An overhaul of school inspection to replace the current system with a report card approach should be based on a “slim” set of standards that apply to all types of schools and trusts and “encourage collaboration rather than competition”, the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) has set out today.
In a short discussion paper due to be published this morning - less than a week before the election - the heads’ union sets out what it believes a shake-up of the accountability of schools should look like, aimed at fleshing out previous proposals adopted by the Labour party in its current manifesto.
The paper does not present formal ASCL policy, the union said, but is an indication of its current thinking.
If elected, the Labour Party has pledged to replace single-word Ofsted judgements with a report card system and to introduce an annual safeguarding check, which would also look at attendance and off-rolling.
Single accountability system for schools and MATs
Tes revealed last year that ASCL was planning to release a report exploring how a scorecard or dashboard could be introduced to replace single-word Ofsted grades.
As part of this work, the union considered whether Ofsted should produce report cards for both schools and multi-academy trusts.
ASCL has said that the move to report cards is a “complex proposition, with many potential unintended consequences” - something that “is made even more challenging by the complex structures” of the school system.
In the discussion paper, set to be published today, ASCL has said that the model “must be flexible enough to work for schools in different circumstances, including maintained schools, single-academy trusts, schools in MATs that devolve significant responsibility to individual schools, and schools in MATs with more centralised control”.
ASCL suggests an approach that would see schools “held to account against a statutory set of standards”, which it claims “would enable the government and its agencies to hold schools to account more effectively than is the case with the current single-phrase judgement-based approach”.
However, the heads’ union emphasises that any standards should “encourage collaboration rather than competition between schools, and include an expectation that all schools should be seeking to continually improve”.
And it calls for the standards to be based on values that are important to all “key stakeholders” including school leaders, pupils and parents, but that they should be “as slim as possible, leaving space for schools to innovate around them.”
Schools would then be held to account “solely against these standards”, the paper argues, adding it “should be clear what the consequences of not meeting any of the standards would be”, with any intervention “focused on what individual schools most need in order to improve in their specific areas of weakness”.
Regulation and improvement are very different activities
Whether or not a school has met some standards is likely to be most effectively assessed through inspection, the ASCL paper argues, but it also suggests that others could be evaluated “through other forms of regulation such as financial or safeguarding audits”.
“It is essential, however, that there is a clear, overarching structure within which these different forms of regulation operate,” the union adds.
The union has said that the decision over whether a school that does not meet the standards has the ability to improve should not be one made by Ofsted. Instead, the inspectorate’s role “should simply be to assess whether or not a school meets the statutory standards it is tasked with evaluating”.
Labour has previously committed to sending regional school improvement teams - comprised of local teachers and heads and managed by civil servants - to schools identified as having weaknesses during Ofsted inspections.
ASCL has said today that “regulation and school improvement are, and should be treated as, very different activities”.
The union has also set out the case for “some form of regional evaluation of the capacity to improve of schools that are not meeting the standards, and for the implementation of structural invention in the likely small number of cases where this was deemed necessary”.
Labour’s proposed regional improvement teams could then be tasked with working alongside schools and trusts to build a strong network of support and professional development in a local area, and to connect schools with complementary strengths and weaknesses to encourage genuine school-led support and development, the paper argues.
And it suggests that this could be an “evolution of the current DfE regional director (RD) role”.
Currently, RDs make decisions on how trusts grow, which trusts are best suited to run particular schools, and how trusts are established, merged or dissolved.
Policy must have ‘strong focus’ on SEND and disadvantage
ASCL has also suggested that “careful consideration should be given to whether there is a place for schools to include some of their own metrics as part of a national accountability system”.
A report card model should have a “strong focus on provision for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and those living with disadvantage”, the paper argues, with the suggestion that this might include standards around inclusive admissions, access to the curriculum, and access to and engagement with extracurricular provision.
But the discussion paper is clear that “the standards should recognise that many of the statutory responsibilities for children with SEND sit with local authorities, rather than with schools or trusts”.
Ofsted launched a “Big Listen” consultation exercise in March to seek views from school leaders, teachers, parents and pupils on the inspection system, following an outcry after the death of headteacher Ruth Perry last year.
And while the Department for Education said it will continue to look at alternative grading systems, it has insisted that single-word Ofsted grades have “significant benefits”.
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