Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the Scottish school inspectorate has not published a report feeding back its findings from the hundreds of school inspections it carries out annually.
This is despite the system going through one of its most challenging periods in living memory, with pupil performance in key areas worsening, school staff reporting increasingly poor behaviour and pupil attendance a constant challenge in many schools.
Education Scotland carries out around 250 school inspections a year. However, the last report it published giving an overview of its inspection findings came out in February 2020, based on the findings from the 252 school inspections carried out the previous year, in 2018-19.
‘Unique evidence base’
That report talks about the “unique evidence base” the inspectorate has “drawn from observing practice at first hand across the country”.
However, the concern is that in recent years - while reports continue to be published on individual schools - much of the insight and knowledge gleaned from the full gamut of school inspection is failing to reach a wider audience and support improvement.
Andrea Bradley, general secretary of the EIS teaching union, said the failure to share overall findings suggested “the approach to inspection has focused much more strongly on quality assurance - putting scores on the doors - than on promoting improvement”.
However, the EIS had “not heard a whisper from members” complaining about the lack of overviews in recent years from HMIE (or HM Inspectorate of Education, the historical title still used to refer to the inspection function of Education Scotland).
Ms Bradley added: “This points again to the fact that teachers largely do not consider HMIE their go-to reference to inform their practice. As the EIS has said many times before, there are far more sophisticated and frankly more cost-effective ways to support good practice - and to enable system accountability - than HMIE inspection.”
School inspection was gradually reintroduced in Scotland in 2021-22, after being paused because of the pandemic. Before the 2022-23 school year, the inspectorate announced its intention to carry out ”at least 250 inspections across the school sector”.
However, with the 2023-24 school year now drawing to a close, there has been no feedback summarising the inspectorate’s findings since visits resumed beyond the reports published on individual schools.
Speaking exclusively to Tes Scotland in April - as she announced there would be a review of inspection in Scotland - interim chief inspector Janie McManus acknowledged that sharing findings from inspection was “an area we need to improve on” in order to “really support the education system”.
More recently, in response to Tes Scotland questions on reporting, an Education Scotland spokesperson again reiterated that “a key priority” for Ms McManus is to “foster a culture of continuous improvement through sharing inspection findings with practitioners and stakeholders across the education system”.
Approach to sharing inspection findings is being reviewed
The spokesperson said Education Scotland is reviewing its approach to publication and sharing of inspection findings, and some new developments will be taken forward for the next academic year.
“This includes how we collate the key themes and findings from inspections and how we share them to best support the education system,” they added.
The spokesperson said the last report, which reviewed inspection findings across all Scottish education sectors, was published in April 2017 and then in February 2020 a briefing on inspection findings from the 2018-19 academic year was published.
HMIE did not “routinely publish summaries of sectoral inspection findings” - although it did publish “regular thematic inspection reports and examples of highly effective practice”. In November 2023, Education Scotland published a report looking specifically at attendance.
The new education bill - which is expected to become an act by autumn next year - will require the chief inspector to report annually on the performance of Scottish education.
Published last week, the bill - which lays the groundwork for three new education bodies in Scotland, including an independent inspectorate - envisages this “regular, independent statement to the Scottish Parliament and other stakeholders on the education system at a national level” will support “accountability and improvement”.
The financial memorandum accompanying the bill notes that “reporting on performance of Scottish education was once standard operational practice for the education inspectorate”.
The inclusion of the requirement in the bill follows a recommendation in Professor Ken Muir’s 2022 report Putting Learners at the Centre: Towards a Future Vision for Scottish Education.
It said one of the “critical roles of the independent Inspectorate” would be to “report annually and over longer periods on the performance of Scottish education”.
Different approach taken in Wales
The approach to reporting on inspection findings taken in recent years by the Scottish inspectorate stands in stark contrast to that taken by the Welsh school inspectorate, Estyn.
It publishes an early summary of its findings from inspection of the previous academic year in October, which is designed “to provide prompt, useful feedback” to schools.
This is then followed by a more detailed annual report in January designed to provide “an in-depth look at how each sector in Wales is performing”.
In his foreword to the most recent report, the chief inspector of Estyn, Owen Evans, said the body is “keen to add value by sharing our findings in a timely and accessible way so that our advice can be readily understood and acted upon”.
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