TO THE OFSTED CONSULTATION:
‘THE FUTURE OF INSPECTION’
INTRODUCTION
1. The NUT welcomes the opportunity to respond to the OFSTED consultation, ‘The Future of Inspection’. It notes the work being carried out by the DfES on a ‘Single Conversation’ and a ‘School Profile’. Within both the DfES proposals and the OFSTED consultation is an increased emphasis on school self-evaluation. The NUT’s record on school self-evaluation is both sustained and influential.
2. In 1994, the NUT commissioned a study from Strathclyde University into self-evaluation in primary and secondary schools in England and Wales. This study resulted in a report entitled, ‘Schools Speak for Themselves’ and four years later in a book, by Professor John MacBeath, ‘Schools Must Speak for Themselves’. Both reports had enormous influence.
3. The NUT model was highly influential in a major European project involving 101 schools in 18 countries. At the end of the study, 98 of the 101 schools expressed an interest in continuing their involvement. The report was published in 1999 and was entitled, ‘Evaluating Quality in School Education’ (MacBeath, Schratz, Meuret and Jakobson) and was followed by a book by the same authors, ‘Self-Evaluation in European Schools’.
4. ‘Schools Must Speak for Themselves’ was translated into Danish and Greek; the Greek version being launched by the Greek Minister of Education in 2001 and representing the policy direction for that country. Self-evaluation in European schools has been translated into German, Italian, Polish and Greek with further translations to come.
5. In many of the participating countries, the European model continues to thrive. In the Swiss canton of Ticino, a hybrid of the NUT and European model has been developed over the last three years. In the Quebec province in Canada, the NUT model has been used together with a similar model developed at McGill University. Rhode Island, in the United States, adopted a successful self-evaluation model. In Hong Kong, the NUT model has influenced policy development.
6. The report of the European Inspectorate acknowledges the significant influence of both the NUT and European models in shaping their policy.
7. As a result of its longstanding interest in school self-evaluation, the NUT has commissioned two separate papers from Professor John MacBeath; one which outlines current self-evaluation models in a range of countries and the other on his response to the OFSTED consultation document. His papers are attached to this response. The NUT’s response is in two parts. The first sets out the NUT’s proposals. The second part is a response to the consultation document, ‘The Future of Inspection’.
SECTION 1: THE NUT’S PROPOSALS
8. OFSTED’s view that, “Inspection should become a more natural part of the normal business of schools, rather than an infrequent event which does not necessarily see the school as it usually is”, is both benevolent and still unattainable. The NUT does not believe that the proposals outlined in the consultation document represent a radical departure from the current inspection arrangements for this aim to be achieved. What is needed is a fundamental rethink of the structure of inspection, its relationship with school improvement and its consequences.
9. The NUT does not believe that the proposals set out in the consultation document consider all of the possible solutions to the question posed in paragraph 5, “how best can inspection support higher standards for all children and young people?”, as the question itself is predicated on the assumption that the OFSTED model, albeit in a modification form, can bring about improvement.
10. In fact, inspection has failed to bring about sustained improvement because of its separation from developmental support and from schools’ own improvement work. Instead, inspection has been used as a means of policing the education system. Despite the inclusion of elements of self-evaluation, school communities do not own the process of evaluation of their schools. Inspection is done to, rather than done with, school communities. What is needed is a fundamental review of the whole system of internal and external evaluation.
11. The NUT’s position is based upon both its experience of supporting members in schools and the independent research it has commissioned on inspection and self-evaluation. The NUT sponsored both the initial ‘Schools Speak for Themselves’ report by Professor John MacBeath, as part of the Strathclyde University study and his subsequent book, ‘Schools Must Speak for Themselves’, which has been highly influential in this country and elsewhere. In addition, the NUT commissioned the National Foundation for Educational Research to undertake research into the impact of OFSTED inspections, which focused in particular on the “human cost” of the current inspection arrangements.
12. This evidence base has been used to inform the NUT’s alternative approach to the ‘top down’ and punitive system of OFSTED inspection arrangements. It believes that the system needs to be realigned so that it:
· allows for co-operation rather than conflict;
· is sensitive to local context;
· earns and maintains credibility with teachers;
· is capacity building and constructive;
· is evidence-based and two-way (bottom-up as well as top-down); and
· complements schools’ own system of self-evaluation.
13. The greatest flaw in the current statutory inspection arrangements is structural in nature. It is a system based entirely on securing accountability accompanied by punitive measures for those schools which have been found to fail. This system of policing schools has led to the alienation of teachers from the process of quality assurance and evaluation. The arrangements have failed to channel teachers’ expertise, experience and their commitment to the evaluative process. OFSTED has contributed to a culture of compliance under which schools and teachers prepare for evaluation out of fear rather than commitment and enthusiasm. Nothing in the consultation document would address these fundamental structural weaknesses.
14. Where the outcomes of the inspection are positive there is a sense that the school breathes a collective sigh of relief and continues, much as before. It is where the outcomes of the inspection result in failure that the destructive nature of the system is more evident. While the punitive consequences of external evaluation remain, they will continue to hamper school improvement.
15. At the core of the inspection process are ‘high stakes’ judgements about teaching quality, which are based on snap-shots of evidence. That those judgements are based on a small number of lesson observations is viewed by teachers as unfair; unfair because they take no account of all the external factors which influence the quality of lessons. Such factors include the composition and attitude of classes at any one time, the inevitable stress of scrutiny and even the state of each teacher’s health. The proposed reduction in the amount of observation to be undertaken could compound this weakness in the current inspection system.
16. It has been a matter of long-standing concern for the NUT that Section 10 inspections have not been seen by schools as supportive of their development needs and that inspectors should, as well as identifying problems, also offer advice. OFSTED is in danger of missing the opportunity of redressing this situation.
17. External evaluation can help identify areas of a school’s work which needs improvement. Such evaluation, however, is at its most effective when school communities understand its purpose and relevance. Overwhelming evidence from research and practice demonstrates that evaluation by schools themselves must also be at the centre of school inspection and support. To quote the Scottish HMCI, “Unless schools know themselves, they cannot benefit from inspection”.
18. There does not yet exist in England and Wales a system which brings internal and external school evaluation together in a coherent and systematic way, drawing on the strengths of both and integrating evaluation into systems for supporting teaching and learning. Yet developments in other countries, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Scotland, have shown that it is possible to move towards such a coherent system.
19. The NUT asked Professor John MacBeath to examine self-evaluation models in a number of countries. His paper argues that, if self-evaluation is truly to be effective and ‘owned’ by schools, it must be school driven, formative and supportive. His paper is attached to this response. The NUT believes that it is a powerful endorsement of the need for a bottom-up evaluation model for schools from the author of the revival of school self-evaluation. It is a model which the current HMCI endorsed himself when he was Chief Education Officer for Newcastle. He was right then to support the approach in ‘Schools Speak for Themselves’. He should do so again now.
20. The NUT believes that the limitations of the OFSTED approach can be redressed by the adoption of externally validated school-led self-evaluation, paving the way for the development of a more collaborative school improvement process, or what Michael Fullan[1] has called the ‘sandwich model’, in which ‘bottom-up’ meets ‘top-down’
21. The NUT would wish to emphasise that it is not advocating self-evaluation as the only means of school evaluation. Its proposals seek to locate the optimal point of balance between the monitoring of quality and standards solely by an external inspectorate on the one hand, and quality assurance undertaken exclusively by schools on the other. Finding the correct point of balance is critical to the pursuit of quality and standards and has been a fundamental concern of the NUT’s work in this field.
The Relationship between Internal and External Evaluation
22. Internal and external evaluation should be coherent, systematic and integrated. A common framework for internal and external evaluation, including its criteria, should be developed in full consultation with teachers and their organisations. This framework could thus be used for the purposes of checking the effectiveness of each school’s self-evaluation arrangements.
23. A holistic approach to evaluation should be adopted involving a coherent approach to the evaluation of teachers, schools as institutions, Local Education Authorities and the education service nationally.
24. External evaluators should evaluate each school’s definitions of its own successes, performance and development plan and the effectiveness of its self-evaluation procedures. In evaluating the work of schools, external evaluation should take account of the circumstances of and specific factors affecting each school. A variety of evidence, both qualitative and quantative, would be agreed and provided by the school to support its own judgments.
25. The role of external evaluators or inspectors would be to assess the effectiveness of the self-evaluation procedures developed and used by schools themselves. All those involved in external evaluations should have appropriate training, qualifications and experience.
26. The importance of involving teachers in the development and refinement of self-evaluation and its external validation cannot be overstated. Such an approach critical to its widespread acceptance and to ensuring that the approach is not prescriptive but able to be customised by schools. Without such involvement, there is a real danger that schools would use it mechanistically and have little sense of ownership. On the other hand, if there is too great a degree of flexibility, it could be difficult for some schools to initiate and sustain self-evaluation. To achieve an appropriate level of balance, schools could be offered a range of models and examples to draw on guidance on key principles, so that schools could choose and adopt self-evaluation procedures which most closely matched their own particular contexts and stage of development. Funding would be made available to schools to support the self-evaluation process, including classroom observations and appropriate training for staff.
27. The categories of ‘special measures’, ‘serious weaknesses’ and ‘underachieving’ should be abolished. They would be replaced by the designation, ‘schools needing additional support’. LEAs would have the responsibility for supporting schools with problems including the provision of additional targeted resources. The progress of each school towards resolving problems would be evaluated by validation teams and LEAs on merit. There would be no deadline/guillotine for improvement.
28. This proposal has been informed by the arrangements for “failing schools” in Guernsey, where, if serious problems are identified as a result of the external validated review, the school is given three months to draw up an action plan to address any problems identified with active support and input from an external advisor, such as an HMI, to enable the school to make progress. The school is then re-visited by the external validation review team a year after the initial visit, to look at the progress that had been made. The emphasis is on supporting the school. There are no labels such as “special measures” or serious weaknesses”.
Framework for a New School Evaluation System
29. The current system of contracted inspections should be abolished. Teams responsible for school self-evaluation could report periodically on schools’ performance, using common criteria for judging school effectiveness.
30. HMI could appoint area validation teams, which would cover single, large local education authorities, or clusters of local education authorities. Validation teams would comprise LEA officers and advisors; headteachers and other members of the Leadership Group; serving teachers; and HMI and Registered Inspectors who have completed training through OFSTED. It would be a requirement that any validation team member who is not based in a school must undertake a secondment to a maintained school of not less than half a term, every three years, in order to refresh and keep up-to-date their professional skills.
31. This model is currently in operation in Rhode Island and has been found to offer significant benefits to both individual teachers and schools in terms of understanding of and engagement with accountability mechanisms and school improvement work.
32. The role of the validation team would be to check and validate schools’ self- evaluations against their own indicators, using a common evaluation framework, and to provide advice to schools as ‘critical friends’. Following validation and the provision of advice, funding would be provided to support the implementation of any key areas identified for action.
33. Discussions with staff should be an integral part of external evaluation. This would reinforce the importance placed on self-evaluation and on the involvement of staff in it. External evaluation would be seen as a dialogue between professionals from the very outset.