Pushing the Government on Ofsted

NDCS has been making progress in trying to ensure Ofsted inspections of schools are inclusive. This follows a debate on the issue, prompted by NDCS, on important changes to education law.

A new law, going through Parliament now, called the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning (ASCL) Bill proposes that schools will be subject to an "interim statement" instead of a full inspection if they are judged to be good or outstanding by Ofsted. NDCS is keen to make sure that this cannot happen unless provision for children with special educational needs is also good or outstanding.

In the debate, the Minister said it was "highly unlikely" that this would happen. Whilst this is welcome, NDCS sees no reason why it should not be ruled out completely.

In a vote, Government MPs chose not to support an amendment that have would made this happen. NDCS will therefore continue to press the Government to go further on this issue.

NDCS is also keen to make sure inspections of schools take place by inspectors with expertise in special educational needs. The Minister stated all inspectors will be recieving training on special educational needs. Again, this is welcome and NDCS will making sure that this results in inspectors being deaf aware.

More information:

Find out more about the ASCL Bill > (external website)

Below are key excerpts from the debate:

Nick Gibb ( Conservative MP for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton): I beg to move amendment 79, in clause 210, page 120, line 28, at end insert—

‘(2A) The Chief Inspector may only make an interim statement about a school in England that has provision for children with special educational needs if it has been assessed by an inspector who has training and expertise in special educational needs and has properly engaged with such pupils at that school.’.

This clause introduces the new light-touch health check in circumstances in which Ofsted has decided not to have a more frequent regular inspection of a school because it is judged by Ofsted to be good or outstanding. Ofsted published a consultation document in May 2008 that focused on improvements and proposals for maintained school inspections from September 2009. The document proposed changes to the way in which Ofsted conducted inspections of schools and how frequently it conducted them. It says that inspections

“will be more tailored to the needs of the school. All schools judged to be satisfactory or inadequate in their most recent full inspection will be inspected within 3 years; in general, schools judged good or outstanding will be inspected within 6 years, although one ‘health check’ report will be published in the intervening years.”

The purpose of the clause, therefore, is to change the legislation to enable Ofsted to conduct a health check only, instead of the regular three-yearly inspection. The amendment would introduce an additional provision to ensure that the chief inspector of schools may make an interim statement about a school that has provision for pupils with special educational needs only if it has first been assessed by an inspector who is trained in assessing special educational needs. The amendment also stipulates that the inspector must have properly engaged with pupils at the school as part of the assessment.

The light-touch inspections system raises concerns that inspectors can do a lot of their inspecting via desktop data, that they will rarely see the school, and that they will often not sit in classrooms. Inspectors could, therefore, inspect a school without coming across any children with special educational needs, particularly if it was a small specialised unit and the inspectors were there for only a couple of days and spent much of that time analysing data. Care must be taken so that schools do not become subject to only the health check, rather than their three-yearly inspection, in circumstances in which the inspector has not specifically inspected the SEN provision. The inspector should be properly trained and experienced in that provision.

That is the view of the National Deaf Children’s Society, which said that it would welcome assurances from the Government that a school with provision for children with SEN will not be granted an interim statement or school health check unless provision has been assessed by an inspector with training and expertise in SEN. It wanted to see that the inspector had properly engaged with SEN pupils at that school.

I would like to hear the Minister’s response to this important amendment that would ensure that we were inspecting the SEN provisions in schools and not simply doing a high-level inspection that could often overlook important details.

Mr. Laws (Liberal Democrat MP for Yeovil): I do not need to add much to the comments made by the hon. Gentleman in relation to the amendment. I would merely like to put on the record our strong support for the amendment. If a fair evaluation is to be made of such schools, it is important that the elements of protection and quality assurance contained in amendment 79 are present.

Jim Knight MP (Minister for State for School and Learners): For reasons that I shall explain, the amendment is not appropriate. It is right that the progress of pupils with special educational needs is an important consideration in the new school inspection arrangement, and I can assure hon. Members that it will be. In fact, a focus on the progress of different groups of pupils—especially vulnerable pupils—will lie at the heart of the new arrangements. All inspectors—whether they are those from Her Majesty’s inspectorate or additional inspectors employed by Ofsted’s contractors—will receive training in inspecting SEN under the new arrangements. There will be a specific judgment on the learning and progress of pupils with SEN in every school inspection report.

If a school is judged inadequate in that respect, there will be real consequences. A school will not be judged as good or outstanding overall—in fact, it would be highly unlikely that a school would be judged good overall—if progress for SEN pupils is anything less than good. That is important because only good and outstanding schools will be eligible for a health check report at the three-year point, and only when Ofsted’s annual risk assessment shows that a school is maintaining or improving its level of performance will a health check report be issued, as opposed to an inspection being carried out.

The annual risk assessment will apply to all schools and will be used to determine the scheduling of inspections within the cycle. Performance data on the progress of SEN pupils will form part of that assessment and a decline in the performance of pupils with SEN could lead to a school being inspected earlier in the cycle. The fundamental point is that it is important to remember that the health check report is not an inspection report. Having an expert on SEN put together the health check report for a school would not make a material difference to the outcome because the report will be based on performance and other data, which all inspectors should be able to interpret. There is no need for additional expertise for an inspector to analyse data and produce a report...

I assure the hon. Gentleman that properly engaging with pupils at the school will be an even more important aspect of the inspection process than it currently is. In particular, Ofsted is developing a pupil questionnaire that it will use to seek views from all pupils at the start of an inspection. Clearly, it would not be appropriate for inspectors to engage directly with pupils at a school as part of putting together a health check report—that engagement could happen only as part of an inspection visit. In the context of a health check, such a visit would defeat its object, which is to defer inspection in recognition of good performance. In light of those clarifications and assurances, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his amendment.

Mr. Gibb: I am afraid that those assurances do not tally with the wording of the amendment, which is:

“The Chief Inspector may only make an interim statement about a school in England that has provision for children with special educational needs if it has been assessed by an inspector who has training and expertise in special educational needs and has properly engaged with such pupils at that school.”

That is the point that concerns the National Deaf Children’s Society. It wants to be sure that when a mainstream school with a unit for children with special educational needs has been categorised as good or outstanding, the inspector makes that judgment based on an assessment that took into account the quality of the SEN provision. I take the Minister’s point that in coming to that overall conclusion, the inspector will have assessed the unit, but I am not convinced that the inspectors carrying out the inspections will always be trained in dealing with the schools’ specific special educational needs. Deafness, for instance, is a low-incidence special educational need.

Given how inspections are carried out under the light-touch inspection regime, I suspect that inspectors will engage very little with pupils in schools. If the number of pupils with special educational needs at a school is small, it is even less likely that the inspector will engage with them. In light of that, unless the Minister wants to respond, I would like to test the Committee’s opinion of amendment 79.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

The Committee divided: Ayes 3, Noes 8.

AYES
Gibb, Mr. Nick
Laws, Mr. David
Wiggin, Bill
NOES
Blackman, Liz
Butler, Ms Dawn
Creagh, Mary
Hodgson, Mrs. Sharon
Knight, rh Jim
McCarthy-Fry, Sarah
Simon, Mr. Siôn
Thornberry, Emily

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