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Lord Hanningfield: I hesitate to speak from personal experience of a local authority, but in Essex we have
 
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110 secondary schools, 50 of which are already carrying out self-evaluation. They are at different levels, so perhaps 25 can skip through the process; and 25 may need real help because of where they are and the problems that they have. Help cannot happen overnight, so will the Minister say how that process can be started? It is no use Ofsted going in. It will say that the school is not doing it properly now, so someone must help it start the process. I am sure that it is common throughout the country that 75 per cent are probably able and moving towards their goal, while 25 per cent of schools need initial help in the process. Will the Minister comment on that?

Lord Filkin: The noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, is right. That is a description of reality. From the centre, we are seeking to avoid thinking that the way to do this is to develop a thick manual and a set of forms. In essence, this has to be the stimulus for more creativity, rather than people thinking that they are going through a compliance process. The more specific answer to his question is that—apart from the high-level guidance that we are going to give, and I shall speak a bit more about the evidence of that in a few minutes—this is where the school improvement partners will have a particular function. They will be identifying those schools almost from the authority's own knowledge. Good local authorities know where schools are not performing well or do not have the capacity to self-evaluate well, as the noble Lord's local authority does, and they will focus their attention there and support those schools at the earlier stages of the process. It is crucial and the SIPs will do that.

We have taken a conscious decision not to have a model of self-evaluation for schools and not to tell them how to do it. They are free to use any model that gives them the best insights into their improvement priorities. The guidance suggests key questions or acid tests that the school ought to pose to itself as part of the process. I shall touch on one or two of those very briefly.

One acid test of the effectiveness of self-evaluation is whether the school's evaluation is based on a good range of telling evidence. Clearly, after a while, a school improvement partner or Ofsted will know the range of evidence that one would expect the school to be looking at and the comparators with which it was comparing itself in terms of its achievements.

A second test is whether the self-evaluation identifies the most important questions about how well a school services learners. The question of what is most important is crucial. A self-evaluation process that describes 700 things is useless. A process must identify the things that are most critical to achieve and where the improvement is most critical. Unless there is focus, one can do nothing.

The next question is how the school compares with the best comparable schools. That is about ambition. Another question is whether the self-evaluation planning involves key people in the school and seeks the views of key groups such as parents, learners and others; in other
 
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words, the process points on which they communicate. The last acid test is whether the self-evaluation process is integral to the key management systems. That relates to the points we talked about earlier. In other words, is the self-evaluation process the core business, rather than something that has been stuck on? It ought to be the core business of management. That is an outline of some of the key guidance developed in discussion with some of the leadership figures on the issue, and we think that it will help.

Inspection will be based on the self-evaluation form which schools will be expected to update at least once a year. The inspector will compare the outcomes of the school's own self-evaluation with the outcomes of the inspection. How successful the school has been at identifying its own strengths and weaknesses will be an important test in the inspection and will be reflected in the reports. That is the direct answer to the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. This is an important distinction. The inspection will test the outcomes of self-evaluation but not the processes that the school has been through to identify them.

Finally, we envisage that Ofsted will be able to assess processes involving self-evaluation through future thematic surveys that give a wider view of the quality of self-evaluation taking place in the school. In other words, that is a clear signal that there has to be a thematic study at some point in order to research the developed experience and reflect upon what more needs to be done to take it further.

Perhaps I may turn to some of the more specific points. The noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Conwy, asked about the GTC briefing. Self-evaluation is part of the improvement but we must keep clear boundaries in inspection. I am also advised that we do not think that we received a copy of the GTC briefing. We are therefore slightly handicapped in our answer on that. We shall do better in the follow up.

We have already said that the new self-evaluation is designed to be integral to the school's planning and improvement cycle. So, I do not think that I can add more on that.

I have gone on at length, but I think that this is an essential debate in terms of the architecture of the Bill. I hope that I have gone some way towards making the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, feel that the processes will answer questions while the legislation does not need to.

Lord Lucas: I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, is not too satisfied. I found the Minister's answer limited. I do not think he appreciates the position that we believe this aspect of inspection should have in terms of being brought to the Minister's attention. I very much hope that the noble Baroness will feel inclined to pursue the matter at a later stage. It is up to her; I shall not try to gazump her on it.
 
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I was reminded that my noble friend Lord Hanningfield carries the good name of my family in his hands and that all he can do to improve the performance of the Sir Charles Lucas School will be much appreciated.

Lord Hanningfield: For noble Lords' benefit, we have a Sir Charles Lucas School in Colchester which is named after my noble friend's family.

Baroness Sharp of Guildford: I thank the Minister for his reply. I am not fully satisfied. The more the Minister identified the detailed guidance which has to be given the more I considered how useful it would be to have a small general clause. The Government will clearly be issuing guidance to schools. The issue will absorb resources. Training will be needed with regard to leadership and teaching staff. It will take time and effort to develop these self-evaluation procedures. Schools need the resources to develop them and a learning curve of how to do so.

Knowing that it is one of the issues the inspectors will be considering will be a stimulus. They will be looking at how far their self-evaluation procedures produce the same answers as those of the inspectors. It is an important part. Nevertheless, they have to have those self-evaluation procedures in hand.

The noble Lord, Lord Roberts, may be interested to know why I tabled the amendment. Having gone through the GTC briefing for the Second Reading, I thought that this was a good point that we should raise and we tabled the amendment.

I hear what the Minister says about school improvement partners. However, school improvement partners seems a fashionable idea that will come and go. We have had quite a lot of such ideas through the ages. I would not mind betting that ten years down the line there will not be school improvement partners. Nevertheless, if we put a provision into legislation now it will be there 10 years down the line.

Lord Filkin: I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. I have some difficulty with her amendment. I said in short that the process of appraisal by Ofsted would explicitly make a judgment, as part of that process, on whether the school was developing rigorous internal processes of self-evaluation. That is what I stated at length. That is the truth in short of what the process will do. Therefore I am at a loss to understand why putting a provision into legislation will make any difference.

Baroness Sharp of Guildford: It is not so dissimilar from saying,

"the quality of the leadership in and management of those schools, including whether the financial resources made available to those schools are managed efficiently".

"Are they developing rigorous internal self-evaluation procedures?" relates to much the same issue. If we put the one into the legislation I do not see why we should not put in the other.
 
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I shall withdraw the amendment. However, it is an issue to which we shall return.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

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