John Bald Ofsted and New Labour

Inspection, anyone? Updated (cross-posting with the languages weblog)

Update. Following the posting below, CILT has announced that HMI will now discuss with schools that have not yet started languages what the "main deterrents" are. HMI also said at the conference that, following "a strong case" within Ofsted, the letter to the school published on the Ofsted website following an inspection did not give an overall grading, and that the inspection would take account of the school's state of development in languages.

This is a step forward. However, languages lessons in the normal run of inspections may still be observed and graded by inspectors who don't know the languages, or indeed any languages, and I share HMI's concern that this may  lead to data that is not, in Ofsted terms, "secure". Ths issue of inspecting a subject that is not part of the National Curriculum, but which is still fudged as an "entitlement" has not been fully resolved, and should be.

An interesting revelation from HMI at last week's CILT briefing conference for primary languages consultants - if you tell HMI's administrative assistant that you're not doing languages yet, Ofsted won't come. HMI told the conference that "it would be a waste of resources" to inspect what wasn't there, and that roughly a quarter of schools had not started doing languages - "or said they hadn't. My administrative assistant can't ask, Are you sure?"

As over 90 per cent of schools have started offering languages, there is something of a gap between reality and inspection. Part of the problem is that the inspection is rigorous, and some schools are frightened of it if they've just started. One LEA consultant told me that she advised schools to say they hadn't started yet, even if they had, because of one such unfavourable report. This is clearly wrong. But so is talking about an "entitlement" to a subject that is not compulsory. The government has fudged the issue hugely by delaying the introduction of primary languages until 2011, while pretending that there is an "entitlement" - which in plain English is an enforceable legal right - next year. The truth is that there is no entitlement without title, and that the government has placed local authorities and HMI in an invidious position. Such is truth under New Labour.

Balls and Special Educational Needs - who's kidding who?

Our secretary of state announces in The Guardian that Ofsted is to rate schools on the basis of their SEN provision. Yet another announcement. The problem is that inspectors no longer know how to do this. Look at A Sore Hand on my language weblog. This child's school was highly  rated by Ofsted despite its complete ignorance of the nature of this pupil's needs - she is deaf, for which no provision was made other than health and safety provision, and did not know how to hold a pen at the age of 12.  I have seen a secondary HMI pontificate about modern languages and special needs - "there's good stuff out there, I don't know the details" - without any idea of what he was really asking children to do, as effective special needs teaching is above all a matter of detailed match of the teaching to the learning needs of the child. Balls is right in principle, but New Ofsted has destoyed the special needs basis of the inspectorate to the extent that almost all inspectors do not have the skills and traininng needed to do the work. There is no longer specialist training for special needs inspectors, for example - in Ofsted training, one size fits all. These skills need to be rebuilt.

Ofsted card house blown away

The QCA, according to The Guardian, has found that 44% of SAT papers in English and science were given the wrong grade this year. The reasons for this disgraceful state of affairs have been discussed in other articles on testing in this weblog. But for Ofsted, the consequences are, or should be, devastating.

Ofsted, says the chief inspector to the select committee, "relies" on tests. But how can Ofsted rely on something that can be wrong as often as this, when making decisions that wreck careers? Some of the language used about Ofsted and the chief inspector in this weblog is as severe as it can be within the bounds of decency. But how can one professional person blight another's career on the basis of rubbish like this?

It is, as I said in The TES when the system first came into use, an outrageous tyranny, unfair, ignorant, anti-social and destructive. The select committee should, at the very least, ask hard questions about how any public body can make decisions on these grounds. Ofsted is founded on naivete, and on political wishful thinking that has convinced the likes of Bell, Clarke and Milliband that you can get results just by pulling on what Militant tendency - a small-scale, local organisation - used to think of as "the levers of power". The profession must fight back.

Harringey serious case review.

The Mail has got hold of this serious case review. Three cheers for whoever blew the whistle. Click here for report.

Radio 4 Today 11th March 09

This morning has a report of Ofsted inspecting a special school in 2006 and "not detecting abuse". Ofsted says its reports provide only a "snapshot" of a school. Well, they shouldn't. When Ofsted did its work properly, the report was based on full and corroborated evidence, and so could be used as evidence itself. I was a member of inspection teams that failed several schools whose circumstances were similar to those apparently prevalent at this school. 

I say apparently.  Milton Keynes' children's services may or may not be competent to decide what constitutes proper treatment of highly disruptive pupils, and what constitutes abuse. If they are not competent, and particularly if they are basing judgements on ucorroborated complaints, then teachers are being treated unjustly. Most social workers - if that is where the complaint comes from - have not had to face the problem of children whose behaviour is so bad that they are a danger to themselves and others. The issue of locking the door is highly relevant - should children be allowed to run out of the room? Should they be allowed to run into the road?  Part of the problem lies in secondary EBD schools themselves, some of which are not viable.

A pupil interviewed for the regional news bulletin that carried the story was calm, lucid and articulate. What had happened to his "ADHD". Or is ADHD just another piece of pyschobabble to explain wilfully bad and anti-social behaviour?  Not to mention a stick for psychologists and social workers to beat teachers with.

The BBC's reporting of this incident took Milton Keynes' report as conclusive and was a disgraceful piece of half-informed journalism. The only independent source of evidence remains Ofsted, and the collapse of Ofsted as a reliable source of judgement has once again led to confusion, suffering and injustice.

Penny wise, pound foolish, and why inspection is important

Much was made in HMCI's latest appearance before the Select Committee (Feb 9th) of how much Ofsted was saving. Its budget is to be reduced by 30% from 2003-4 levels (with inflation, apparently a 42% reduction) so that it is aiming at a budget of £186million, out of which it has to "inspect" social services too.

The arithmetic is interesting. The latest government figure for the education budget is £78billion. On this basis, the new Ofsted budget amounts to 0.24% of the total, down from around 0.32%, despite its new duty to "inspect" social services, about which HMCI appears to know nothing at all. The ignocracy's argument that substantial savings can be made in a budget of £78billion by reducing inspection costs by this amount is typical of the way in which they treat everyone outside their own ranks as an idiot. The saving amounts to less than a tenth of one per cent of the education budget.

Is it sensible for an organisation as unwieldy and yet essential as the state education service to spend under a quarter of one per cent of its resources on quality control? And, if it does, is it surprising that inspectors can't do their work properly? The whole exercise is the kind of madness that can only arise from the systematic application of a bad theory, and its consequences are unfairness, superficiality, and dangerous neglect. For HMCI's information, inspection involves checking what people say against the evidence - you do not disbelieve anyone without good reason, but you check. A cup of coffee and a chat, as Ofsted appear to proceed in local authority and some schools inspections, is not an inspection. Unless you also ask the right questions, it does not even pass for a pre-inspection visit.

I once told an editor at the Times Educational Supplement, how hard it was to get an inspection report right. This journalist disliked Ofsted, and particularly disliked Chris Woodhead, who, she said, treated anyone who disagreed with him with contempt. The exchange went like this

Editor -  Why bother?

Me - Because you have people's life's work in your hands.

Editor - That's a good reason.

HMCI and her henchmen and women might reflect on this little conversation. They have people's careers in their hands too, and are not treating them fairly. They can do better, if they choose.

Tellus2

Ofsted has stopped using surveys of pupils as part of its inspections. It is running a national survey annually - click here for a link to the 2007 results. It's interesting that only a tiny proportion of pupils don't think bullying is a problem in their school, especially in secondary school, and also that Ofsted do not ask pupils about their views on behaviour in their school. There is no good reason for dropping this question from the surveys that used to be given in normal inspections. There is an obvious bad reason, which is that a very high proportion of pupils regularly told inspectors that behaviour in their school was unsatisfactory, a figure that Ofsted and its political masters found - what is their word? - challenging. Or even poor.

Another small step backwards - no inspection of off-site classes.

Inspection Matters 13 says that schools are increasingly arranging courses off their own site, for example in local FE colleges. Inspectors are instructed not to visit these sites, but may wish to ask schools how they monitor the provision. This is a small cutback in comparison with the wholesale abandonment of subject inspection undertaken by Ofsted, but is still a deliberate restriction of the evidence available to inspectors. From the time I started inspecting, in 1973, to the last secondary inspection I undertook, in January 2006, inspectors were expected to consider all relevant evidence. In the final inspection, a bricklaying course for fourteen year olds was of excellent quality and counted towards the school's grading. Now, the teacher would not even be seen. Neither would an excellent arts day at a local specialist school that I saw in 1995 have counted, or successful computer lessons in a local secondary school for a primary school in difficult circumstances.

Inspection was once designed to find out what schools were doing, and how well they were doing it. This is no longer Ofsted's concern. I leave readers to imagine a conversation between an inspector asking questions about a dubious college course he or she is not allowed to see, and a less than scrupulous manager seeking to dismiss them.

Today and PM. Ms Gilbert's dilemma

Christine Gilbert ducked an appearance on Today this morning to defend her tick box inspection regime, leaving Barry Shearman MP to criticise her for complacency, for rejecting suggestions from his committee "out of hand" and for using a model for schools that was not appropriate for children's services. 

The methodology of inpsection, said Mr Sheerman, needed to be changed by moving inspectors into the authorities and put on a personal basis. Mr Sheerman felt that Ofsted could afford this out of its 2300 employees, and he is quite right in this.

However, basing an individual inspector in an authority is a dubious tactic - the individual inspector in this system becomes a commisar, effectively in the organisation but not of it, creating a blurred line of responsibility. The approach was used in the former Inner London Education Authority - it pleased the local ignocrats, but was seen simply as a threat by people in the schools. People need encouragement, support, and guidance, not threats. Inspection can be substantially improved without this step - the former DES regional system would be a possible alternative. 

Update. Having suffered grievously at the hands of Mr Sheerman in the morning, Ms Gilbert appeared on PM in the afternoon. She said that Ofsted had written to local authorities asking if their data was reliable and had accepted their assurances that it was. Her interviewer, Eddie Mair, was polite, but incredulous. Ms Gilbert was thinking what to do next, and nothing had been decided, though a whistleblower line was a possibility. The social worker from Haringey whose concerns had been dealt with by Ofsted by asking the management of Haringey whether they were justified said that the whistleblower line should be independent of Ofsted. Ms Gilbert agreed that confidence had been dented. Mair - "You're not going to check." Gilbert, "No," plus waffle about accepting authorities' integrity as there was no reason to doubt it.  She then denied that authorities that got a good report this year would get a light touch inspection next year - standard practice at present, but technically within the parameters of truth, as she said nothing had been decided yet. HMCI should not resort to such equivocation.

The social worker is quite right to say that a whistleblower line should be independent of Ofsted. If all Ofsted does is talk to the boss, then the whistleblower will get the sack. So Ofsted can't be trusted with confidential information. This is more than a dent in confidence.

Ofsted under Ms Gilbert is discredited. Sir Michael Tomlinson should be brought back to sort out the mess, with the assistance of Sir Jim Rose and the handful of other former senior HMI who built up the reputation for quality assurance that David Bell and Christine Gilbert have wrecked.

Who is telling the truth?

Sue Bailey, Head of Beechwood Junior School in Southampton, tells Today (16th December) that she has been told by her inspector that her school cannot be more than satisfactory because of the latest round of SAT results. "Ofsted are so data driven that they really only look at a school in terms of the latest SAT results." I.e., inspection findings are based on SATs rather than first-hand evidence.  

Either Miss Bailey is not telling the truth, or HMCI is not telling the truth when she says that inspection is not based on data. Note that I am not saying that HMCI is telling an outright lie here. She probably thinks she is telling the truth. If so, she lives in a world of her own, which is not a good quality in a chief inspector. As the interviewer pointed out, if the SATs are rubbish, Ofsted should look at the work. That is, do its job properly.