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Structures, inspection and accountability

 
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School leaders understand the need for public accountability. Parents, politicians and the wider public want to be sure that schools are doing their very best for the children they serve.

However, we also recognise that the current low-trust accountability system is based on a narrow range of measures that drive a range of perverse incentives and unintended consequences and that the current high-stakes inspection system all too often instils fear and stifles innovation. 

NAHT is committed to securing fairer methods and measures of accountability, so that pupils’ performance and school effectiveness are judged using a broad range of information, including the school's broader context and performance history, rather than a narrow focus on data.

Ensure published performance data are calculated and used fairly

  • Press the government to take action to ensure understanding across the sector of changes to primary progress data from 2020
  • Engage with the DfE to ensure that the reception baseline assessment is a valid baseline for progress 
  • Work with the DfE to ensure the methodology, publication and use of performance data is accurate, proportionate and appropriate.

 

Press for a transition from vertical high-stakes approach to accountability to a lateral system with greater ownership by the profession itself

  • Further develop, articulate and argue the case for a new approach to school accountability, building on NAHT's Commission, and working with other partners
  • Campaign against a hard accountability measure on exclusions
  • Make the case and lobby for a wholly independent complaints process for appeals against Ofsted inspection judgements
  • Lobby for the publication of all training materials for inspectors to ensure transparency and equity
  • Lobby Ofsted for greater transparency regarding the experience, skills and training of inspectors for specific phases and settings
  • Monitor members' experiences of the new inspection framework, holding Ofsted to account for the consistency, reliability and behaviour of inspectors, particularly around curriculum and the quality of education judgement.

 

Ensure any changes to school structures or systems benefit all pupils within a local community

  • Continue to oppose any form of forced academisation
  • Continue to oppose any expansion of grammar schools
  • Promote and advance local accountability, transparency and democracy in school structures and governance so that schools are best able to serve their wider local community
  • Make the case for centrally coordinated place planning to ensure all new school provision meets demand
  • Promote the full variety of school collaboration from Trusts to informal collaborations. 

The leaky pipeline

 

Today (24 November 2017), NAHT reveals the findings from its annual recruitment survey. 

This year’s survey of more than 800 school leaders finds that, for the fourth consecutive year, recruitment in schools is a significant problem.
  • For the fourth consecutive year, school leaders report there is a difficulty in recruiting across all roles, from teachers to senior leaders. A very high proportion (81 per cent) of teaching vacancies were difficult to fill, 63 per cent were recruited with a struggle and 18 per cent failed to recruit  
  • In the last year, two-thirds (66 per cent) of school leaders said they were aware that some of their staff left the teaching profession for reasons other than retirement. The top two reasons cited were workload (84 per cent of respondents) and work-life balance (83 per cent of respondents
  • Budget pressures have an ever-increasing impact year on year, with the number of respondents blaming them for their failure to recruit to teaching roles rising from nine per cent in 2014 to 33 per cent this year
  • There's also an issue at senior leadership level; this year, respondents reported a rise in the failure to recruit to deputy/vice principal roles and assistant head/principal roles since 2016 (up one percentage point and nine percentage points respectively) 
  • There are still huge difficulties in recruitment for the middle leadership roles in schools. For posts carrying a teaching or learning (TLR) or special educational needs coordinator (SENCo) responsibility, only 17 per cent of roles were filled with ease; members reported difficulty in recruiting to 61 per cent of these posts, and in 23 per cent of cases, the school failed to recruit altogether 
  • All too often recruitment efforts fail to produce enough high-quality candidates. The main reasons as to why schools struggled to recruit included the quality of applicants in the area (cited by 64 per cent of individuals) and an overall shortage of staff in the area (cited by 50 per cent of respondents) 
  • Continuing the trend seen in 2016, supply agencies were the most common solution for those schools that failed to recruit (reported by 73 per cent of individuals). A further concern our survey revealed is that 44 per cent of respondents reported the solution to the failure to recruit was for a member of the senior leadership team to cover the teaching hours (up from 41 per cent in 2016). 

NAHT deputy general secretary Nick Brook said: "Despite four years of warnings by NAHT, the recruitment crisis continues unabated. The government is still failing to provide enough teachers for our growing school population. The recruitment pipeline is leaking, with insufficient numbers of newly qualified teachers coming into the system and too many experienced teachers leaving prematurely."

 

Download our full report here.

First published 23 November 2017
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