Memorandum submitted by The Universities'
Council for the Education of Teachers
1. The Universities' Council for the Education of
Teachers (UCET) welcomes the opportunity to submit its views to
the Education Select Committee inquiry into Ofsted. The institutions
which UCET represents are regularly inspected by Ofsted. Our comments
are based therefore on very considerable collective experience
of the inspection process.
2. In UCET's view, the central purpose of inspection
is to hold organizations and public bodies to account for their
work in promoting the educational progress of children and young
people. While these organisations of course have a professional
obligation to evaluate their own effectiveness, there is a need
for an independent body to scrutinize the validity and robustness
of an institution's self-evaluation, so that the public can be
assured that the quality of services provided for children and
young people meet public, professional and political expectations.
In the educational field Ofsted is the independent body which,
being able to report with impunity, provides evidence on the quality
of provision. Ofsted inspection is a powerful agent through which
the accountability of educational institutions is made explicit.
3. It is frequently claimed that inspection holds
the key to the enhancement of the quality of provision. That
claim needs to be qualified. In our view, the inspection process
itself does not effect improvements of provision: through the
system of public reporting inspection places very considerable
pressure on institutions to examine ways in which the quality
of their work can be enhanced. Inspection provides one incentive
to improve on current performance.
4. In recent years a single inspection framework
has been devised for all bodies and institutions responsible for
the education and wellbeing of children and young people. UCET
strongly supported the creation of such an integration of services,
believing that teachers have a distinctive contribution to make
to human flourishing but that it is a contribution that needs
to be sensitive to the ways in which the work of teachers influences
and is influenced by other professionals. Given the existence
of integrated services for children and young people, it makes
sense to have these services subject to the same inspection framework
and process.
5. While UCET respects the thoroughness, impartiality
and professionalism of Ofsted's inspection of teacher education
institutions, there are three respects in which that inspection
might be improved. Firstly, in our view, inspection of these institutions
is far too frequent. There is a need for Ofsted to be much more
economical, not just with regard to the expenditure of effort
of its own officers, but also with regard to the resource pressure
it creates for institutions. There is a strong case for the re-examination
of the principle of proportionality, according to which the frequency
of inspection is related to risk. At the same time consideration
might be given to the re-introduction of the role of Link Inspector,
in line with Estyn's future practice in Wales.
6. Secondly, UCET maintains that the balance between
self-evaluation and externality of scrutiny needs further re-consideration.
Ofsted has declared that it seeks to place more emphasis of an
institution's self-evaluation. However, the guidelines relating
to the generation of the self-evaluation document, which is integral
to the inspection process, is far too detailed and prescriptive.
7. Thirdly, UCET has repeated urged that the highest
inspections ratings should not be awarded unless a school or FE
college shows a continuing engagement in initial teacher education.
That measure would inhibit schools or colleges from regarding
initial teacher education as an optional extra, of little relevance
to their core business.
8. UCET very much hopes that the Education Select
Committee will take full account of these recommendations.
9. We have a final general observation to make.
If, as Ofsted has repeatedly claimed, the quality of the work
of an educational organization or body requires independent scrutiny,
then that principle should apply to Ofsted itself. There is a
need for an explicit statement about the means by which Ofsted's
work and mode of operation will be independently evaluated, including
the criteria to be used in such independent evaluation.
October 2010
| 
