WEDNESDAY 2 DECEMBER 1998

DR JOHN DUNFORD OBE, MR DAVID BENNETT, MR DAVID HART OBE AND MR JEFF HOLMAN

  260. Why should there be any notice of the inspection at all if you want to do the inspection properly?
  (Mr Bennett) I think it is the sheer practical arrangements. For example, at my school, which is a very large school, we had 65 inspector days actually at the school, all condensed into a week. That number of people, the sheer practical arrangements associated with that, descending upon a school, invading—or perhaps that is not quite the right word—invading almost anything in the life of the school, then there are just complexities around that. I, for one, would much rather see it embedded in the ordinary planning process. When we had our inspection, we suspended part of what we were doing simply to focus on the inspection. I believe that was good planning.

  261. I spoke to one school and they said that all the teachers were working the weekend before the inspection started and all the corridors had new pictures and things going up on the walls and all that, so you are not inspecting anything that is typical, but you are inspecting something that is atypical. Surely the point about inspection is that you are trying to see how things usually run, not some fabricated reality.
  (Mr Bennett) That is the purpose of inspection, but I go back again to saying that, as currently run, it is not actually achieving and being able to focus on how things are operating in the way that they normally operate.

  262. I do not want to draw any analogies stupidly on this, so do not get me wrong, but when certain lay people inspect prison cells, they do not say, "We're coming in a couple of weeks", but they just go in and I think that with care homes, although I am not certain, there is a right just to go in, rightly and properly. I am not drawing any analogies on these subjects, but I do not quite understand why certain inspections should not just be strictly off the cuff and suddenly they are there.
  (Mr Bennett) If it is one or two people who knock on my door tomorrow morning, of course they can come in and we will take them round, but 15—

  Chairman: Okay, I see it is a practical point, but I also see the drawbacks of that.

  263. Can we hear the views of NAHT on this?
  (Mr Holman) If there were going to be light-touch inspections, if there were going to be just a couple of inspectors for a couple of days, then that could happen, they could just ring up and say, "I'm coming tomorrow" and that would be fine and we would have no problem with that. It is the paperwork and preparation that has to be put in beforehand and if the inspectors require a huge amount of information before the inspection, then clearly they cannot just ring up and say, "I am coming in tomorrow". OFSTED have made a great play of the fact that they have reduced the burden of preparing paperwork ahead of an inspection. One of the questions we asked our members in our survey was, "If you have been through two inspections, did you notice a difference in the burden of preparation of paperwork?" and the majority of people have said, "No, it was much the same", so there has still got to be work in terms of reducing the burden of the inspection. Now, there could be some value, as I said earlier, in having a light-touch inspection at 24 hours' notice or something, but you could not run the whole system at 24 hours' notice because it just simply would not be practical. The amount of notice to be given has got to be in relation to the amount of preparatory work that is required of the school. We would reverse the 70:30. There seems to be an indication in OFSTED's paper that only 20 or 30 per cent of schools are going to be worthy of a light-touch inspection, but we would reverse that and put it the other way round. There is another aspect of this as well which is that if you reduce the notice period, it still does not take away from schools the fact that at some stage in the next six years they are going to have an inspection and they have still got this hanging over them. Now, if you could convince schools that the majority of schools, the successful schools, the effective schools, whatever that means, were actually going to have a much lighter-touch inspection, a much briefer inspection which would not be as demanding, that would do a lot for teachers' morale and teachers' performance, but the fact that they know, whether they know two terms in advance or whether they know one term in advance or whatever, they know that in the next few years they are going to have this very heavy inspection process descending upon them, then they always have it blighting what they are doing.

  264. Can I just interrupt you because I am now somewhat confused. I got a very clear answer from SHA as to where they stood on the proposed reduction to four to eight weeks, but what I am not clear on from what you are saying is whether in fact within the package that OFSTED are proposing, which is not necessarily your preferred option, but within the package they are proposing, possibly the 30:70 the wrong way round, as you would see it, are you, nevertheless, in favour of the reduction of time?
  (Mr Holman) Yes.

  265. We need to draw to a conclusion fairly soon, but may I ask you two last questions. The first is this: that we get the impression, and I think you have confirmed it, that headteachers welcome many aspects of inspection, but we have also heard much inevitably anecdotal evidence about the stress that is caused by some inspections to teachers, to headteachers, but I am also interested in the impact on pupils. We do not wish you to say anything which would come close to identifying any individuals of course, but what is your general view on this stress factor? Is it a real issue?
  (Mr Hart) Yes, our survey demonstrates that very clearly and I do not need to go into detail because it is there for you. There is no doubt that it does have an impact in stress terms beyond what I would regard as acceptable limits.
  (Dr Dunford) I would agree totally with David, yes.

  266. Do your colleagues have anything to add?
  (Mr Bennett) Yes, the only comment I would make is that although we very carefully planned in my own school for inspection, it took us about six months to recover the teacher enthusiasm and commitment simply because they were tired.

  267. Can I ask a final question about the role of HMCI. Do you agree that the Chief Inspector should use his high public profile to promote the national debate on the standards of education in schools?
  (Mr Hart) Yes, I do, but that is not what he has been doing. He has only in part been promoting the debate about the standards of education in schools, but, as our evidence demonstrates, he has ranged widely across other issues which are tangential or even irrelevant to the issue of the standards of education in schools. I think that is where the difficulty has been created for our members who are frankly angered, deeply angered, not by his pronouncements about the standards of education in schools, because that is a part of his job, but are deeply angered by comments he makes about the number of incompetent teachers, about class sizes, about resources, about a whole range of issues which, in my view, are dangerously astray from his appropriate remit. I do have real problems with the very wide-ranging remit which he has been given by the Secretary of State as recently as January of this year because it does bring OFSTED into virtually every aspect of the education service in a way which I think does pose a lot of difficulties. For instance, he has a major remit in relation to the School Teachers Review Body and teachers' pay and conditions of service, but I have to say that the quality of the evidence submitted by OFSTED on the issue of teachers' pay and conditions of service is very poor indeed and reflects badly on OFSTED in comparison with other good work that OFSTED does, and I do doubt the ability of OFSTED sometimes to deliver the remit they have been given to deliver in areas beyond the inspection system.
  (Dr Dunford) The answer to your question is yes, but the power and his post and the data that is available to him means that he must do it on the basis of evidence, not personal views, and there is a widespread perception that much of what he says is on the basis of his personal views.

  268. I really must come back to David Hart. I accept entirely what John Dunford is saying, that if HMCI is making comments, they must be based on evidence, but what you, David Hart, were saying is that the Chief Inspector, with or without evidence, should not be commenting on issues like class size, resources and so on. It has always been the case that HMI in the past, long before OFSTED was in operation, commented on issues to do with the levels of resources, on class sizes and on other things that did have an impact, as they saw it, on standards of education. You seem to be implying that it would be wrong for HMCI to comment on those issues regardless of whether or not there is the evidence. I think it is important that the evidence is there, but are you really saying that HMCI should not comment on the adequacy of resources?
  (Mr Hart) I am saying that in the context of the political scene that has developed over the last decade, certainly since OFSTED anyway was created, I think it is very dangerous for HMCI to be commenting on issues which I think have enormous political implications and I do think that class size has enormous political implications and it has major public expenditure implications. I think the whole question of resources in schools has major political implications. I think the whole question of teachers' pay and conditions of service has major political implications. If you are going to give HMCI that remit, which I think does go beyond actually commenting on the standards of education in schools, then I agree entirely with John Dunford, that it must be founded on good evidence, but even if it is founded on good evidence, I still think that you are asking HMCI to stray into political issues. They are deeply political, those issues, and even if he or she has got good evidence for what he or she is saying, you are still asking Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools to stray into the political agenda and that is when I start to have difficulty.

  269. One aspect you mentioned was the incompetent teachers. Are you really suggesting that OFSTED has no right to comment on what they regard as the level of incompetent teachers in the system or that this somehow does not have an impact on school standards?
  (Mr Hart) I do not think it is the job of HMCI to tell the great British public that there are 15,000 incompetent teachers. I really do not think that is his job. I think it is the job of HMCI through the OFSTED process to tell schools how many teachers they have which are at levels of competence within those schools and the schools should then do something about it. To come out with banner headlines saying that there are allegedly 15,000 highly incompetent teachers in the system has an enormous impact, an enormous impact on the teaching profession and the motivation of the teaching profession and again it is straying into very political waters, and I want OFSTED to be an inspection system, but I want it to be non-political because I think that is its true job.

  270. Is there not plenty of evidence from OFSTED—you may disagree with this—about the incompetence of teachers? It clearly has a great deal of evidence from its inspections?
  (Mr Hart) Well, there was a great dispute at the time about whether the evidence supported that assertion.

  271. While we are having this on the record, let us say that there was a challenge to those figures. My concern is the evidence on which HMCI bases comments. I am not too concerned about the range that you have given certainly of his comments, but what I am crucially concerned about is that he gets it right.
  (Mr Holman) Yes.
  (Dr Dunford) I agree exactly with what you have just said. He had no evidence whatsoever for saying that there were 15,000 incompetent teachers other than perhaps a chance conversation with a statistician who told him how many unsatisfactory lessons there were and he extrapolated from that. I would not have minded him commenting on that and I would go further than David and say that I do think that the Chief Inspector of Schools has a valuable role to play in the system by commenting on it generally and indeed very much of what he would do in that role would be useful to the Government in developing government policy, but he must do it on the basis of evidence and we have lots of examples in recent years where he has not done that and the incompetent teachers is a very good one.

  Chairman: Gentlemen, thank you very much indeed. We have had a very useful morning and we are grateful to you all. My self-appraisal sheet will mark me low on keeping this Committee to time, as usual, but thank you very much.