Scottish Schools Inspectorate: change of role needed?

Posted on | August 14, 2008 | 2 Comments

When it comes to the machinations of educational administration in Scottish local government, no one that I know of comes close to offering the richness of insight, challenge and vision that Don Ledingham presents regularly, and so transparently, mainly through his Learning Log but also in his regular TES column. As a Director of Education in one of Scotland’s 32 local authorities Don is unrivalled in his willingness to open up to scrutiny the critical issues he contends with on a daily basis.

Don, over the past two or three months, has been working his way through a rich vein of thinking on the concept of school-based management, a notion that fits well with his stated principles of distributive leadership, which he describes as challenging, “…the traditional hierachical view of leadership in schools.” He has also been thinking through some of the, potentially profound, implications of the Concordat signed in 2007 between the Scottish Government and Scottish Local Government, an agreement to move towards Single Outcome Agreements for all 32 of Scotland’s councils. In the Government’s own words, these local outcome agreements will:

Ensure that locally elected leaders are free to provide the services people in their local area need and deserve without having their hands tied by micromanagement from the centre.
Reduce the myriad of bureaucracy and reporting that has held councils back for too long. The new system is designed to focus on outcomes – what the council will actually deliver for the people it serves.

The Concordat itself states that the Government will work with Local Government to come to an agreement on how to respond to the recommendations of the Crerar Review (Report of the Independent Review of Regulation, Audit, Inspection and Complaints Handling of Public Services in Scotland) to seek:

“….improvements in performance management and self-assessment across the public sector thereby enabling a more focused and proportionate inspection regime to apply to local government.”

Taking all of of this together – Don’s thinking around school-based management and distributive leadership, the Concordat, single outcome agreements, Crerar Review – the opportunity seems to be there for Scottish Local Government to take control of its own destinies to an extent that has been impossible for at least two decades, maybe longer. The combination of Thatcherite control freakery and the Blair Government’s profound suspicion of local government has for too long restricted the scope for local democratic control over services and priorities.

One of the key questions that arises from all of this for education in Scotland is the issue of the continuing role of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education (HMIE). Expanding the scope in local government for self-assessment and for ‘a more focused and proportionate inspection regime’ must turn the spotlight on HMIE and their inspecting/evaluative function, both for schools and for education authorities within local government. From my own experience of working in local government, I doubt that council leaders will accept a situation in which such changes are taken forward for every service apart from education.

Anyone who would claim that HMIE have done less than a magnificent job for Scottish education over the past 25 years is a fool: Scotland has been in the lead internationally for most of that time in its pursuit of an effective model of school self-improvement. A quarter of a century ago there were schools that were able to hide, to rest on their laurels, to indulge in practice that was quite simply ruinous for any children unlucky enough to have to step through their doors seeking an education. Today, that scenario is probably impossible – and most of that is down to the lead teaken by HMIE in their pursuit of a model in which school leaders are required to assess continually where the school is, where it wants to go, and what it needs to do to get there. In this, HMIE have, indeed, set the pace for other sectors of government, and any wholesale attempt to import sharper and more focused self-assessment practices into every corner of local government would do well to start with the experience of HMIE and our schools in recent years (as I am sure it will).

However, I would suggest that the shifting context means that HMIE will have to look seriously at a change of role, at least in some aspects of their practice, if they are to serve the ongoing needs of schools and education authorities. Some, at least, of the questions that need to be asked (and, I am sure, are being asked) are these:

Should HMIE’s traditional function of schol inspection continue in its current form? Might HMIE develop more of a partnership role with education authorities in working to turn around schools that are identified as struggling in some or all aspects of their responsibilities?
How can HMIE change their practice to enable “…a more focused and proportionate inspection regime…” for schools and for education authorities?
Is there a desire, and the scope, for HMIE to morph into a national advisory/consultative service for education?

When we come back to some of the ideas that Don Ledingham has expounded around school-based management, I can’t help thinking that there must be great scope for HMIE to work with local authorities and schools to create an environment, locally and nationally, in which individual schools can begin to develop in creative and innovative ways that have been difficult if not impossible under the regime that has been in place for the past while. If school-based (or community-based) management is to mean anything, then school leaders must be given their heads, within some basic and irreducible parameters, to take their schools in whatever direction they (and their staff, students, and parents – distributive leadership, remember?) feel would be beneficial for their children and young people in their charge.

Perhaps a change of role for HMIE – more consultative, more partnering, more expert resource, less scrutinizing – could be a critical step towards allowing a thousand flowers to bloom in Scottish education?

Just a thought.

Technorati Tags: don ledingham, hmie, scottish education, scottish government, local government, school-based management, distributive leadership

Category: assessment, democracy, education, government, leadership, politics, schooling, scotland

Comments

2 Responses to “Scottish Schools Inspectorate: change of role needed?”

Robert hill
August 14th, 2008 @ 3:27 pm

I think that the recent HMIE summative (perhaps) reports, viz ICT in Schools, could be part of their future. It would be useful for them to assess the state of various aspects of education across the whole of Scotland, giving individual local authorities a benchmark.
David Gilmour
August 14th, 2008 @ 11:17 pm

About 20 years ago, a study of the ten or so very best-performing nuclear power stations world-wide, probably under the auspices of the IAEA, showed that one of the things which set these 6 or so stations apart was their relationship with their own national regulatory authorities. At the time, most people would have expected a relationship not unlike the traditional one between HMI and schools: a strong emphasis on formal inspection against externally defined standards; infrequent, highly structured and formal visits; extensive pre-inspection preparations draining resources, and little ongoing relationship with the inspectors.

I remember being surprised that the study attributed the success of the stations in part to a radically different relationship with their inspectors. Instead of an adversarial relationship, there was collaboration. Instead of secrecy, there was openness. Inspectors were in and out of the stations regularly, staff knew them and were open about what they were doing. They used the inspectors as a resource, tapping in to their wider knowledge and expertise.

This is, of course, consistent with the changed approach to quality elsewhere in industry. Car manufacturers, for example, no longer “inspect in” quality because that means accepting defects and rework. Instead they move upstream and pay attention instead to the manufacturing processes, with the aim of preventing the occurrence of defects.

When I was thinking about returning to teaching I attended Moray House’s returners course. It was an excellent course, but the low spot for me, without doubt, was a session on HGIOS which showed that, for our presenter at least, the only possible way to get quality was to inspect it in.

From what I can see, HMI are starting to move away from the idea of inspecting in quality, but only very tentatively. I’m sure there are potential benefits in using their expertise to improve quality by focussing more on continuous improvement of day-to-day processes, and less on infrequent, formal high-stakes inspections.

I like the saying that if a problem is important enough to justify many meetings, the meetings will eventually become more important than the problem. I wonder if a similar thing has happened with high-stakes inspections? It sounds like the problem that justified them has now been solved, but they’ve become something of an end in themselves.

There is a real opportunity here, just as you describe.