Memorandum submitted by the General Teaching
Council for England
SUMMARY
— The
Select Committee is encouraged to consider the contribution of
inspection to accountability in the round, and to bear in mind
that there may be other accountability processes that may better
serve some accountability objectives.
— The
Committee might usefully explore whose interests are captured
and whose needs met by inspection in its current form, with reference
to (a) the process, and (b) the nature and use of the data generated.
— There
is a strong value for money case for optimising the contribution
of inspection to improvement, particularly in straitened times.
— Knowledge
transfer between schools and settings is more important in an
environment characterised by more autonomy and diversity.
— It
is counter-productive to overburden inspection, requiring it to
meet too many needs - this can obscure a sharp focus on the most
important areas.
— The
value of inspection is maximised if it is structurally embedded
in a sustained, on-going process of reflection, account-giving,
innovation and improvement.
— Inspection
needs to continue to be proportionate, and greater emphasis might
usefully be given to the 'permission to innovate' conferred by
a school's "clean bill of health".
— A reconsideration
of inspection might usefully form part of a wider rebalancing
of resources between quality assurance and quality improvement.
— The
GTC is concerned that the well-being of children and young people
should continue to be a focus of school and teacher accountability,
although care is needed to ensure that accountability in this
regard is sensible.
— Similarly,
the GTC favours the continuation of an explicit emphasis on schools'
contribution to the life chances of all pupils.
— The
question of whether there ought to be one or more inspectorates
of children's services is to the GTC of lesser order than the
credibility and expertise of inspection teams in every kind of
setting.
— If
there continues to be one inspectorate responsible for children's
services, it should be encouraged to realise the potential opportunities
for cross-sector knowledge and learning.
INTRODUCTION
1. The General Teaching Council for England (GTCE)
is the independent professional body for the teaching profession.
Its main duties are to regulate the teaching profession and to
advise the Secretary of State on a range of issues that concern
teaching and learning. The Council acts in the public interest
to contribute to raising the standards of teaching and learning.
2. On 2 June 2010, the Secretary of State announced
his intention to legislate to abolish the GTCE during the next
parliamentary session.
3. Inspection is one tool for accountability; professional
regulation is another. The GTCE responds to this inquiry as part
of the machinery of accountability at the present time. The advent
of the GTCE led to teachers in England being held to account for
the first time as professionals (as distinct from employees in
a particular setting) for their competence as well as their conduct.
4. As a professional regulatory body for teaching
the GTCE takes the view that accepting accountability for the
impact of one's professional practice is one of the hallmarks
of a profession, and that the willingness of practitioners in
disciplines like teaching to accept this accountability is a public
good. This is a theme that is reflected in the code of conduct
and practice for teachers.
5. This response focuses on those inquiry questions
to which the GTC's work in the area of accountability can make
a contribution. The GTCE undertakes to send the Committee wider
material on the future of accountability as it is produced.
6. The GTC would be happy to supplement this written
submission with oral evidence if helpful to the Committee.
ACCOUNTABILITY IN
CHILDREN'S
SERVICES
7. Accountability should be the means by which legitimate
stakeholders in an enterprise receive an account from the agents
of that enterprise, of their actions. But it is only true accountability
if the act of account giving enables stakeholders to take action:
to seek redress if standards are unacceptable; to sanction; to
influence future practice. The GTCE has used the following definition
in its work on accountability:
"Accountability can be defined as the methods
by which the actor may render an account (i.e. justify their actions
and decisions) to the stakeholders and by which the stakeholders
may hold the actor to account (i.e. impose sanctions or grant
permissions)[176]"
8. Moving from wider children's services to a consideration
of the work of schools, it is worth beginning by setting out the
many ways in which schools are held to account for their work.
Performance tables record their outcomes in statutory tests and
public examinations. Governing bodies generally reflect the community
of interest in a school in order that they can hold the leader
to account for its work. They also review the performance of the
head teacher annually. Teaching staff, and increasingly other
staff, are subject to performance management. Teachers are registered
with, and regulated by, the General Teaching Council for England.
The Government currently sets out the curriculum framework (the
non-statutory but widely implemented National Curriculum) and
in recent years have also been active in promoting particular
approaches to pedagogy (e.g. literacy and numeracy strategies,
teaching of phonics). Schools are inspected against national criteria
and inspection reports are published.
9. One important question for the Select Committee
is whether legitimate stakeholders in education feel empowered
by the range and means of accountability mechanisms acting on
schools at the present time. These might include children and
young people, parents and carers, teachers and other staff, other
children's services, local communities, employers, wider society,
and the government as funder and on behalf of the perceived interests
of any of the other stakeholders. For some schools, financial
or denominational sponsors are also important stakeholders. Do
their priorities shape what is scrutinised? Does accountability
help stakeholders to be more discerning about services? Do the
right consequences flow from holding a service to account? Do
things get better?
10. The GTCE hopes that the Select Committee will
situate its work on inspection in the wider context of accountability.
It may wish to consider:
— What
particular role within accountability should inspection play?
What roles should other accountability processes play?
— What
should inspection look like, bearing in mind considerations of
effectiveness and cost?
— Is
the model of inspection, and the use made of resulting evidence,
consonant with aspirations held for schools as institutions of
learning, and for teaching as a profession?
THE PURPOSE
OF INSPECTION
11. Inspection should be one of the means by which
the state assures itself about standards of education, on behalf
of the citizen, among others. It can be fit for the purpose of
providing a snapshot of performance within and across schools
as sites of learning, with some caveats about inspection evidence
as a source of comparative data. At its best, it has taken good
account of the challenges individual schools face as well as the
value they add; at its worst, it has said more about a school's
intake than its outcomes.
12. It can be counterproductive if the state tries
to drive every aspiration it has of schooling through inspection,
or if it becomes the single device through which stakeholders
have their say about what matters in education.
13. In its current form inspection is not embedded
in any sustained, on-going improvement focused form of accountability
and that is a weakness if inspection is to play a greater role
in improvement.
14. Inspection can make a contribution to judgements
about teaching quality but on its own it represents a fairly limited
means of doing so, and there are other accountability mechanisms
that have more to contribute in this regard, including performance
management and professional accountability.
15. Inspection can provide parents with insights
that help with their decisions about school preferences but evidence
about the extent and nature of parents' use of reports suggests
there may be better ways of helping parents to be discerning about
schools. Ideally, accountability tools should help parents to
be insightful and influential throughout their children's school
careers, and not only when expressing a preference between schools.
THE IMPACT
OF INSPECTION
ON SCHOOL
IMPROVEMENT
16. In recent years OFSTED has presented research
and evidence to support its assertions of the positive impact
of inspections on school improvement. A constant theme of head
teachers' perspectives is that inspection did not tell them what
they did not know about the school's shortcomings but the external
reinforcement gave them a mandate for more robust action to secure
change. This may imply a need to revisit the leverage of school
leaders in conveying urgency about improvement to their stakeholders.
17. If inspection continues to be a significant element
of accountability for children's services, the GTCE recommends
that every effort is made to maximise its contribution to improvement.
There is a value for money case for doing this in a time of cuts,
but there is also a strong case to be made about generating and
disseminating knowledge about effective practice across the system
at a time when provision is set to diversify and providers to
become more autonomous. There is an opportunity to refocus Ofsted's
school work in ways that strengthen its contribution to improvement,
and these might include:
— Increasing
the emphasis on thematic reviews and improving the throughput
of their messages to practitioners.
— Stepping
up the involvement of school leaders , thereby building capacity
for critical friendship and supporting knowledge transfer within
the profession - as well as demonstrating a level of trust in
the professionalism of school leaders.
— Engineering
a better articulation between the episodic external inspection
and a sustained process of improvement focussed critical friendship,
such as school improvement partners (SIPs), at their best, have
provided.
18. The form in which inspection findings are reported
may also need revision if practice improvement is to be a primary
function of inspection.
19. The GTCE suggests that the Select Committee might
usefully consider how other accountability mechanisms such as
performance management and professional registration might make
more of a contribution to improvement. The existence of a range
of accountability mechanisms might be portrayed as burdensome
but it might be argued that multiple accountabilities can serve
the public interest. For example, strong professional accountability
can provide a protection for professionals and their service users
where managers within settings apply pressure to act in ways that
are unethical.
20. In its health reforms, the Coalition government
is proposing to enhance the status and infrastructure around public
health, so that there is a dual focus on keeping people healthy
and treating people who are ill. The same rebalancing is needed
in education, in order that more of our scarce resources are spent
enabling the majority of schools to succeed. By implication, in
data rich times it should be possible to spend less on identifying
a minority of schools that do not meet expectations by targeting
activity proportionately where problems are evident or anticipated.
21. The Committee may wish to explore the extent
to which a 'clean bill of health' might serve as more of a 'licence
to innovate' for schools that are demonstrably and consistently
deemed effective.
THE WEIGHTING
OF FACTORS
IN THE
INSPECTION PROCESS
22. In September 2010, the Secretary of State for
Education, Michael Gove, wrote to HMCI Christine Gilbert setting
out his intention to refocus school inspections on four themes:
— The
quality of teaching.
— The
effectiveness of leadership.
— Pupil
behaviour and safety.
— Pupils'
achievement.
23. The GTCE supports the Coalition government's
view that the public interest in schools would be better served
by inspections that focused on fewer, enduring characteristics
of school 'health'. Where accountability is over-complicated there
is a risk that the focus on the things that really matter is diluted.
Furthermore, a regime focused too closely on contemporary government
initiatives runs the risk of appearing less than independent.
24. Inspection should focus on what all schools need
to do well, and what else they do should depend less on micro
management from the centre and more on the priorities of legitimate
stakeholders locally.
25. It is possible that there might be a high degree
of consensus about what these characteristics might be. There
are strong similarities between the Secretary of State's framework,
above, and what the GTCE offers for consideration, on the strength
of its work with parents, children and teachers about their expectations
of schools and teachers:
— What
is the quality of teaching and learning in the school?
— Are
all pupils being supported to progress and achieve, in their academic
and wider development?
— Are
all pupils safe, happy and engaged in school?
— What
is the quality of leadership and management in the school?
— Are
pupils, parents and other stakeholders appropriately involved
in and consulted by the school?
26. References to all pupils are intended
to continue what the GTCE believes has been a morally important
emphasis on schools helping all to succeed. The new Equalities
Act underlines the responsibility of public bodies like the Department
for Education and the GTCE to promote greater equity in the frameworks
we shape in which public services are delivered.
27. The GTCE continues to believe schools have a
responsibility for pupils' well-being. The Code of Conduct for
teaching captures this responsibility because extensive consultation
with parents and other stakeholders confirms that this is a firm
societal expectation of teachers and schools. This is not to imply
that schools should be held solely responsible for well being,
or to support the burdensome means by which schools are sometimes
held to account for wider outcomes. At a time of far-reaching
cuts in children's services it is more important than ever that
schools, as a universal service, understand and meet their contribution
to children's well-being, not least because the capacity of other,
targeted services will be diminished.
28. The GTCE also places emphasis on the stake in
the school held by legitimate stakeholders in its work, foremost
among which are pupils and parents. The GTC's work on the future
of accountability concludes that strong accountability to the
centre has diminished the accountability of schools to local stakeholders
- those to whom teachers rightly feel most responsible. The Coalition
government has taken one route to addressing this deficit - free
schools. The GTCE will propose that all schools might improve
their accountability to pupils, parents and others if the onus
of central or national accountability was reduced where schools
were demonstrably in good health.
A SINGLE INSPECTORATE
FOR ALL
CHILDREN'S
SETTINGS AND
SERVICES
29. It is essential that inspection teams have the
credibility and expertise to make judgements about practice in
each setting, whether there is a single or multiple inspectorates.
If there continues to be a single inspectorate for children's
services, there are potential benefits to be realised, including:
— Streamlining
inspection of multi-disciplinary settings such as schools that
are also children's centres.
— Having
the capacity to make judgements about services as they are experienced
by children and families, e.g. the quality of co-ordination between
services.
— The
potential to undertake thematic reviews across disciplines on
topics such as the quality of consultation with children.
— The
opportunity to spread best practice or innovation across settings
on topics such as successful engagement of excluded families.
30. It may be that while Ofsted has been absorbing
and streamlining substantial areas of work, some of these benefits
have not yet been fully exploited.
October 2010
176 Bovens (2005) "Public Accountability"
in Ferlie, E., et al The Oxford Handbook of Public Management,
Oxford: OUP Back
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