SCHOOL INSPECTION: a GBEP component

WHAT ARE THE PURPOSES OF SCHOOL INSPECTION?

School inspection has a long history. In its early days, it had a very limited purpose. With the introduction of state systems of education, governments needed to check that their statutory requirements for schools were being observed. This usually involved inspecting attendance records, student discipline and basic standards of literacy and numeracy. The function of schools was to produce a minimally educated workforce, not to provide the nation’s children with an education for enhancing the qualities of their own lives. To carry out this task, inspectors needed little direct experience of teaching or schools. They were government agents who policed, rather than supported, the work of schools. Not surprisingly, they soon gained an unwelcome reputation.

Today, in many countries around the world, school inspection plays a much wider and more substantial role in the work and development of schools. Historically, schools had decided what to teach, how the content would be taught and what parents should be told about their children’s performance and progress. Little wonder that schools were known as “secret gardens”. What went on inside them was a mystery to most outsiders.

Major shifts in social, economic and political thinking and attitudes in the industrialised nations over the last 30 years have swept away such freedoms and independence. Accountability, value for money, competition, stakeholder rights, new technologies and globalisation now dictate the shape and direction of education and schools. Schools are very different places, open to public scrutiny, more directly subject to the needs of national social and economic policy, and expected to serve the local communities in which they are situated. Partnership has replaced imposition as the means for bringing about change. “Working together” is the new doctrine. It is generally agreed that effective progress is consequent upon the involvement and satisfaction of all stakeholders. For schools, the notion of the “secret garden” is a thing of the past.

Developments in school inspection have kept pace with these changes. Of course, inspectors still have a basic duty to check that government requirements are met. But increased accountability has meant increased government control. National Curriculums are now familiar features of many advanced education systems. They define what is taught, and in many cases how it is taught. National testing has been introduced to measure not just the performance of students, but also the performance of schools. Inspection systems have been restructured to help promote and support these developments. Inspection now has three main functions; to make clear national performance standards and targets, to guide and support all schools in achieving them, and to assess the progress made by individual schools in reaching them. School inspection reports are detailed, evaluative, publicly available and provide the basis for action by schools.

It is widely accepted that ultimate responsibility for educational improvement must lie with schools themselves. They have to be empowered to take on this responsibility, properly supported by the partners and stakeholders they work alongside, including inspection. This has meant a radically new approach to the recruitment and training of inspectors and to the focus for school inspection. Improvement must centre on practice in the classroom, on the quality of teaching and learning, not on school regulations and management. To be effective, today’s inspectors must have an extensive knowledge and experience of the classroom. Who better to help in this task than the schools themselves?

We are now used to the idea of an inspection workforce that includes practising headteachers and other experienced teachers operating on a part-time basis alongside career inspectors. This provides real empowerment of schools, as well as an inspection workforce large enough to execute national educational policy. We are also used to the idea of community involvement in inspections based on the belief that schools must provide for the needs and aspirations of the local communities they serve, as well as for national needs. Inspection has come a long way since its early days.

Inspector in a classroom discussing the childrens work with them

Feedback meeting with head teacher and lead inspector

WHY IS SCHOOL INSPECTION IMPORTANT IN GBEP?

The new models of inspection share the GBEP principles, notably the need to adopt a more “bottom-up” approach to educational development. Inspection is seen as a supportive process designed to work “with” schools, not a process intended to impose change upon them.

Effective inspection takes account of the particular needs and circumstances of each school. This enables inspection to benefit schools and communities that suffer from geographical isolation and lack of opportunity and resources.

Although inspection identifies standards and expectations for all schools, in practice, it starts from where each school is in terms of its standards, provision and objectives. This is best achieved through the school’s own development plan (SDP) – which is a central component of the GBEP. Inspection seeks to validate and assess the progress made by the school in the achievement of its SDP targets.

Inspection assesses school effectiveness by the progress pupils make, not just the standards they achieve. In disadvantaged situations, this is the most appropriate benchmark for enabling schools to measure their success. In line with the GBEP, inspection is about guiding and challenging schools in positive and supportive ways.

Inspection provides a first hand method for benchmarking overall progress in achieving the GBEP objectives. It also provides evaluators with “qualitative” information/evidence to interpret the statistical data they collect and analyse.

Inspection data, statistical and qualitative, enables central policy makers to identify specific strengths and weakness in schools’ performance and provision and to develop strategies to promote progress.

The emphasis on classroom observation in the new inspection model (50% of the inspection time at least), means that teachers are being supported and trained in the work place, within the conditions that help to define their performance. This reflects the importance attached to improving the quality of teaching and learning in the objectives and implementation of the GBEP.

Inspection supports, monitors and reinforces the work of most GBEP components. It is an active partner in developing headteacher and teacher training, SDP formulation and monitoring, social development, identifying best practice in teaching and learning, target setting, monitoring and evaluation and school support. The new Guidance for School Inspection Handbook accumulates progress in all of these activities into a unified expression of GBEP policy and expectations.

WHAT HAS BEEN ACHIEVED IN INSPECTION SO FAR?

Establishing the new model of inspection

A Inspection Development Team was established made up of members of central and local inspection departments, headteachers and senior teachers, educationalists, practising inspectors, school administrators and consultants.

A Framework for School Inspection was produced that identified the purposes and principles upon which a revised system of inspection was to build on the existing inspection system and practices.

· A Guidance for School Inspection Handbook was compiled which translated the Framework’s principles into a practical system for implementing school inspections in a consistent and supportive way. The Guidance has been further developed through several drafts following the experience gained from piloting the new inspection arrangements in schools. It is a document for schools as well as inspectors, so that partnership has been achieved not just in the development of the Guidance, but also in the practice of inspection itself. The Guidance gives inspection a shared set of values, objectives and educational expectations.

Training

· Two substantial training manuals have been produced, one for lead inspector training and one for team inspector training. Each training programme takes four days. The team inspector training includes one day of training in school.

· A training video has been produced. This simulates, in a school setting, each phase of a school inspection, supported by explanations and descriptions of the different processes taking place.

· Over a three year period, 115 lead inspectors have been trained to take on the important role of leading small teams of inspectors in implementing the inspection arrangements set out in the Guidance Handbook. Lead inspectors have been selected from schools, on a part-time basis, and from local inspection units and education bureaus.

· Over the same period, 200 team inspectors have been trained. Again, they are drawn from a wide range of educational backgrounds, but all with experience of working in the classroom. They, too, include existing career inspectors.

· While consultants were used to carry out the initial training, a small group of specialist trainers has subsequently been developed from the most experienced and effective lead inspectors, under the management of the Linxia Education Bureau. All inspector training is now organised and carried out locally without support from consultants.

· There are now sufficient numbers of trained inspectors to enable inspection to move from its “piloting” phase into a first round of mass inspections (140 schools in two years). Inspectors receive accreditation on successful completion of their training. Gradually we are building up a significant pool of GBEP experts, mostly working in schools, who are able to influence practice in very direct ways. Equally, these experts can be used as a mobile resource to disseminate and share their knowledge and experience regionally and locally.

Piloting

· Three pilot phases were conducted, all with small numbers of selected schools (schools in total over a two year period). Each phase was extensively evaluated by the inspection development team, and by the consultants, enabling modifications and improvements to be made to the Guidance Handbook and training manuals.

· Feedback from schools was very positive. They were particularly enthusiastic about the way in which inspectors treated them as partners in the inspection process. Teachers valued very highly the practical guidance and help given to them personally as a result of lesson observation. A small selection of comments from participants are given below.

What next?

· The greatest challenge is to sustain the new system into the future. The means to achieve this are already being considered and developed.

· The Linxia inspection unit is being strengthened in order take on the additional workload demands made of it.

· Provincial, prefecture and county planning has become more closely linked so that strategy, planning and implementation are more effectively aligned and are conducted as a single interdependent process.

· Personnel from non-GBEP counties, and from other prefectures and provinces, are now participating in the training. This enables the GBEP developments to be disseminated in more cost effective ways by making use of existing resources, expertise and experience. For example, it has not been necessary for new participants to go through the costly stages (time as well as money) of developing the Guidance for School Inspection Handbook and the training manuals.

· The use of part-time inspectors drawn from schools has effectively empowered schools, as well as providing the human resource to make large scale, regular inspection, logistically feasible. The danger is that this benefit could be jeopardised were schools to feel that inspection work demands too much of their time and detracts from their first-line responsibility - to their own students. Inspection development plans are being produced that take account of this issue.