A new framework for the self-evaluation of council education services has been launched by the education directors’ body ADES.
The framework, How good is our education authority?, and accompanying guidance aim to support councils to take greater responsibility for improvement and to iron out differences between council education services.
In the wake of the 2024 exam results in August, education secretary Jenny Gilruth drew attention to the “wide degree of variation in results between our 32 local authorities”.
Ms Gilruth has also been critical of differing rates of pupil attendance between councils.
‘Improvement isn’t somebody else’s responsibility’
The introduction to the framework says: “Improvement isn’t somebody else’s responsibility and it isn’t possible to ‘inspect’ improvement into a school or system.
“Establishments, services and local authorities need to take responsibility for improvement as well as progress towards ensuring greater consistency of standards across the establishment and local authority.”
It adds: “A child’s or young person’s chances of success in education should not be dependent on where they live in Scotland. ADES believes that we are accountable to the children, young people and families we serve, who deserve a consistently high standard of education wherever they live in Scotland.”
The How good is our education authority? self-evaluation framework borrows its name from the inspectorate’s How good is our school? self-evaluation series for schools.
The framework focuses on two quality indicators, the first relating to leadership and the second to improving outcomes for all children. They set out features of highly effective practice and reflective questions as a guide to self-evaluation.
After education authorities go through the self-evaluation process, the guidance suggests that they share the outcomes in “quads” - eight groupings of four councils with “broadly similar characteristics and demographics”.
‘More likely to lead to useful learning and improvement’
The guidance states: “The point of comparing like with like is that this is more likely to lead to useful learning and improvement.”
The councils would then discuss strengths and weaknesses and take forward emerging priorities.
The guidance says that “one local authority may show strengths in a particular area and be willing to share with others”.
The publication of the framework and guidance comes in the wake of the education inspectorate’s decision - set out in a letter to education directors in June - to “develop a framework for the inspection of local authorities”.
The letter was taken as a signal that the inspectorate plans to reintroduce regular inspection of council education departments - although Education Scotland said it had “not yet made any announcement about a programme of local authority inspections”.
ADES criticised the move at the time, saying the decision had been made with no discussion and failed to take account of the work education directors had been taking forward on self-evaluation - even though this had been undertaken jointly with the inspectorate and had been ongoing for more than a year.
The EIS teaching union, meanwhile, said that “time, money and resources could be better spent in the current climate”.
For the latest in Scottish education delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for Tes’ The Week in Scotland newsletter
