Local authority education bosses have criticised Education Scotland’s decision to work towards a new system of inspecting local authorities, which would add to current inspection processes focused on individual schools.
They say the announcement was made with no discussion and fails to take account of the work education directors have been undertaking for over a year to bring about more effective self-evaluation.
A spokesperson for education directors’ body ADES told Tes Scotland: “If this is a signal of the way the new inspectorate plans to operate, it does not align with what we would consider constitutes effective partnership working.”
Scotland’s largest teaching union, the EIS, has also criticised the plans.
In the past, the EIS has called for council education departments to be inspected, arguing that ensuring local authorities have the capacity to support schools would make more sense than inspecting individual schools.
However, responding to the Education Scotland plans, EIS general secretary Andrea Bradley said that, while there was an argument for evaluating the extent to which the government at both national and local levels supports schools, current models of inspection “need to be rationalised and reformed, rather than being extended and expanded”.
‘Money and resources could be better spent’
She said: “Imposing yet another layer of top-down accountability and performativity drivers on the system, in lieu of addressing the chronic resourcing crisis in education, will only hamper the efforts to improve children and young people’s educational experiences, and the outcomes of these.
“The EIS view is that time, money and resources could be better spent in the current climate.”
The comments follow a letter sent to education directors ahead of the summer holidays from Janie McManus, who has been appointed acting chief inspector as plans to separate the inspectorate from Education Scotland, and make it an independent body, are taken forward.
National overview due soon
In the letter, Ms McManus highlights plans to carry out a national “thematic inspection” of local authorities’ approaches to supporting school improvement, early in 2024-25.
The thematic inspection will see inspectors visit all councils, beginning in September, with a view to find out “what is working well, as well as the challenges” that councils face.
However, the letter also says the inspectorate intends “to develop a framework for the inspection of local authorities”. Although Education Scotland says it has “not yet made any announcement about a programme of local authority inspections”, this is being taken as a signal that it plans to pay more regular visits to council education departments in the future.
Responding to the EIS and ADES comments, an Education Scotland spokesperson said: “We greatly value the feedback and involvement of stakeholders in the development of our new frameworks for inspection, including the framework for local authorities. We are committed to partnership working to drive improvement and we have made this clear in a letter we have recently issued to our partners.”
Plans for visits to local authorities
“Simultaneously, [inspectors] will be undertaking visits to local authorities as part of our national thematic inspection that is looking at local authority approaches to school improvement. We have already engaged with a range of stakeholders and are using feedback from this engagement to support the development of the thematic inspection.”
Tes Scotland asked Education Scotland when it last carried out a regular inspection of council education departments.
It highlighted that in 2017, Education Scotland undertook inspections of the nine Scottish Attainment Challenge (SAC) local authorities. The last report was published in June 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Education Scotland website says it inspects “the education functions of local authorities in response to the level of risk”.
It adds: “This is determined through the Shared Risk Assessment process, which is coordinated by Audit Scotland.”
‘Wide variation’ in councils’ SQA results
When the 2024 Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) exam results were published earlier this month, education secretary Jenny Gilruth highlighted the “wide degree of variation in results between our 32 local authorities”.
She planned to meet education directors, SQA chief executive Fiona Robertson and Ms McManus “to consider the context of these results and how the Scottish government can work with our councils to drive the improvements we all want to see”.
Tes Scotland understands that meeting is due to take place on Tuesday 20 August.
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