Memorandum submitted
by Save the Children
INTRODUCTION
1. Save the Children is the world's largest independent
children's charity working across the UK as well as in over 120
countries around the world. We save children's lives and support
children by delivering long-term programmes and emergency aid
in the areas of Education, Protection, Health and Hunger. We work
to ensure that the rights of children in the UK and around the
world are protected, promoted and respected in line with the United
Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and other
international human rights instruments, with a particular focus
on poverty and educational attainment.
2. Established in London in 1919, we now focus all
our attention on ending child poverty in the UK by 2020. Our Inspiring
Change programme works directly with children, young people and
their families to respond to poverty in their local communities.
Our evidence-based Families and Schools Together (FAST) prevention
programme breaks the link between poverty and low levels of education.
FAST coaches parents to support their children's early education
(early years and primary), alongside, building home-school links
and local social capital.
3. In the UK we work directly with children and families
experiencing poverty and provide expertise, research and policy
support to key partners including local authorities and national
government. We are members of the End Child Poverty coalition
and take a lead role in the campaign to end child poverty. We
work with local authorities and other strategic bodies across
the UK to ensure services are preventative, integrated and that
they deliver for the most disadvantaged in society.
THE ROLE
AND PERFORMANCE
OF OFSTED
4.This submission focuses on the role of Ofsted in
relation to what the purposes of inspection should be for children's
centres, schools and local children's services. Save the Children
is supportive of the current inspection frameworks in place. However,
we believe that these frameworks could be adapted in order to
support settings and providers to be more accountable for the
impact they have on children and families living in poverty. Save
the Children recommends that:
5. Children's Centres:
— The
framework for inspection should remain the same and new regulations
introduced in 2010 should not be diluted or revoked.
— Inspectors
should give specific attention to the quality of services and
to evaluating the impact services have on improving outcomes for
children living in poverty as a standing requirement, continuing
to use eligibility for Free School Meals (FSM) and the IDACI Pupil
Residence Profile as proxies.
— Inspectors
should not only assess access rates to services but retention
rates also, paying specific attention to the proportion of low
income families that access services and complete any on-site
interventions.
6. Schools:
— Inspectors
should continue to assess the performance of "at risk"
groups, including the performance of children eligible for FSM
as a standing requirement.
— The
parental engagement indicators introduced in 2009 should be reviewed
and improved to be more outcomes rather than outputs-focussed.
— Ofsted
should consider what the future remit of inspection should be
for assessing the effectiveness of any "pupil premium"
expenditure in offsetting disadvantage.
7. Children's Services:
— Inspections
should take into account local authorities' child poverty needs
assessments and feedback from any consultations undertaken with
children, young people or families.
THE FRAMEWORK
FOR CHILDREN'S
CENTRE INSPECTION
8. Save the Children supports the principles of inspection
and believes that Ofsted should continue to assess whether children's
centres are:
(a) Facilitating access to early childhood services
by parents, prospective parents and young children.
(b) Maximising the benefit of those services
to parents, prospective parents and young children.
(c) Improving the well-being of young children.
9. We agree that specific attention should be paid
to assessing whether children's centres are providing high quality
services and that these services are making measurable improvements
to children's and families lives. However, we believe that inspection
could go further; it could directly examine whether children's
centres are improving outcomes for children living in poverty.
We are proposing that inspection always takes into account the
learning and development progress of children living in poverty
compared to their better-off peers using data from Early Years
Foundation Stage assessments.
10. Save the Children supports the new regulations
that were implemented in April 2010 that require assessment reports
to comment on the quality of leadership and management including
whether:
(a) The financial resources made available to
the centre are managed effectively.
(b) Young children, parents and prospective parents
in the area served by the children's centre, who would otherwise
be unlikely to take advantage of the early childhood services
offered through the centre, are identified and encouraged to take
advantage of those services.
11. While we agree that it is crucial for children's
centres to be evaluated on their role in facilitating high access
rates, we believe that inspection would be more useful if it took
into account not only access rates but retention rates also. This
data would assist inspectors to evaluate as to whether children's
centres are indeed maximising the benefit of their services to
parents, prospective parents and young children and whether prospective
children and families unlikely to take advantage of the early
childhood services offered through the centre, are proactively
identified and supported to take advantage of those services -
from beginning to end. Formal evaluation mechanisms that measure
retention rates and service-user satisfaction should form part
of overall evaluation frameworks for both centre-based and outreach
programmes as a matter of course. These findings could support
centres to self-assess their own success at incentivising families
who have not traditionally accessed services to access the centre.
12. Save the Children also strongly believes that
in order to truly "maximise the benefits of services"
operating out of or in conjunction with a children's centre that
inspection should assess how effectively a centre functions as
a 'multi-agency hub' promoting a pipeline of local family support
services[158].
By this we mean that inspection should examine the quality of
implementation and evaluation of services, alongside, the quality
of outreach work and signposting of families on to a range of
services. While we understand that the commissioning of area-wide
services takes place at a strategic level, every children's centre
has a key role to play in ensuring that services are affordable,
accessible, inclusive and connect seamlessly to other more targeted
services within a locality.
THE FRAMEWORK
FOR SCHOOL
INSPECTION
13. In order for schools to be accountable to 'at
risk' children, it is our view that inspection should always assess
how well pupils eligible for FSM are progressing in comparison
to their non-eligible FSM peers. This assessment is an extension
of the general examination of trends in pupil outcomes. We believe
that this extension as a standing requirement is warranted because
the achievement of pupils eligible for FSM will be a matter for
concern in every school in the country What is more, if school
spending mechanisms are altered to enable a "Pupil Premium"
to be introduced, Ofsted will have a responsibility to assess
whether schools are directing Pupil Premium spend towards offsetting
disadvantage and whether Pupil Premium budget management is having
a positive impact on disadvantaged pupil's outcomes.
14. In 2009, Save the Children published A Child's
Portion by Tom Sefton from the London School of Economics.
This research explored deprivation weighting across children's
services including schools and early-years settings. The report
called for greater emphasis on how schools allocate deprivation
funding and mechanisms to ensure all intended resources reach
the appropriate schools.[159]
While the level of Pupil Premium quota per child and exact methods
of distributing spend has yet to be agreed, it is likely that
a Pupil Premium will mean that every school will be allocated
additional funding based on the number of disadvantaged pupils
they admit. This would be a step change away from the current
school spending system, in which schools are devolved expenditure
from the local authority based on historical school demographic
data.
To match this change we need much clearer school
accountability for the year-by-year progress made by pupils from
the poorest homes. This must come through the publication of comprehensive
data on the progress of poor pupils and clear assessments on the
extent to which each school is offsetting disadvantage.
15. According to Ofsted (2007), pupils' achievement
clearly improved in schools where parental involvement/engagement
was judged to be "outstanding". From September 2009,
Ofsted has been inspecting the effectiveness of a school's engagement
with parents and carers. Save the Children is highly supportive
of changes to school inspection frameworks that seek to improve
schools' effectiveness in facilitating "parental engagement"[160].
A lack of parental engagement in a child's learning as they are
growing up can negatively impact on their chance to fulfil their
full potential. If a child arrives at primary school behind, in
terms of, not reaching the expected levels in literacy, for example,
they are unlikely to ever catch-up and to achieve well during
their educational experience and crucially, to have good chances
in later life.
16. We know, however, that it is often the poorest
children that are least likely to benefit from parental engagement[161].
Research has shown that children who are born into poor families
or are malnourished in the first 2 years tend to have poorer levels
of educational attainment or cognitive function[162]
than their better-off peers. Low-income parents can face a number
of barriers to engaging with their children's education. Constraints
on time, low confidence, low self-esteem, low levels of educational
skills and a lack of learning resources in the home can form a
constellation of disadvantage that can serve to weaken the home
learning environment and ability of parents to help their children
to learn at home. Further evidence suggests that institutional
structures can also act as social barriers that hinder engagement
of disadvantaged families to attend any local parental engagement/family
support services that may be on offer.[163]
17. Bearing these issues in mind, Save the Children
feels that the parental engagement element of inspection could
be further strengthened. We feel that the current parental engagement
measures are too output-focussed rather than outcomes- focussed.
We agree with the scope of parental engagement indicators but
not the specific measures that are used to determine whether a
school's parental engagement practice is "satisfactory",
"good", or "outstanding". For example, the
indicator relating to "impact of parental engagement"
focuses on a need for partnerships, but does not offer any key
performance indicators that could be employed to measure this
effectively. It might be more useful to ask schools to provide
data on any improvement in pupil outcomes since any measures to
improve parental engagement were implemented. Further, schools
could undertake parental engagement satisfaction sessions, whereby
parents are asked how many take part in parental engagement related
activities and to give their view on the level of parental engagement
practice at the school in a variety of ways to ensure that all
parents are supported to give feedback.
The inspection framework must encourage schools to
deliver a pipeline of evidence-based parent engagement programmes
and to systematically assess their impact.
THE FRAMEWORK
FOR CHILDREN'S
SERVICES INSPECTION
18. Save the Children supports ongoing inspection
of children's services within a locality. As previously mentioned,
we firmly believe that inspection should take into account the
effectiveness of any local "continuum of services".
We mean by this that children's services should, in part, be examined
in their effectiveness at improving child, family and community
outcomes via effective integration and multi-agency partnerships,
systematic commissioning of high quality, evidence-based services
responsive to local needs, and, robust evaluations of impact.
19. The Child Poverty Act (2010) places a duty on
local authorities and their partners in England to conduct a child
poverty needs assessment and to produce a strategy setting out
how they will reduce child poverty. It is our view that going
forward, inspection should always take into account the quality
of needs assessments undertaken and whether a local authority
has proactively sought to engage a culturally representative sample
of children and young people in consultation.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Save the Children recommends that:
Children's Centres:
— The
framework for inspection should remain the same.
— Inspectors
should give specific attention to the quality of services and
to evaluating the impact services have on improving outcomes for
children living in poverty.
— Inspectors
should not only assess access rates to services but retention
rates.
Schools:
— Inspectors
should continue to assess the performance of "at risk"
groups, including the performance of children eligible for FSM.
— The
parental engagement indicators introduced in 2009 should be reviewed.
— Ofsted
should consider what the future remit of inspection should be
for assessing the effectiveness of any 'pupil premium' expenditure
in offsetting disadvantage.
Children's Services:
— Inspections
should take into account local authorities' child poverty needs
assessments and feedback from any consultations undertaken with
children, young people or families.
October 2010
158 Centre for Excellence
and Outcomes (C4E0) (2010). Grasping the Nettle: Early Intervention
for Children, Families and Communities. London: C4EO. Back
159
Sefton, T, (2009). London School of Economics, A Child's Portion:
An analysis of public expenditure on children in the UK. London:
Save the Children. Back
160 Parental
engagement differs from parental involvement. Parental engagement
is difficult to quantify but can refer to actions in which parents
directly support their children's learning and development either
by nurturing, by offering moral support, by partaking in specific
play and learning activities and also to having a good working
relationship with their child's school. Parental involvement on
the other hand can refer to parental participation in general
school activities that do not have a direct link to learning and
development. Unlike parental engagement, parental involvement
has been shown to confer little or no real benefit on the individual
child in terms of improved educational outcomes (Okpala et al.
2001; Harris and Goodall, 2008). Back
161 Harris,
A and Goodall, J (2007). Engaging parents in raising achievement:
Do parents know they matter. London: DCSF, Pg 6. Back
162
See note 4. Back
163
See note 4. Back
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