Education TodayWill the proposed publication of school inspection reports help parents to select the right school for their child? Former Department of Education and Science inspector Claire Breslin is unsure
The inspector was in deep discussion with a primary class of five-year-olds on the the topic of birds and nest-building. "Now, any questions?" she asked brightly. "I have a question for teacher," said a little boy. "What colour are the lollipops we are getting when she is gone?"
The incident illustrates the complex task involved in school inspection, or Whole School Evaluation (WSE), as it is now named. The announcement that the Minister for Education and Science is considering the dissemination of school inspection reports to parents raises important questions about how well these reports will serve the entitlement of parents and society to information about schools.
Inspection serves multiple purposes in the education system. What is at issue here is its effectiveness in providing information that matches the needs of parents. As an information source, Whole School Evaluation has its strengths and, also, a number of significant weaknesses. Can it facilitate parents in making what is one of the most important decisions of their parenthood - choosing a school for their child.
The strength of WSE as a source of information lies in its all-embracing enquiry into the way a school functions. Every aspect of the school is evaluated - from the condition of the school buildings to the social and personal development of students. What is at the core of the process is, of course, an evaluation of the quality of teaching and learning at the school, an evaluation of the quality of school management and of the standards of achievement of the students.
The education provided by the school is evaluated in the broadest sense and full credit is given for everything the school does to ensure the development of the whole student, including its pastoral care programme and extra-curricular activities. Such information could help parents in assessing the school's capacity to encourage the particular talents and gifts of their child and the school's commitment to providing a fully-rounded education.
However, while WSE could give parents much needed information on the above, there are a number of important questions that deserve the attention of parents and educators in considering the Minister's proposal.
Can inspection describe the school as it really is?
A school may be rife with internal conflict or be aware of complaints from parents about a particular teacher, yet these issues may not be evident in the final report. Much depends on the skill of the individual inspectors and the willingness of the staff to be open. Will this openness be likely to occur under the proposed new arrangements? Even if it does, the issue of the underperformance of individual teachers, a concern to parents, is not the focus of Whole School Evaluation
Crucially, and most importantly, the format in which a report gives vital information on student achievement may be open to question as regards its usefulness to parents. Student achievement is described in general terms such as "very good" or "poor". Some reports do contain information on standardised test results, but this is not possible where such tests do not exist. It is not possible to get a precise picture of the achievement of students from such a format as compared with the comparative numerical data to which we are, rightly or wrongly, accustomed. Indeed, inspectors themselves rely heavily on examination results or standardised test results when they want to analyse student achievement.
A number of other issues arise. Could parents, and indeed the school itself, be confident that if the report was carried out by a different inspection team the evaluation would reach similar conclusions? Research carried out in other states indicates a level of agreement among inspectors of 66 per cent, even when inspectors use strictly defined criteria. This raises issues about the reliability of the judgments of inspectors in terms of their consistency from one inspector, or team of inspectors, to another.
Recent reports have highlighted the many different degrees of disadvantage, and indeed advantage, among schools. As an inspector, it is easy to be unduly influenced by expensive uniforms and above average achievement levels when one visits middle-class schools. It is salutary to remind oneself that school effectiveness research has described such schools as "doing as well as would be expected, given their intake".
In another jurisdiction, it was found that one in five middle-class schools was described as "very good" in inspection reports, whereas only one in 100 disadvantaged schools was so described. Did inspectors fail to take the context of the school into account or were there other issues involved?
Useful developments in setting schools in context, now employed in many systems, include comparative data analysis, where a school's attainment data is compared with a group of schools having similar characteristics and, as a further development, the provision of value-added methods, where the progress of pupils is emphasised. Such data, built on numerical and statistical models, could, in the interim, be provided to schools and could be available to inspectors. In particular, the value added approach recognises the efforts of staff in schools that are contending with difficult circumstances.
Whole School Evaluation is, of course, based on the value-added approach and aims to acknowledge the progress achieved by students in any particular school context. Yet one questions whether such complex judgments can be made with precision using the particular methodology involved.
No one system of information is adequate to describe the complexity of schools in a fully comprehensive manner. Other education systems use various combinations of inspection and indicators as sources of information. These have the potential to complement each other in providing comprehensive and balanced information to parents and society.
The Minister for Education's proposal is a step forward, but much remains to be done to create a culture in which the democratic right of parents to full information is recognised.
