they need to be above, one of the things, which speaks to
your point, is that we've introduced a progression measure for
precisely the point you made. Children come in different shapes
and sizes and schools have different intakes, and to judge solely
on the basis of attainment when children come from a range of
different prior achievements does not seem to be a very subtle
measurement of how the school is doing. I agree with your basic
point.
Q459 Tessa Munt: But Jonathan,
the problem is that what you are saying—and what you said
earlier—is that the Government's job is to set the framework
to see where that school is. That is not the point of education.
The point of education should be for the Government to set a framework
to see where the child is. It is about every child.
We should stop measuring exams all the time
and actually measure the ability of teachers—the professionals—to
measure progress. They can do that because I see it happening
in the primary sector. If we focus entirely on the ability to
move a child or a young person through the system, when they go
to the next school, on to university or into an apprenticeship,
the automatic checks are to ask whether they can achieve what
the school has said. The local economy and everything—the
local community—will say whether that achievement is correct
or not. That is the judgment.
Lord Hill: I think we need both.
We need to know how children are doing in exams, because they
haven't been doing well enough. If you look at other jurisdictions,
they certainly have measurements on how children are doing in
exams.
When you look at good practice in all sorts
of schools, they have detailed information on individual pupils.
They use grades online to see how they are progressing, which
is an extremely powerful tool. The best schools are doing that.
They know everything about the children—their background
and their progression, almost day by day. That is clearly an important
part of progression.
Q460 Tessa Munt: That is the key
to all of it, isn't it?
Lord Hill: I think it is both.
You need to have progression, but you also need to see how children
are doing in terms of whether they are actually getting some qualifications
at the end of it.
Tessa Munt: That will come naturally.
Q461 Chair: Minister, how will
Ofsted treat the English baccalaureate?
Lord Hill: The English baccalaureate,
as you will know, is separate from the Ofsted process. Again,
it is another light that shows us how schools are doing.
Q462 Chair: So Ofsted won't take
any notice. When it does its data analysis, it will ignore the
percentage of children taking the baccalaureate.
Lord Hill: That is something we
are publishing, so that people can see what is going on in those
schools.
Q463 Chair: Ofsted takes the five
good GCSEs seriously and uses that when it talks to heads and
school leaders. That is, in fact, the baseline. The Government
have said that they are not getting rid of that yet, but that
they are bringing in the English baccalaureate. Surely, the reality
is that having announced the English baccalaureate, Ofsted, heads
and everyone else will rush over to that and it will be absolutely
central to inspections in future.
Lord Hill: The effect that the
English baccalaureate will have on the system remains to be seen.
It is a certificate that children will receive if they do that,
rather than us saying, "This is what every single school
has got to do." I agree with you. Providing more such information
on how the school is doing will probably have an effect through
the system. But I meet plenty of heads who say, "This is
all jolly interesting, but I know my children well. What they
need is something different." I think it will be part of
the mix, and, clearly, it will be something that everyone will
look at, but I don't see that it will necessarily skew things
in the way that you suggest.
Q464 Chair: Has the Department
contacted Ofsted about the baccalaureate?
Lord Hill: I wouldn't know whether
that has happened at an official level.
Q465 Pat Glass: I want to follow
on slightly from what the Minister has said before I quickly move
on.
I am concerned that there are two groups of
children who hugely underachieve in our schools, and I think the
Government are right to look at underachieving children. One group
is one that we normally think of: children with SEN, looked-after
children and children who are falling behind the others.
The other group of children consists of those
who leave primary school with level 5s at Key Stage 2 but who
get Bs at GCSE. That happens because the light in schools has
shone on those who get wobbly Cs or A*s. Whatever measure the
Government put in place, head teachers will move towards it like
satellites. That is where the resources will go. The Department
has excellent tools, not least the progression guidance, and if
we focused on such children, they would achieve. As we know, when
you shine a light on them, they improve. So I completely support
what Tessa says.
I want to move on to Ofsted and what it can
do. In our evidence sessions the lack of consistency and quality
in the inspections has often been consistently criticised, although
I think it is getting better. There is an argument about HMIs
versus additional inspectors. Where do you think the balance should
be struck?
Lord Hill: I was struck by the
point that Christine Gilbert made, which is that, in terms of
the inspections on the ground, schools didn't seem to know whether
the inspection would be led by an HMI or an additional inspector.
The answer, which sounds like a cop-out, is that the important
thing is the quality of the inspectors and whether they are being
properly trained, whether they have relevant recent experience—we
have just discussed that point—and whether they are up to
doing the job.
I don't have a terribly strong view on whether
all inspections should be HMI-led or whether the system is working
fine. I am not aware from, say, the level of complaints about
inspections being led by HMIs as opposed to AIs, that there is
any difference in terms of people's feelings. I know that if you
talk to people they say they would like an HMI, but that doesn't
seem to be borne out by the evidence. But if there is different
evidence, obviously I would want to take it into account.
Q466 Pat Glass: What came through
quite strongly is that, when things go wrong, people on the ground
should know whether it is an HMI or an additional inspector. That
should be very clear. The depth of knowledge, the experience and
the confidence of HMIs can very often get an inspection back on
track when it is going badly wrong.
Focusing on what you said about the right person
doing the right job, another key piece of evidence that has been
repeatedly presented to the Committee is that in specialist areas,
the problem is increasingly not with inspectors who have never
taught a day in their life. In specialist areas, such as early
years, SEN—particularly with behaviour issues—fostering
and adoption, it is crucial that the right people with the right
relevant, recent experience are part of the inspection. So what
plans do the Government have in such specialist areas to ensure
that Ofsted is delivering the right people to do the job?
Tim Loughton: That is a really
important point, as is your earlier point about the mutual consistency
and quality of inspections. What we don't want is a consistently
poor inspector producing consistently poor inspections. I would
be very alarmed if it was someone whose practitioner days were
many years past, not least—in the areas you mentioned—in
early years where there have been a lot of changes and, I hope,
a lot of improvements over recent years, ensuring that we are
raising the quality of the service offered and of the people involved,
and that they are properly trained.
Ideally, if we are talking about where we want
to get to, we should have more practitioner-led inspections. We
could have practitioners on secondment to the inspectorate for
a year or so at a time. We could even do that with senior people
in children's services departments, where there is a wealth of
experience. With someone who might be a director of children's
services, taking time out to become an inspector and seeing another
authority, we could bring some really live, real-time constructive
criticism of what is being done well or what is not being done
well. Such people might actually learn from the experience, for
when he or she goes back to his or her own authority. So there
is a real mutual benefit there.
The problem we have, in the meantime, is a shortage
of people at the sharp end doing the professional job. Part of
the criticism of the inspectorate in the past has been that it
has nicked some really good people—some really good social
workers have ended up being inspectors, so we have lost some talent
that I would rather have on the front line than in an inspection
role. I would like the talent to be in both, but at the moment
we have a shortage of recruits, particularly in child safeguarding
social work. When we get to a stage whereby we have sufficient
high-quality people on the front line, we can make sure that we
are more flexible and have real-time practitioners helping out
in the inspection role as well.
Q467 Pat Glass: May I ask, Minister,
what you intend to do to make sure that we do get those people
in the right jobs? Who would be in social work and safeguarding
these days? I have had people ring me and ask if I would like
to apply to be a director of children's services. When I stop
laughing, I say there is absolutely no way I would do that. Why
would I do that to myself? What will you do to combat that attitude?
We live in a blame society, and people are just not going to do
this to themselves.
Tim Loughton: You are absolutely
right, but that is a whole different investigation, which in part
goes back to the earlier appearance I made on the Munro review,
which is crucial and is about restoring public confidence in the
safeguarding business in this country.
An absolutely crucial part of that is restoring
confidence in the social work profession—by themselves as
well. The Munro review is crucial to valuing the job of social
workers, primarily by letting them be social workers again, getting
on with the job at the front line. If we start to achieve that
and they start to value themselves more, and be valued, hopefully
more of them—including the good ones—will stay in
the job at the front line, rather than wanting to go off and be
inspectors anyway. More good-quality people will come in to train
and stay, going into some challenging positions. I have in no
way underestimated the extent of that challenge, but that is what
I am absolutely about and dedicated to doing, and absolutely why
it is so crucial that Eileen Munro is doing the work she is doing.
Q468 Lisa Nandy: You seem to accept
that Ofsted judgments are not perfect. In fact, 55%[1]
of schools previously rated outstanding were downgraded this year.
Why then are you basing policy decisions, such as the criteria
for becoming an academy, on imperfect and often unreliable Ofsted
judgments?
Lord Hill: There are a couple
of separate points tied up in that. First, in terms of the academy
criteria, I think that the straight answer is that—in terms
of starting the programme and as a proxy measure—an outstanding
school is one we could have the greatest amount of confidence
in. The process of converting to an academy should be straightforward
for such a school, so that was a measure we took. Since then,
as we all know, we have opened the process up, so that is less
of a requirement than it was originally.
The point linked with that, and I understand
why the Committee has been concerned about it, is what happens
to a school that is exempt from inspection because it is outstanding
but then it ceases to be outstanding. Schools do not remain outstanding
forever, for example when a head changes or something else happens,
particularly in primary schools. Those are proper concerns. One
has to keep an eye on ensuring that those schools don't fall back,
and there are a number of ways in which that will happen. First,
Ofsted will carry on doing its general surveys, which will encompass
schools of all Ofsted classifications. Secondly, Ofsted will carry
on doing risk assessments. Thirdly, we want parents to be able
to complain directly to Ofsted if they have concerns. In a way,
that comes back to the point about local knowledge.
We also said in the White Paper, which I think
is a good and important development, that local authorities ought
to have the ability and the role to champion parents' interests
locally. If they have concerns because they know what's happening
on the ground, they should be able to go to Ofsted to say, "We've
got concerns about this school. Please go in and re-inspect."
Q469 Lisa Nandy: My experience
of academies has been that they place a great deal of power into
the hands of the head teacher and the governing body. In fact,
I think that that was part of the intention behind it—to
give head teachers more flexibility in what they can do over curriculum,
pay and conditions and other factors. My concern is that at the
same time, you are taking away the ability of parents to hold
that school to account for their child. Do you accept that?
Chair: Can we stick to Ofsted? We have
limited time and I would like to stick to Ofsted on the broader
academy points.
Lisa Nandy: It is related to Ofsted because
the Ofsted framework is absolutely vital for parents, particularly
parents of children with special educational needs, who often
rely on Ofsted judgments to know whether a school is suitable
for their child.
Lord Hill: So far as Ofsted is
concerned, the approach to exemption applies to maintained schools
as it does to academies, so I don't think it is a specific point
about academies, and I do not accept that academies will mean
that parents will have less information. As I have said before,
it is hugely important that we have more information about all
schools.
Q470 Lisa Nandy: I have one final
question as I know that we are running short of time. The Secretary
of State recently appointed Baroness Morgan as the new chair of
the Ofsted board. She is involved in ARK, which runs several academies,
and is seeking to expand in that area. She is also involved in
the New Schools Network, which is paid by the Government to expand
the free schools programme. Is that not a startling conflict of
interest for the head of a body that needs to have a strong independent
voice?
Lord Hill: First, as far as the
inspection process is concerned, that is not anything that the
board of Ofsted can interfere in; that is the responsibility of
the chief inspector. Secondly, like any board of any organisation,
if there is—indeed, as there is—a perceived conflict,
they have to put in place systems to ensure that that doesn't
develop in practice, and I am sure they will do that.
I cannot believe that that will happen, because
everyone is aware of the issue. In terms of the volume of inspections,
Ofsted carries out something like 40,000 inspections a year. I
do not know precisely how many academies ARK has—probably
fewer than 10. The key question in all of these things is who
is the best person for the job? Our view was that Baroness Morgan
would be a jolly good chairman.
Q471 Lisa Nandy: Would you be
prepared to intervene if it became apparent that there was a conflict
of interest?
Lord Hill: In terms of conflict
of interest, there is a whole board that would make those judgments.
If it emerged as an issue, I am quite certain that it would be
very public—that you and others would make sure that it
was very public—and we would have to address it.
Q472 Lisa Nandy: So that's a yes?
Lord Hill: The issue is that it
is a responsibility for the boards—that's what boards do.
Q473 Lisa Nandy: So it is a no.
Tim Loughton: In some respects,
you cannot have it both ways. We have heard about the value of
having local inspectors who are practitioners, who know all about
the subject. The same applies to people who are running the boards
of Ofsted. Surely it is a benefit if they know a bit about the
subject that their outfit is there to inspect. There will always
be, therefore, somebody who you could say has some conflict of
interest. Hopefully, that means that they will bring a good deal
of expertise and knowledge about what they are supposed to be
doing.
Q474 Lisa Nandy: Do you accept
that there is a difference between having a background in that
area and being involved in running schools that you are also inspecting?
Tim Loughton: To draw your own
analogy, having a background in that area may mean that you have
not run a school for 20 or 30 years, as opposed to having more
recent knowledge of running one. It is probably better to have
recent knowledge and experience than something that could be out
of date, so you cannot have it both ways.
Q475 Lisa Nandy: Surely there
is a difference between recent and current.
Tim Loughton: Are you talking
months, years, weeks, what?
Q476 Lisa Nandy: Well, Baroness
Morgan is currently the governor of an ARK School.
Tim Loughton: Yes. We want someone
who is as up to date as possible in what they are there to be
overseeing. As Jonathan has said, she is one person among many
others, and she is under the scrutiny of and is answerable to
her board, as well as to this Committee and all sorts of other
people.
Q477 Lisa Nandy: So you don't
accept that there is any conflict of interest.
Tim Loughton: I am not aware of
any, no.
Chair: Let us move on from Blairite embers
to Damian.
Q478 Damian Hinds: Ministers,
there is an obvious attraction in having four simple grades to
an Ofsted inspection. On the other hand, we have a lot of other
measures in schools that are impossible to understand by anybody.
Contextual value added, for example, comes out with a score of
1,000.9, and nobody can tell you what that means.
Is it not the case that Ofsted is just too blunt—focusing
on its one word, which we hope people can understand? Would it
not be better instead to have something more like a balanced score
card, on which you do not give an overall grade between 1 and
4, but you give a grade for each of the new four categories? Would
it be better also to have something that measures progress across
all quintiles, as Tess was saying, and something else that measures
overall value added and GCSE results? Perhaps there might even
be other measures, such as staff turnover and other indicators
that you might use in different sorts of organisations for success
and help. Would it not be better to have that more balanced approach?
Lord Hill: This is another variant
of some of our earlier debates about where one comes down on the
balance. Is the task to carry out a simple, clear inspection,
or to produce something more nuanced? Sometimes the difficulty
is that the more nuanced one makes it, the less sharp it is in
making people ask questions. There is not a simple, perfect answer
to any of this. By stripping the areas back to the four, we are
trying to allow more space for inspection of what is going on
in the classroom, during observation, and for the inspectors to
concentrate on those core issues rather than on 27—or in
the past, I think, 45—different things.
Some of these things will be teased out in the
consultation that Ofsted will publish on the framework. That will
set out how it will take that framework and translate it into
inspection on the ground, which will provide an opportunity to
look at some of those questions.
Tim Loughton: The situation is
even more complicated in children's social care than it is in
schools, and raw figures are perhaps not as important as the narrative
that goes with them. With the care system, if you look only at
raw figures and authorities appear to have fewer children in care,
should that be a criticism? If they have fewer because they are
doing a much better, proactive job of keeping those kids with
their families in the first place, it is a strength. So you must
delve beneath the raw figures to get a real quality analysis of
what is going on.
Q479 Damian Hinds: Would you accept
that in the overall suite of measures that we use for schools,
there is an important absence of understandable measure of progress
being made across all ability levels within a school? So it is
perfectly possible to be rated highly by Ofsted and to be getting
very good GCSE results, but actually to be letting down one particular
segment of your intake—whether that is at the bottom or
at the top. Is there a role for Ofsted, and the scoring that comes
out of Ofsted, in addressing that?
Lord Hill: Your basic point I
accept, and it comes back to some of the earlier points about
progression and the way that, wherever you set different things
in terms of league tables, you get people gaming the system one
way or the other. We had conversations earlier around children
only getting Bs at GCSE rather than As and all the rest of it.
I accept that basic point and, therefore, I totally agree that
we should provide more information about particular groups, how
the pupil premium is spent and where children come in and how
they get on, across the piece. Whether that needs to be done in
a more nuanced way by Ofsted, rather than through other means,
I am not so sure.
Q480 Charlotte Leslie: I am interested
in the move towards allowing more people to trigger an Ofsted
inspection, particularly in schooling. I wonder if you had thought
about transferring that over to the standard of local authorities,
particularly in their education remit, because I can imagine that,
in one or two areas of the country, parents may be fed up with
the overall provision. That does not mean the schools that a local
authority is providing, but its strategic oversight, and it may
well be that parents would want to trigger an inspection of the
ability of the local authority to fulfil its strategic role, if
they were able to do so. In an age of localism, when freedom and
accountability must go hand in hand, is that something that you
have been considering?
Lord Hill: No is the short answer.
In an earlier part of the conversation, we discussed whether Ofsted
is already at the limit of what it might reasonably take on. As
far as I am concerned, I think that the task of Ofsted is to concentrate
on schools. There are other mechanisms for holding local authorities
to account. I hope that, over time, there will be more information
about what may well be increasingly differential performance across
the country, depending on which way local authorities go, because
I think that what is likely to happen, for a whole variety of
reasons, is that the speed at which education provision becomes
more diverse will vary across the country. If that does happen,
people will be able to see quite clearly whether some areas are
getting better education results than other areas and to ask why
that might be.
Q481 Charlotte Leslie: What would
those parents then do if they were in one of the areas where provision
was not improving, and it was apparent that at the heart of that
were certain administrative or other failures in competences within
the very machinery of the local education authority? What would
they then do?
Lord Hill: There are a variety
of ways in which they can go. In some parts of the country, as
you know, they might choose to set up their own free school. In
other parts of the country, they might go to the ballot box.
Q482 Nic Dakin: When we heard
evidence from Ofsted, the lead for post-16 said that she thought
that it was time for the data that is used to judge post-16 institutions
to be used consistently, rather than inconsistently as it is at
the moment. Do you agree with that?
Lord Hill: The more that we can
have consistency, the better.
Q483 Chair: Do you think that
the chief inspector's job is do-able? It strikes me as the most
monumental task to read through every one of the reports in such
a vast area; to sign them all off; to be able to answer questions
on such a range of matters; and to be personally and legally responsible.
Is it impossible? If it is very difficult or impossible, does
that suggest that something is fundamentally wrong with the structure
and remit?
Lord Hill: My short answer is
that I agree that it is a hell of a job because, in addition to
what you set out, there are also huge management, reform and financial
jobs. The person has to have great integrity and independence
of mind. It is a hell of a job. In terms of what perhaps lies
behind your question—Mr Loughton might have a different
take—my answer is that while satisfaction ratings are not
the be all and end all, schools are getting north of 90% satisfaction
ratings and, if the question is whether the system is bust or
is doable, those figures suggest that it is not bust and it is
doable, but it is a big job.
Tim Loughton: I agree. To give
the current chief inspector her due, during her tenure she has
overseen a huge transformation programme. The cost of running
the whole show has been pared down considerably, and there are
some areas where some real improvements have been made. In certain
areas of social care, some real deficiencies came up, and Ofsted
has had to react to that.
What is important is that we have a chief inspector
who is experienced, respected and can command the confidence of
the people he or she inspects, and also that the people in senior
positions in Ofsted have a range of experiences to be able to
advise and scrutinise the work done and the lead given by the
chief executive, as she effectively is. It would be a huge job,
if there was just one person there, but that is why it is important
to have a high-quality chairman, and high-quality board and senior
management people. There have been weaknesses in that in the past,
but in certain of those areas there have been improvements. It
is absolutely essential that what has been a hard act to follow
is followed by somebody who commands enormous respect and confidence
across the whole of education and children's social care.
Chair: Thank you both very much for an
interesting and informative session.
1 If the Member was referring
to the number of outstanding schools , at last inspection , which
dropped a grade, at their latest inspection, then the figure
should be 43% - see figure 18, page 36 , The Annual Report of
Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Education, Children Services
and Skills 2009/10 Back
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