School leaders and teachers have come to regard accountability as something unpleasant that is done to them by Ofsted inspectors and league tables. However, they are not against accountability. It is agreed that, as public services, schools should be held to account for the efficiency and effectiveness with which they spend public money.

One has only to consider the appalling front page of the Daily Mail, attacking the three judges who ruled on the need for a Brexit procedural vote in Parliament, to recognise the lack of proper accountability in the newspaper industry, as we had already seen in the phone-hacking scandal. Accountability in the banking system is similarly lacking.

In public services, though, the questions - both in the system as a whole and in individual schools - are not about whether there should be accountability, but about how much and how.

In my new book, The School Leadership Journey, I discuss what intelligent accountability might look like, if applied to the performance of schools.

In a paper for the Secondary Heads Association (now the Association of School and College Leaders) in 2003, I defined intelligent accountability as:

“A framework to ensure that schools work effectively and efficiently towards both the common good and the fullest development of their pupils. It uses a rich set of data that gives full expression to the strengths and weaknesses of the school in fulfilling the potential of pupils. It combines internal school processes with levels of external monitoring appropriate to the state of each individual school.”

Decentralisation of power in public services, such as the governance of academies, is almost always accompanied by a balancing increase in the power of the centre.

In 1988, the introduction of grant-maintained schools and local management of schools (LMS) was accompanied by an increase in accountability through a national curriculum, national tests and regular school inspections, none of which had existed previously.

Governments have at their disposal powers over the curriculum, assessment, funding and accountability with which to steer policy in schools.

In particular, external accountability drives policy at school level, sometimes placing school leaders in the difficult position of having to decide between the interests of their pupils and the school’s position in performance tables. The EBacc, and only the first GCSE entry counting, are recent examples of political value judgements having direct educational consequences. That is not intelligent accountability.

Progress 8, on the other hand, incentivises schools to raise the attainment of every 16-year-old and is therefore a much better accountability measure than a threshold measure, such as the proportion of 16-year-olds gaining at least five high-grade GCSE passes. All threshold measures create too many perverse incentives.

In the context of intelligent accountability, Ofsted inspections in their current form are an improvement on some previous models, but could still benefit from a different approach.

In dealing with inspections, school leaders and teachers want to give a good account of the school’s work within Ofsted’s terms of engagement, but they do not want to be diverted from the school’s own priorities and improvement plan. This requires school leaders to take greater control of the accountability agenda, using intelligent accountability internally through school self-review, and using peer review in order to ensure that the school’s judgements on its own performance are aligned with best practice elsewhere.

In my work as national pupil premium champion, I encouraged schools, which are held to account for the impact of the pupil premium, but not for the detail of how they use it (unless they are markedly unsuccessful), to set their own success criteria. So, for example, schools might decide that pupil premium success would mean raising attainment from x per cent in 2016, to y per cent in 2017 and to z per cent in 2018. Or closing the gap by 5 percentage points each year; or increasing the attendance of disadvantaged learners by 3 per cent each year; and so on.

In setting these success criteria themselves, schools are taking control of accountability and will be using peer review - through Challenge Partners, the Education Development Trust, Whole Education or the SSAT, all of which have proven peer-review systems - to check on their performance against national norms.

In taking greater ownership of accountability, schools can give an account of their performance to pupils, parents and the local community. All of this helps to put accountability in its proper place, supporting the aims of the school and not diverting them.

It also helps to hold staff to account intelligently, and not just pass down the line the type of accountability that is placed on schools by the government and Ofsted.

The highest form of accountability for professional people such as teachers, however, is the professional accountability to which we hold ourselves. It is our own view of the extent to which we uphold the highest standards of professionalism that should be our sternest test. Taking ownership of accountability is part of this process.

John Dunford is chair of Whole Education, a former secondary head, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders and national pupil premium champion. He tweets as @johndunford