Memorandum submitted by Mike Bostock,
New Media Learning
INTRODUCTION
The author has been a teacher, a school improvement
adviser and has been a team member during the inspections of 30
secondary schools, two primary schools and one adult education
institute. This submission relates only to the inspection of secondary
and primary schools.
WHAT THE
PURPOSES OF
INSPECTION SHOULD
BE (RELATING
NOT ONLY
TO SCHOOLS
BUT TO
ALL ORGANISATIONS,
SETTINGS AND
SERVICES UNDER
OFSTED'S
REMIT)
One of the main purposes of inspection should be
to ensure that the quality of educational provision is consistent,
of sufficient quality and range, and meets statutory requirements.
It should also ensure that the leadership is discharging its duties,
an important one being to exercise its quality assurance role
in maintain the highest standards of teaching.
Whilst much can be deduced by examining remotely
school examination data, that data does not provide any evidence
of current standards, eg of Year 11. An important reason for visiting
schools therefore is to judge current standards. However, there
is tension between making inspections lean and cost-effective,
and ensuring that sufficient evidence is collected.
One important recommendation for revising the role
of Ofsted would be to elevate school self-evaluation to a standardised
process and incentivise schools to publish an annual report covering
their analysis of attainment, achievement, progress and teaching
quality.
Where schools do this, the role of Ofsted will be
to validate the school's findings.
This move could be assisted by running a national
programme to support all schools in undertaking systematic self-evaluation
using the Ofsted criteria.
THE IMPACT
OF THE
INSPECTION PROCESS
ON SCHOOL
IMPROVEMENT
The role of Ofsted in providing an accountability
mechanism for schools operating with greater autonomy
Schools are expected to undertake self-evaluation
but there is wide differences in the way that they do this; often
with less effective schools doing it less well than effective
ones. Addressing this issue would be an activity that would support
the improvement of less effective schools by helping them make
evaluation more effective.
Spot inspections of teaching can cause unnecessary
stress and will usually be unrepresentative of teaching over time.
Schools should be encouraged to undertake standardised lesson
observations of all teachers using Ofsted criteria. Schools should
not be required to publish individual reports on teachers' performance,
but they should publish information about the range between the
best and least best teaching and information showing how they
are addressing the less-effective teaching.
The TDA and NCSL has produced reports showing that
"Within School Variation" (WSV) ie inconsistency of
provision, notably teaching quality, is higher in the UK education
system than anyway else within the OECD. Much research has been
done to show how schools can tackle it with the consequence of
providing greater fairness and consistent learning quality, no
matter which teacher a pupil has. The TDA has produced an excellent
draft manual on tackling WSV. Teachers' TV has reported on successful
work in schools.
If negative variation in the performance of some
subjects, or some classes was eliminated through the effective
evaluation of teaching, and quality support for professional development,
the estimates are that standards would rise considerably. Within
School Variation has been described as "Education's Greatest
Challenge". It is time it was tackled.
THE PERFORMANCE
OF OFSTED
IN CARRYING
OUT ITS
WORK
The consistency and quality of inspection teams
in the Ofsted inspection process
The weight given to different factors within the
inspection process
Ofsted needs to get to the bottom of how data should
be used to evaluate schools:
1. We cannot use pupil attainment on its own
to determine if a school is good or not, or else selective schools
would always be good and special schools would always be inadequate.
The "attainment profile" for a school can tell us a
lot about the intake of a school, but far less reliably how good
the school was in educating those pupils.
2. We need to judge "school provision"
separately from the impact that it has. Some pupils will not be
able to take advantage of what even the—most exceptional
of schools can offer, no matter how hard everyone tries. To deduce
school quality only from exam results is lazy and imprecise.
3. We should not "adjust" the scores
of schools based on the proportions of pupils that are in categories
known to underachieve at a national level, as they do with "CVA".
Pupils from deprived areas or categories known to underachieve
can do as well as other pupils—where schools are successful
in specialising in their particular needs.
4. Progress is a key way to compare the value
added by different schools, but the inspection process does not
yet acknowledge the relative difficulty that different schools
have in achieving similar levels of progress with different categories
of pupil.
5. Pupil "Achievement" is a better,
broader way to look at the totality of what a pupil has gained
from their school's provision but it is not clearly defined in
the Evaluation Schedule.
6. The emphasis on league tables encourages schools
to make curriculum choices which make the school look better rather
than do the best job for its pupils.
7. The test of the criteria for defining an "Outstanding"
school is that it should place at the top of the list those schools
that achieve the most despite operating in the most difficult
circumstances. If we always see selective schools at the top of
the list and not any of the 12 Outstanding schools operating in
difficult circumstances reported on by Ofsted (see "Excelling
against the Odds") then we know that the criteria for judging
the very best UK schools are still in need of further review.
8. The evaluation of the work of schools is not
yet strongly linked to the success of its pupils once they have
left school. We should collect evidence fm students for each of
three years after they have left school about how well the school
prepared them for life after school and use this as evidence to
judge the worth of the school.
9. The frequent use of the term "take into
account" in the Ofsted evaluation Schedule leaves too much
scope for interpretation in an evaluation schedule that is otherwise
very detailed and precise. Inspectors and schools need greater
guidance on how to evaluate achievement, and how to take into
consideration where good provision is having less impact than
expected.
Whether inspection of all organisations, settings
and services to support children's learning and welfare is best
conducted by a single inspectorate
No information is offered on this point
September 2010
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