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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. 

Progress scores 2018: methodology changed to reduce the impact of outliers

The Department for Education (DfE) is refining the methodology used to calculate school progress scores for 2018 in order to reduce the disproportionate impact of the most extreme pupil level progress scores. This change is a result of NAHT's work in raising and discussing the concerns of members with the DfE about the impact of the individual progress scores of these outlying students.

The refinement introduces a limit on how negative a pupils progress score can be when calculating the school average. They are not setting a maximum limit on how positive a pupils progress score can be as there are much smaller numbers of extremely positive progress scores that have a disproportionate impact than extremely negative ones.

Where a pupil's score is more negative than the minimum score, the minimum score will replace the pupil's original progress score when calculating a school's progress average.

The minimum scores will be fixed at a set number of standard deviations below the mean so that approximately 1% of pupils are identified nationally (we anticipate this will normally be no more than one or two pupils in any school).

As such, predicting which pupils will, and will not, have their score affected by this methodology change, in advance of progress scores being made available, will not be possible. The exact minimum progress scores will be confirmed in the autumn, once we have the 2018 progress data.

The adjusted progress scores will be the headline measures but they will also publish the unadjusted progress scores, within the underlying data, for transparency.

First published 20 June 2019

First published 20 June 2020
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