Minutes:
The Chairman introduced David Hoare, the Chair of Ofsted, and thanked him for agreeing to speak at the board meeting. The Chair further invited the board to engage with David Hoare on current and future work of Ofsted.
David Hoare introduced himself including a short bio of his career, and set out the key issues in the British education system as he sees them:
· Numeracy and literacy. There are specific problem areas in education e.g. 1 in 5 children leave school without the necessary numeracy and literacy skills employers demand. This leads to low productivity growth by international standards and low social mobility.
· Britain’s underclass. Britain’s underclass is mostly white, British, and largely concentrated in coastal areas. David used the Isle of White as an example of this, and suggested that the wider public are unaware of this situation.
· Early years education (0-5 age range). While government is investing in early years education the statistics show a poorly performing sector. The less privileged 20% of society gain little benefit from this investment with mechanisms like child care subsidies largely acting as a subsidy for middle class families. Mr Hoare also stated that failures in 0-5 years education lead to persistent underperformance throughout a child’s schooling.
· Coordinated effort. David spoke of the need for a coordinated effort between Ofsted, local government, central government, and other key stakeholders, to change the system to help the disadvantaged.
· Priorities. David spoke of his three priorities 1) Early years education 2) developing good Leadership in schools 3) Re-organisation in FE colleges to stop students failing.
In the discussion that followed, the board raised the following points:
· Leadership in schools. Members raised concerns of how leaders can be effective in different settings, especially with regard to addressing deficiencies in key competency areas in schools. Further, how Ofsted can address these deficiencies in leadership and governance. The following points were raised:
- Effective leadership is the vital ingredient needed to address these concerns, and has been shown to turn around failing schools.
- Teaching as a profession has a deficit of leadership training and no clear pathway from teacher to senior management. This risks losing key talent from the sector.
· Ofsted’s role. Members stated that it is Ofsted’s role to change the mindsets of people working in education to spur progress. Members further raised the concern of inconsistencies in Ofsted inspections with some being conducted in an adversarial way, and some more constructively. The board stated that Ofsted should be working with schools as a champion of reform and best practice to which the response was that Ofsted have invested in new staff and training and expect to see these inconsistencies lessen significantly over the next few years.
· Other social factors. The board commented that there are a whole range of social factors which influence outcomes for underprivileged children and that schools are just one of these factors.
· Ofsted’s position on the White Paper. The board asked David Hoare for comment on Ofsted’s position on the Education White paper. The response was that Ofsted is not involved in policy setting, and concerns itself with the practicalities of what is and is not working in education.