16 July 2010
School heads are calling for a comprehensive shake-up of the education inspection system.
A policy paper on ‘intelligent accountability’, released today by the Association of School and College Leaders, concludes that the existing system of assessments and league tables is not adequate.
General secretary John Dunford criticised Ofsted for continually raising standards, as this made meaningful comparisons across a period of time impossible.
He said: ‘The current accountability mechanisms are poor and often create the wrong incentives, which inevitably impact on how and where resources are focused.’
The ASCL said league tables did ‘more harm than good’. It is recommending that Ofsted stops measuring schools by how many pupils achieve a minimum of five A* to C grade GCSEs. This, the study says, leads to too much focus on the C/D borderline. Instead, regulators should judge schools according to a points score based on overall GCSE results.
The union lauds the School Improvement Partnerships programme as a way of supporting schools’ own self-evaluation. Dunford argues that future inspection systems should be more like a process for validating these internal audits.
The ASCL recommends a new inspection regime that ‘gives full expression to the strengths and weakness of a school in fulfilling the potential of pupils’. It should use data only where valid conclusions can be drawn from it.
The union is also calling for the government to appoint a group of statistical experts to re-draw the ‘contextual value added’ measure, which adjusts school performance according to the social circumstances of its pupils.
