The Annual Report of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Education And
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The Annual Report of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education and Training in Wales 2011-2012 Annual Report 2011-2012 Foreword Annual Report 2011-2012 My annual report this year The report includes sections on: n findings from inspections undertaken in 2011-2012; draws on findings from n findings from the reports we write in response to the annual Ministerial remit letter to Estyn; the second year of the n the follow-up monitoring of providers that need to improve; inspection cycle that began n progress on national priorities and in provision; and n national performance data, including detailed data on inspection outcomes and from learner and parent questionnaire responses. in September 2010. Ann Keane Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education In this foreword, I want to highlight some of the main and Training in Wales conclusions that can be drawn from the evidence that my inspectors have gathered and consider their implications. www.estyn.gov.uk Estyn Annual Report 2011-2012 / Foreword 1 Standards “There is more In the schools we inspected this year, the proportion Standards of wellbeing are generally high across most excellent work in awarded good or excellent judgements is a little lower sectors, although it is good or better in only half of the than it was last year. There is more excellent work in pupil referral units inspected. More generally, pupils are secondary than in secondary than in primary schools, but there is also more increasingly involved in making decisions about school life primary schools, but unsatisfactory work (one in seven secondary schools is but in only a few schools does this include making decisions there is also more excellent and one in seven is unsatisfactory). Standards are about what and how they learn. Attendance remains the unsatisfactory work.” good or better in most special schools and independent weakest aspect of wellbeing for schools. Attendance is not mainstream schools inspected this year. In other sectors, good enough in over a third of secondary schools and it standards remain variable. varies too much between primary schools in the most and least deprived areas. www.estyn.gov.uk Estyn Annual Report 2011-2012 / Foreword 2 The impact of ‘follow-up’ inspections ‘Follow-up’ is a new feature of our 2010-2016 inspection to monitor performance and to set objectives. They have set cycle and reflects a more proportionate approach to new levels of expectation for self-evaluation and monitoring inspection. It means that we re-visit the schools and practices, using the scrutiny of learners’ work and lesson providers that need to improve to check on their progress. observations to identify where performance is good and Just under half of the schools/providers we inspected last then sharing that good practice. Managers have made more year were judged to require follow-up. What we found when confident use of performance management systems not we returned to the secondary schools in local authority or only to support and challenge poor teachers but to raise Estyn monitoring was that all of them had made enough everyone’s performance. Teachers have been trained to progress not to require another visit. In the primary sector, co-ordinate the delivery of a curriculum to help all pupils to 87% of schools no longer need further monitoring by Estyn. become more literate and numerate. Later on in this report, in Schools that are placed in a category of being in need of the section on follow-up, case studies from Peter Lea Primary significant improvement or requiring special measures School, Ysgol Friars and Cylch Meithrin Penllwyn illustrate usually take longer to come out of follow-up. the kind of improvements that can make a big difference to standards. In post-16 sectors, as in schools, follow-up has led The schools that we removed from follow-up are the ones to improvements, particularly in adult community learning that have acted on our recommendations. They have and Welsh for adults. introduced whole-school systems to deal with shortcomings and staff have agreed on how they will implement the systems in order to improve standards. Having a focus on how to strengthen teaching and learning to meet the specific needs of learners has been crucial to success. Typically, leaders and managers have adopted pupil tracking systems www.estyn.gov.uk Estyn Annual Report 2011-2012 / Foreword 3 Local authority education services Over the past two years a majority of A lack of depth in specialist expertise However, further education and local recommended a migration of school local authorities have been found to need constrains the scope of advice and support. authorities are not fully comparable. improvement services to regional consortia follow-up. Where areas for improvement are This means that officers will tend to deal Colleges have stood alone since they by September 2012 and this is currently pronounced, a local authority is designated at a more general and superficial level became incorporated institutions around 20 in train. Although the school improvement as being in a category “causing concern”. with the range of demands that they years ago whereas local authority education service function is now to be organised Around a quarter of the local authorities face. By comparison, in a larger authority, services for children and young people regionally, it remains a statutory duty of inspected so far have been placed in this economies of scale enable a higher co-exist with other services for children and the local authority and subject to local category. degree of specialisation, more distinct job young people in a local authority area. These arrangements for commissioning, scrutiny roles and more focused expertise in the services together share an infrastructure and accountability. The shortcomings that inspectors identify advice and support provided to schools. of corporate governance and control in the in these local authorities causing concern Economies of scale mean that more people context of local democracy within a county Some authorities have services that are are often symptoms of limited capacity can be employed to cover the range of or county borough council. good and a few areas of provision that are and capability among officers as well as responsibilities. excellent. We need to retain and extend symptoms of failure in how well elected Merging services across local authorities these strengths across all authorities. members challenge performance. The fact By comparison, the rationale for merging is difficult because of the complex sets that many of the authorities that have been colleges of further education has in part of interdependencies between statutory placed in categories are relatively small emerged from projections illustrating the services within each authority. The Beecham suggests that limited capacity is a significant benefits of economies of scale. These report, in 2006, recommended collaboration factor. benefits have subsequently been realised between services and across local in several instances of merger, in all parts of authorities and promised another whole- Because of their size, small authorities Wales, and several of these mergers have system review in 2011 if collaboration cannot benefit from economies of scale. been of larger with smaller institutions that did not work. We now know that voluntary They have fewer officers to fulfil the full struggled to cover the demands they faced collaboration has not worked as well as it range of duties that they need to deliver. alone. should have. The Thomas report of 2010 www.estyn.gov.uk Estyn Annual Report 2011-2012 / Foreword 4 Safeguarding “Local authorities are only now Local authorities play a key role in managing the Local authorities are only now beginning to monitor beginning to monitor regularly their safeguarding of children and young people. In the regularly their schools’ use of behaviour management schools’ use of behaviour management summer of 2011, we conducted a joint investigation strategies, and how the schools report on them. strategies, and how the schools report with the social services inspectorate, CSSIW, of how Following our reports, the more pro-active local on them.” well Pembrokeshire local authority safeguards children authorities have issued guidance about how to use ‘time in its schools and other education services. We also out’ appropriately with pupils to de-escalate difficult undertook a joint survey of safeguarding and behaviour situations. management in a wider selection of pupil referral units nationally. As a result of our published findings, local authorities, schools and pupil referral units across Wales have looked more closely at their own safeguarding practices. Increasingly, they have been developing and updating their policies and procedures for safe recruitment and child protection. There remain a few schools and local authorities where procedures are under-developed, arrangements for safe recruitment are not rigorously applied, key staff have not received recent training and a few are not aware of how to respond to a disclosure. www.estyn.gov.uk Estyn Annual Report 2011-2012 / Foreword 5 Literacy, numeracy and closing the poverty gap Introducing the national literacy and opportunities to write independently, in a more coherent set of data for schools to performance inspected this year, three numeracy framework should help school different styles and for different purposes in use to compare their reading and numeracy have about a quarter or more of their pupils leaders to raise standards by supporting lessons other than English or Welsh lessons. results with those from other schools. The entitled to free schools meals and these teachers to focus more on literacy and results from the numeracy tests will provide pupils perform well. This is because the numeracy. While a few schools have Leaders need to make improving literacy the first national picture of pupils’ numeracy schools concerned take a whole-school, excellent skills provision, we need to achieve and numeracy and closing the ‘poverty gap’ abilities.