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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. 

NAHT's Nick Brook gives evidence about Ofsted's inspection of schools

NAHT was invited to give evidence to the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on 25 June.  The PAC is considering the National Audit Office’s (NAO) recent report on Ofsted’s approach to inspecting schools and whether the inspectorate provides value for money.

In a wide-ranging session, Nick Brook set out NAHT’s view that accountability systems should always be tested against their ability to deliver improvement, explaining that there is now ‘much less evidence that the inspectorate is having a positive impact’ than it did when it was first formed.  

Nick said ‘I hear much less about inspection uncovering anything of worth that… schools did not actually know already,’ echoing the NAO’s view that there are issues with the rigour of the inspection process.  Referencing the high stakes of the current accountability system he emphasised the ‘interplay with performance tables and the fear that...poor results at the end of one year…could be career ending.’

He pointed to short one-day inspections of good schools ‘which simply do not seem to be long enough to be useful, yet… are now the norm’ noting that ‘Ofsted has become reliant on the short inspection model to perform its duties’.  Reporting the experience of a recently trained Ofsted Inspector who said that short inspection involves 'a near impossible task to get through the work that was needed, ’Nick noted that ‘we have good inspectors attempting to achieve the impossible in schools’. 

Nick explained that these reasons lay behind NAHT’s decision to convene an independent commission on accountability that will report its findings and make recommendations this September.  NAHT’s ambition is that this will be the first step towards a future accountability system where school leaders no longer require bravery or heroism to do that right thing because ‘doing the right thing is the easy thing to do’.  

You can watch a recording of Nick giving evidence here.

Ofsted and the Department for Education gave evidence at a later session - for a summary of Amanda Spielman’s responses to the Committee’s questions see this Schools Week article. 

First published 27 June 2018
First published 20 June 2019
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