Archived decisions

Contact: John Clarke, Assistant County Education Officer, Standards and Improvement Branch, County Office. Tel 01962 846459, email [email protected] or
Chris Wilson, Senior Inspector/Adviser (Strategic Management), County Office.
Tel. 01962 846517, email [email protected]

1 Summary

1.1 This report gives the results of the surveys of headteachers' views of the work of the Hampshire Inspection and Advisory Service during the 2002/03 year. Two surveys were conducted: a survey of the attached inspector scheme conducted during the Summer term 2003, repeating the exercises carried out in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002; and the first county-wide survey evaluating the services HIAS sells to schools under service level agreement (management partnership). The results of both surveys show that the work undertaken by HIAS staff is seen as valuable to schools in helping them improve and that the service offered by HIAS continues to be good. The work of attached inspectors helped 59% of schools judged to be in need of some or of substantial improvement to become more effective during the 2002/03 year. These surveys form part of the evaluation of the Education Development Plan and meet one of the outcomes of the Best Value Review of the work of HIAS (2001).

2 Context

2.1 The attached inspector survey canvassed the views of headteachers of schools judged to be in need of improvement during the 2002/03 year, a judgement arrived at through the process of LEA categorisation of schools. Thus the survey in 2003 was different from those conducted in previous years in that only schools who had received more than the minimum contact allowed by the Code of Practice for LEA-School Relations were contacted. It is therefore difficult to make secure comparisons with previous years' outcomes because of the nature and size of the survey.

2.2 Since April 1997 a named inspector/adviser has been attached to each maintained school in Hampshire, charged with the task of challenging and supporting the school to improve standards and the quality of education. From April 1998 the tasks of the attached inspector have included agreeing targets for literacy, numeracy, and other improvements with the school, informing governors annually about the school's category for additional support in inverse proportion to the school's success, and leading the actions to be taken in the school to bring about improvement.

2.3 The attached inspector is the key and main point of contact between the County Council and each school. It is vital that the work done by attached inspectors is of high quality, is perceived by schools to be so, and that the time taken to do the work really adds value to the school's performance over time. The effect of the 1999 Code of Practice for LEA-School Relations has been to restrict contact between the LEA and schools judged to be effective or highly effective. This limits the contact time paid for from centrally held resources to the minimum needed to monitor these schools' progress.

2.4 The evaluation of the sold services of HIAS was undertaken through a rolling sample of schools purchasing work from HIAS from April 2002 to March 2003. Whereas in the attached inspector survey, responding schools were not identified, the evaluation of the sold services identified specific members of HIAS and specific visits to named schools. The undertaking given to headteachers was that no primary or special school would be approached more than once, and no secondary school more than three times, with no secondary school department approached more than once. The aim was to ensure that all inspector/advisers who sold work to schools would have at least one of their visits evaluated, and to ensure that all schools in Hampshire who purchased work from HIAS were approached on at least one occasion. Hampshire schools are invited to enter a service level agreement with HIAS to purchase time from HIAS staff, using their delegated budgets, to enable improvements to be made in line with the schools' improvement plans and the priorities identified in the LEA's Education Development Plan.

2.5 The surveys asked headteachers to express a view on a six-point continuum from "Very strongly agree" (scored 1) to "Very strongly disagree" (scored 6). The aspects of inspectors' work surveyed were whether the inspector:

· had established a good rapport with the school;

· gave good information in advance about what would be involved in each visit to the school;

· wrote helpful reports about the school;

· was professional;

· had challenged the head or the school to strive for higher levels of performance;

· had helped the school to use data to evaluate school performance, and to set targets;

· had a good knowledge and understanding of school improvement issues;

· provided effective support through giving practical and relevant advice;

· delivered messages sensitively and was not afraid to give hard messages when necessary;

· had had a positive impact on the school.

Headteachers were invited to add additional comments if they wished.

2.6 These surveys are only one technique used to evaluate the work of HIAS. Judgements about the improvements schools have made overall are drawn from the data in the LEA Profile, based on OFSTED inspection visits and the progress made by pupils from the end of one key stage to another, based on data comparing progress in Hampshire schools with that made in schools nationally and in counties like Hampshire.

2 Outcomes of the surveys: the attached inspector scheme

3.1 The number of days of visits made by the 33 attached inspectors between April 2002 and March 2003 to the schools surveyed, who all fell into the categories of needing some or substantial improvement, ranged from 1.77 days to 34.77 days. Schools received support in relation to their needs, not as an entitlement. During 2002/03 year, 59% of these schools improved so that, at the annual categorisation visit they were judged either to have become effective schools or to need only some, rather than substantial, improvement in subsequent years.

3.2 There was a very good response from headteachers to the attached inspector survey, with 156 responses received: a response rate of 83%. The overall conclusion is that the attached inspector scheme continues to be successful, although improvement in performance is still possible. There was an average approval score of 1.83 suggesting a continuing high level of satisfaction, between "Very strongly agree" and "Strongly agree", across all items. The variation between responses on individual inspectors was only in the strength of the positive approval given to their work, with the great majority receiving very strong support for all items in the survey, as in previous years, although the number of schools each inspector was attached to ranged from one to 14.

3.3 The proportion of responding headteachers agreeing with the statements was above 92% for all items, except the item , "Has helped me use data to evaluate school performance", where the response was 89%. This overall response rate was higher than in 2002. More than 93% of headteachers agreed that the work of their attached inspector had had a positive impact on the school. This is a particularly encouraging response given that all the schools surveyed were in need of some or substantial support to improve. The strongest agreement from responding headteachers was that inspectors were not afraid to give hard messages when necessary, gave good information in advance for what would be involved in each visit, were professional and had good knowledge and understanding of the school. In all cases the overall proportion of schools agreeing with these items is greater than in the survey of 2002, albeit across a narrower range of schools.

3.4 A number of comments made by headteachers referred to the changes in their named attached inspector over the previous years, but equally praised the work undertaken by their attached inspector during the 2002/03 year. Although over 93% of the responding headteachers agreed that the work of the attached inspector had had a positive impact on the school, there continued to be variations between phases and types of schools. All special school headteachers and education centre managers agreed with this statement, but only 85% of responding junior school headteachers agreed. It is possible that other data will show some of those junior schools improved despite their headteachers' perception of the impact of the work of the attached inspector. Primary and infant school headteachers were stronger in their agreement than the headteachers of junior schools, and the 17 responding secondary headteachers were considerably stronger (93%) in their agreement this year than in previous years.

3.5 Most of the comments made by headteachers continue to be supportive of the value to them and to the school of having a named person with whom they can work to improve the school, and from whom they should seek challenge and support.

3.6 These comments have been discussed by the senior management team of HIAS and will be acted on generally through the continuing programme of staff development and training for attached inspectors and associate inspectors. In planning the work of support for schools in need of some or substantial improvement in future years, the lessons from this survey will be put into effect to improve the speed with which schools are enabled to improve, and the sharpness of the focus that the school brings to bear on the areas for important improvement.

4 The survey of Sold Services

4.1 In the survey of the sold services, a total of 430 responses were received from 510 surveys sent out: a response rate of 84%. This represented 78% of the maintained schools in Hampshire contacted, as some schools were contacted on more than one occasion. The work of 83 members of HIAS was surveyed. Where schools were not contacted, they were schools who had not purchased any time from HIAS within the reasonable time span for the work to be evaluated. Generally requests were not made to evaluate work more than six months after the visit had taken place. Because of the nature of the work undertaken by inspector/advisers, some staff, particularly those in curriculum subject teams, and within these particularly those in the foundation subjects whose work is not susceptible to national strategies, tended to undertake the greater proportion of sold services. Care was taken to ensure that the work of these staff was not disproportionately evaluated compared with the work of all staff in HIAS. The survey questions were similar to those in the attached inspector survey.

4.2 The overall average grade across all responses from all phases of schools was 1.77 representing agreement with items on the survey between "very strongly agree" and "strongly agree". This represents, across all phases of schools, generally strong agreement with all the statements in the survey and indicates the work purchased by schools from HIAS as part of the schools' plans to improve has been effective and has had impact. Taken together with other evaluations into the work of HIAS, this survey suggests that, in both the purchased services and the work supported by centrally retained budgets, HIAS staff have a significant impact on the work undertaken with schools to cause school improvement.

4.3 Across all items there was a generally high level of agreement, with the exceptions of the items : "Gave good information in advance about what would be involved in the visit" and "Helped me use data to evaluate school performance and set targets". HIAS management will undertake further work to improve the administration of visits so that schools are clearer before the visit takes place about what will be involved. This is a training need for some of the staff in HIAS and their support officers. The item relating to the use of data was often not applicable, and in the survey some schools responded with disagreement but added a written note that this item did not apply, even though that optional response was available.

4.4 Items with the strongest agreement were the inspector/adviser "Was professional" (1.45 average grade), "Established a good rapport with me" (1.58 average grade), and "Provided effective support through giving practical and relevant advice" (1.63 average grade). All items except "Gave good information in advance" and "Helped me use data" gained agreement between very strong and strong. In particular, there was strong agreement that the inspector had had a positive impact on the school through the work in that visit (1.82 average grade).

4.5 The additional comments from headteachers were generally supportive of the work HIAS undertakes, although many schools commented that they had found it difficult to evaluate the impact of the work from this one visit from a member of the service.

4.6 The individual responses were fed back to inspector/advisers at the end of the 12 month period, although any responses indicating disagreement were passed to line managers during the year of evaluation for them to decide how best to feed-back this information to those they managed.

4.7 In future years this evaluation will be continued, but HIAS management will be reflecting on how to speed up the feed-back to inspector/advisers about the quality and impact of their work so that it can beneficially affect what they do subsequently in that school and in other schools.

4 Conclusion

5.1 We are very grateful to the headteachers and other staff who contributed to this evaluation because they have helped HIAS frame some of its development needs and its consideration of how the service can work with schools to enable and sustain school improvement.

Recommendation

1. That this report be noted.

Section 100D Local Government Act 1972 - Background Documents

The following documents disclose facts or matters on which this report, or an important part of it, is based and has been relied upon to a material extent in the preparation of this report.

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1. Published works

2. Documents which disclose exempt or confidential information as defined in the Act.

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