The final of our spring conferences for college inspectors passed off on Friday twentieth April.
In whole, round 1,600 inspectors attended the 4 conferences, with two held in Nottingham and Manchester in March and two extra in London in April. Together with our autumn conferences, these occasions kind a part of our ongoing coaching to make sure the consistency, high quality, reliability and validity of our inspection observe. So, I assumed I might share with you among the issues we mentioned this time.
Inspection is above all about human judgement. Due to this fact, the standard of Ofsted’s work and our price as a power for enchancment rely completely on the data and experience of our inspectors.
Typically, the general public debate will get caught on the degree of inspection grades, particularly the general effectiveness judgement. However the skilled conversations between inspectors and college leaders are the place the best worth in our work lies. Once we get this proper – and we normally do – our work is acknowledged as constructive, useful and, sometimes, even pleasing by these on the opposite facet of the method.
With all this in thoughts, the only most necessary factor Ofsted can do is to ensure all our inspectors are supported and nicely outfitted – intellectually and virtually – for the work we have now to do. Our autumn and spring conferences are a central a part of this preparation.
This 12 months’s conferences primarily targeted on curriculum, particularly how a deeper understanding of what we imply by curriculum can inform our inspection observe. We additionally held periods on all of the other ways wherein youngsters fall out of mainstream training, and on careers training.
It’s the periods on the curriculum that I need to discuss right here.
Our general purpose was to assist inspectors consider how nicely a faculty’s curriculum is designed and carried out – each inside the context of the present Ofsted framework and college inspection handbook and, as we develop a fair sharper give attention to the curriculum, for the training inspection framework 2019.
We mentioned the necessity to construct a dialog concerning the curriculum on a transparent understanding of how youngsters – and certainly all of us – actually be taught, over time. So, we requested ourselves what progress actually is, and acknowledged that each realizing extra and remembering extra, are central to it.
We mentioned the concept data is ‘sticky’ – which, for colleges, implies that the extra youngsters know, the extra they will be taught. So this can be a matter of social justice too. For some youngsters, particularly essentially the most deprived, college is usually the one place the place they’ve the chance to achieve data of the ideas and vocabulary that can allow them to be taught successfully alongside their friends and reach the long run. Certainly, analysis from each the US and UK has highlighted the rising hole that emerges if colleges don’t do that nicely.
What precisely can we imply by curriculum?
Most individuals are conscious that Ofsted has been finishing up analysis on the curriculum for the very best a part of a 12 months now. We mentioned our preliminary findings in a commentary from Amanda Spielman, revealed in October 2017.
One of many basic findings from the assessment was that we don’t have a typical language for curriculum. To assist right here, we got here up with a working definition, which states that curriculum is…
A framework for setting out the goals of a programme of training, together with the data and understanding to be gained at every stage (intent)…
…for translating that framework over time right into a construction and narrative, inside an institutional context (implementation)…
…and for evaluating what data and understanding pupils have gained towards expectations (affect).
We’ve requested our inspectors to use this definition to their observe and discover these three areas of intent, implementation and affect when evaluating a faculty’s curriculum. In different phrases, what’s a faculty making an attempt to attain by means of its curriculum, how is it being delivered and what distinction is it making to pupils’ studying.
These concepts aren’t new: relatively they’re about making seen what has generally been overpassed. Efficient colleges have all the time thought fastidiously concerning the intentions behind their curriculum design, its construction and implementation, and the way it builds pupils’ data over time.
I additionally need to emphasise two issues: Ofsted doesn’t have a most popular curriculum, and our present inspection framework and handbook haven’t modified. There isn’t a particular graded judgement on the curriculum, so we’re not asking inspectors to grade it now. Nonetheless, the curriculum already options inside the judgements we make a few college’s management and administration, and instructing, studying and evaluation. This working definition is a useful gizmo to assist inspectors have the appropriate conversations with colleges, inside the context of the present framework and handbook.
The following part of our curriculum analysis is nicely beneath means and we’ll publish the findings from that sooner or later. Finally, all of this work helps to form the training inspection framework that can apply from September 2019. Till then, there isn’t a change to the weighting given to the curriculum or how we attain our judgements.
