The Executive Director of iMPOWER, Amanda Kelly, will present research due to be published at NCAS which looks at the effectiveness of the current Ofsted Single Inspection Framework.
Minutes:
The Chair introduced the Chief Executive of iMPOWER, Amanda Kelly, to the board. Amanda was asked to present the main findings of iMPOWER’s research on the effectiveness of the current Ofsted Single Inspection Framework. This research was published at the NCAS Conference.
By way of context, the Chair noted that no councils had received ‘outstanding’ ratings under the new Ofsted framework, and the majority are being rated as ‘requires improvement’. The key question for the board is whether the new framework is serving the interests of children.
Amanda Kelly then presented the main findings of iMPOWER’s research. The research focussed on three main issues:
1. Is inspection helping drive improvement?
· The research shows that there has been a decline in local authorities’ ratings since Ofsted introduced the Single Inspection Framework in 2012, but that this downward trend began before the introduction of the new framework.
· This downward trend is exemplified by the fact that not a single authority has got an ‘outstanding’ rating since 2012, and the last authority to be rated outstanding has recently been rated inadequate.
2. Impact post-inspection
· The research shows that those authorities that are rated ‘inadequate’ have the worst post-inspection performance and tend to suffer an accelerated decline away from the average. For instance, 25% of authorities that are rated ‘inadequate’ remain at this rating for a 5 year period
· Amanda noted that this pattern of post-inspection impact on children’s services does not mirror the pattern of post-inspection impact on schools, where ‘inadequate’ ratings tend to quickly improve schools, which revert back towards the average.
3. The cost of inspection
· The research shows that the costs to local government of responding to failed inspections ranges between £3m and £10m, but this excludes the costs associated with preparing for and then servicing an inspection, which means that the total costs could be upwards of £30m.
· The key question is whether this expenditure can be shown to improve the safety of children. As things stand, the sector has a poor record of tracking outcomes and even inspectors cannot tell definitively if things are getting better or worse.
In her summary, Amanda said that the sector needs to work collaboratively to develop a new way of dealing with local authorities who are rated ‘inadequate’, because at the moment they tend to remain ‘inadequate’ for years. The research highlighted the risk of the sector making policy to promote improvement on the back of a flawed system for assessing performance.
In the ensuing question and answer session, members raised the following points:
· The need to broaden the research to take into account the views of members as well as officers and to study similarities and differences between the two sets of views.
· The need to incorporate into Ofsted’s approach the wider lesson that negative sanctions do not tend to induce positive change.
· The need for local authorities to innovate in the face of likely further funding cuts, and to think about how an inspection regime can be organised to spur such innovation, most likely by emphasising the value of prevention.
· The value of further research on the differences between school inspections and children’s services inspections, particularly within regions, in terms of allowing the board to draw wider conclusions about possible improvements to the latter.
· How an ‘inadequate’ rating has a negative impact on staff morale, which has a negative impact on recruitment and how this can lead to a downward spiral that might account for some of the trouble authorities have recovering from an ‘inadequate’ rating.
· The problems that are raised by the new terminology in the Single Inspection Framework, as it is hard to get constituents to recognise that a ‘requires improvement’ is equivalent to the old category of ‘adequate’ rather than being a ‘fail’.
· There is a concern that local authorities who get an ‘inadequate’ rating spend more time and resources servicing the many inspections that this triggers than tackling the root causes of the problems identified.
The Chair concluded that iMPOWER’s research provides the board with valuable material to bring to Ofsted and Ministers in future discussions. He also said that he saw the potential for fruitful collaboration between the board and the new Chair of Ofsted, David Hoare.
Action
Members noted the research.