Memorandum submitted by Landex
BACKGROUND TO
LANDEX.
1. Landex was formed in 2006 and now comprises 36
member colleges spanning higher and further education in England
and Wales, plus six further associate members in the devolved
countries within the United Kingdom. Members all have a specialism
in land based subjects and are required to maintain a minimum
level of resource and range of provision to provide an acceptable
experience for learners and other users. It aims to enhance communication
between members and with external agencies, and to improve quality
across the membership to raise the credibility and reputation
of the sector. It has a Board of Directors elected from the membership
which oversees all Landex activities.
2. All members pay a subscription sufficient to collectively
employ a full time Director of Quality Improvement with the aim
of utilising the good practice already present to raise quality
across all members. Landex has established a Quality Improvement
Strategy. This is based on seven guiding principles which highlight
the use of the collective expertise of members to add rigour to
validation of college quality, and to provide targeted improvement.
While our membership, and the quality strategy, spans higher as
well as further education, this response relates to English members
with further education provision within Ofsted's remit.
3. The response below relates mainly to the learning
and skills sector, although it may be considered that some statements
can also be applied more widely.
Question 1* What the purposes of inspection should
be (relating not only to schools but to all organisations, settings
and services under Ofsted's remit)
4. Landex sees the purposes of inspection firmly
as improvement towards high quality provision. All other possible
purposes, such as setting or safeguarding standards, of providing
a transparent picture of quality across providers, should be subservient
to the over-riding one of improvement. Ultimately, if inspection
succeeds in this prime purpose of improving the sector to be consistently
good, then Ofsted and inspection may be considered worth having.
If it does not succeed in this prime purpose, then no matter how
much it succeeds in other goals, then Landex submits that it will
have failed and continued existence cannot be justified.
5. Ofsted itself seems to agree with this assessment
as its prime purpose, as its strap line 'Raising standards, improving
lives', adopted when merged with three other inspectorates to
result in its current huge scope, suggests. Indeed this strap
line is printed on the front of all their reports and seems to
Landex a useful reminder of their function.
6. Ofsted strategic plan (quoted in Ofsted 2009)
states:
"The heart of inspection remains the exercise
of independent professional judgement by highly knowledgable inspectors"
(Page six)
With this in mind, we consider the plan to be wanting
in that it fails to emphasise the centrality of improvement to
their purpose and therefore process. While inspection reports
do now contain recommendations for improvement, they are little
more than reworded judgements and do not provide sufficient support
for many providers to help them put into place the things needed
to make a difference.
7. In some ways even subsidiary purposes of providing
independent, standardised assessments of quality are compromised
by inspection. Ofsted themselves have admitted this. For example
(Ofsted 2005)
"a college which offers a predominantly vocational
curriculum risks being judged less successful" (page 19)
This suggests any hope on the part of policy makers
or funding bodies to use inspection results to inform them where
good and poor quality resides, is at best, imperfect.
Question 2* The impact of the inspection process
on school improvement
8. Landex was formed from its predecessor organisation
in 2006 because of a concern that a number of land based colleges
were not improving. Landex has formed its own quality improvement
strategy and invested in support services with the long term vision
of bringing about the improvement across our part of the sector
which it would have been hoped the multi-million pound inspection
investment would have stimulated over a decade and a half since
external inspection began in earnest in 1993. However while some
members have flourished in this time and achieved high quality
ratings, others have not, and have struggled under successive
inspection regimes. Successive Chief Inspectors reports make the
same point, noting many colleges judged no better than satisfactory,
fail to improve from one inspection cycle to the next (Ofsted
2007, 2008, 2009).
9. This suggests that whatever brings about improvement,
it may not be inspection. Rather, improvement seems to occur where
there are staff with the right vision and skills within the institution.
Inspection can sometimes help in these organisations by providing
a stimulus or target or redirection. But it seems ineffective
where the capacity within the organisation is not already able
and working towards improvement. This is why Landex has set about
a different course of action, trying to stimulate new ideas, new
purpose and new inspiration among land based providers by encouraging
collaboration and sharing as much as possible. Landex does incorporate
an element of inspection in its work, but considers it ineffective
on its own in bringing about improvement, a recognition we feel
is supported by successive Ofsted Chief Inspectors reports.
Question 3* The performance of Ofsted in carrying
out its work
10. Landex acknowledges the expertise of the best
Ofsted inspectors, and the commitment of many individuals to sector
improvement. Some thematic reports are excellent in identifying
issues for colleges and others to address, for example, the insightful
"How Colleges Improve" (Ofsted 2008) which contains
most helpful insights into reasons behind success or not, of a
college. The Good Practice database, while hosted by the Learning
and Skills Improvement Service on their Excellence Gateway, uses
material discovered by inspectors during inspection, and is seen
within the sector as the more authoritative because of this.
11. However, we do not consider the organisation
itself fit for the purpose we identify under question one above.
Conversationally, some inspectors themselves admit they find the
culture frustrating in relation to the service they feel they
could provide to the sector.
12. The Ofsted website has virtually no search facility
of benefit to professionals in the sector seeking to find material
to support a quality improvement journey. Try looking for a grade
one provider in land based provision (no search facility); or
for a recently published care standards report with high quality
residential provision (no search facility); or some outstanding
practice in teaching and learning (no search facility). As an
organisation, Ofsted has appeared unresponsive to concerns expressed
and communication seems such that senior managers may not even
aware of the frustration experienced by those who are trying to
use the insights from inspection to effect improvement in their
part of the sector.
13. Ofsted contracts, through Inspection Service
Providers, with independent inspectors and consultants who are
paid to go into providers, see the valuable ideas and practice,
and proffer judgement on it. They then take these ideas away in
their heads and are able to sell their services back to the sector
as improvement services. Because providers feel the result of
an Ofsted inspection will be for them to be "named and shamed"
if their quality is not deemed good enough, it is not uncommon
in England for a provider to spend a considerable sum engaging
consultants who are "registered inspectors" in order
to tell them the things these same consultants have gleaned from
the sector in the first place during inspection. Thus the sector
is being forced to pay for its own wisdom to be returned, and
the nation pays twice for insight to be received by providers,
once for Ofsted to come and judge it (and take it away) and again
to buy it back from those who took it away…..! In the devolved
nations we understand more use is made of staff within colleges
and providers to undertake inspections on a peer review basis,
and the culture is less "name and shame", but rather,
more "support and improve". How can managers in the
sector glean ideas for improvement when so few of them have opportunity
to be involved in inspection and go into other providers and glean
new ideas for themselves? How can it be best use of public money
if providers feel they must spend again to receive the judgements
that Ofsted are already being paid to deliver, when finance is
so tight within the sector? Landex proposes this is an opportunity
to review the culture of inspection to direct it more towards
improvement. There is now a requirement for 50 per cent of part
time inspectors to be "from the sector". However the
definition of this, at best, seems vague, and there is no attempt
to ensure maximum coverage of providers or even inclusion of providers
who most need to glean new insights.
14. The help lines are staffed by friendly people
who we assume pass queries on, but which ultimately, often fail
to produce adequate (or any) responses. Where Landex has been
able to glean useful dialogue with Ofsted it has usually resulted
from personal contact within the organisation (who have then often
been most helpful), and not because the organisation itself is
geared to respond effectively.
Question 4* The consistency and quality of inspection
teams in the Ofsted inspection process
15. As already acknowledged, the best inspectors
have undoubted experience and insight of great potential value
to the sector. Most are at least competent though some do lack
the insight required to really help those being inspected benefit.
Some are too far removed from the practitioners and find it difficult
to express judgements in ways which the recipient will find helpful
in their search for improvement. Others are out of date or simply
have insufficient, recent, quality experience to be credible in
the subjects they are inspecting. However the system also seems
culpable in any lack of effectiveness of inspection teams. The
sector having to pay to receive its own good practice back has
already been outlined (under question 3). However, inspection
teams are also constrained by the perception that judgement of
standards is paramount rather than guidance towards improvement.
Thus inspection practice provides something of a contradiction
to Ofsted's own strapline.
16. Good inspectors will sometimes have an informal
"off the record" conversation with those they inspect
where they can clearly see what must be done to improve. However,
this is all too rare because of the constraints of the perceived
remit.
Question 5* The weight given to different factors
within the inspection process
17. Judgements made by Ofsted are still unnecessarily
narrow, and hinge too much on a narrow interpretation of success.
Landex acknowledges progress here, and the recent emphasis on
"learner outcomes", rather than "success rates"
alone, is welcome. However inspection success is still heavily
dependant on success rates and on grades achieved for main qualifications,
with too little consideration of, and weight given to, other equally
important parameters such as progression, employment or employability,
citizenship or other personal skills. Ofsted allows its inspection
to value that which can be easily measured, rather than attempting
the harder but more important task, of attempting to measure what
is valuable. A view of a range of inspection reports, and a comparison
of column inches devoted to grades and percentages of success
in main qualifications, with that given to wider aspects of success
(if included at all), will evidence the point. Good grades are
given where success rates are high. Where they are not, a good
grade will not be forthcoming, no matter what, or how good, other
factors are. Judgements by inspectors of college data compared
with national benchmarks sometimes lack validity but are still
made, and approach to data comparison is inconsistent. Landex
considers that this simplistic approach to quality does not do
justice to the complexity of the sector or to the clients it seeks
to serve. Neither does it require highly paid inspectors to make
such judgements, since finding out whether a number is higher
or lower than another (for example, compared to the previous year,
or to other providers), does not seem a high level skill worthy
of an inspectors salary.
18. Learning and skills inspection reports are commendably
concise and do contain summaries of significant issues which impact
on quality. They seem to be written mainly for potential students
and parents rather than for sector managers and other professionals
in supporting improvement (in spite of this being the likely main
audience for the reports). However, there is insufficient specific
guidance to give practical insight and support for managers to
effect improvement. This gap is seen especially in vocational
subject reports, which sometimes now read much like cross college
aspects already covered earlier in the same report.
19. Inspection is sometimes driven too much by protocol
rather than individual provider improvement needs. Completion
of specific inspection forms, moderation of specific paperwork,
completion of the required text on the required aspects and completion
of the required grades on the required form by the end of inspection,
is deemed paramount. However additional investigation to arrive
at a more insightful set of judgements to support provider improvement,
risks relegation and is sometimes missed altogether. Colleges
are often complex places, with complex provision aiming to serve
a complex set of learners, employers and needs. Current inspection
arrangements do not allow for sufficient understanding of these
intricacies and so cannot provide enough support for improvement.
Question 6* Whether inspection of all organisations,
settings and services to support children's learning and welfare
is best conducted by a single inspectorate
20. Landex does not have a view as to the scope of
an inspectorate as such. However, we note that the current Ofsted
seems less responsive to issues within the sector than previous
inspectorates such as the FEFC inspectorate, or the Adult Learning
Inspectorate, where there did seem, on balance, to be a clearer
focus on understanding the needs of the sector and working together
towards improvement. Landex simply requests that each component
part of the current remit, such as that relating to learning and
skills, is sufficiently independent from any central organisation,
and structured to ensure it is sufficiently responsive to the
sector it purports to serve. This could be achieved through a
combination of the following considerations:
— A "board"
(with powers to make decisions as well as to advise) overseeing
each part of Ofsteds work, with sector representatives dominant
to ensure inspection remains responsive to sector needs.
— Having
only a minimum of full time inspectors on each team (to safeguard
standards) and contracting, not independent consultants (as often
at present) but with providers within the sector, for the bulk
of each and every inspection team. Instead of providers having
to pay again to buy insight back which originated from their sector,
pay providers to be part of inspection teams and ensure they glean
these improvement insights directly. Landex believes this would,
in the long term, both save money and provide more improvement
for the extensive cost and effort inspection entails.
— Reforming
Ofsted as it currently exists (if it is considered too difficult
to adjust effectively to improvement as its prime purpose, in
its current form), and setting up some smaller organisation(s)
to safeguard improvement and standards within learning and skills.
If this option is taken, consideration might be given to the standards
and quality improvement work already being undertaken elsewhere
(such as that within Landex), either to build on this approach
or to avoid duplication.
— Closer
linkage between Ofsted managers and inspectors, and providers
and provider representative organisations, to provide a regular
channel for communication and for sharing concern and best practice,
and if need be, redirection of Ofsted strategy towards improvement
as its prime purpose.
Question 7* The role of Ofsted in providing an
accountability mechanism for schools operating with greater autonomy
21. Within the learning and skills sector, of course,
providers are already autonomous bodies. Many are completely within
the private sector. There would seem an example here, therefore,
of how inspection might work in increasingly autonomous schools.
However, Landex urges the committee not to see the current state
of inspection within learning and skills as the example for others
to follow, but rather to consider the evidence and views expressed
above in the hope of a more "fit for purpose" organisation
and inspection/improvement process to emerge.
September 2010
REFERENCES AND
BIBLIOGRAPHY
(all Ofsted reports accessed from www.ofsted.gov.uk).
Ofsted, 2005 FE matters. Ofsted, London, November
2005.
Ofsted, 2007 The Annual Report of Her Majesty's Chief
Inspector of Education, Childrens' Services and Skills, 2006-07.
Page 40 states the proportion of colleges failing to improve beyond
"satisfactory".
Ofsted, 2007. Strategic Plan 2007-2010. Ofsted, London,
October 2007.
Ofsted, 2008 The Annual Report of Her Majesty's Chief
Inspector of Education, Childrens' Services and Skills, 2007-08.
Page 37 states the proportion of colleges failing to improve
beyond "satisfactory".
Ofsted, 2008. How Colleges improve. Ofsted, London,
September 2008.
Ofsted, 2009 The Annual Report of Her Majesty's Chief
Inspector of Education, Childrens' Services and Skills, 2008-09.
Page 43 states the proportion of colleges failing to improve beyond
"satisfactory".
Ofsted (2009) "Raising standards, improving
lives", Ofsted September 2009, page 6.
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