Contact: John Clarke, Deputy County Education Officer, Tel 01962 846459 [email protected] or

Chris Wilson, Senior inspector/Adviser (Strategic Management), Tel 01962 846517 [email protected]

1 Summary

1.1 This report is an evaluation of the impact of the work of attached inspectors and other HIAS staff in schools whose time was paid for from county council central funds during the 2003/04 financial year. Information was gathered through interviews with a sample of headteachers and builds on the evaluation surveys of the previous 5 years. This report forms part of the evaluation of the EDP activities for 2003/04 and implements one of the outcomes of the 2001 Best Value review of Hampshire's Inspection and Advisory Service (HIAS).

1.2 This report to the Panel supports Aim 5 of the Corporate Strategy (improving services). The school improvement service regularly undertakes evaluations of its own practice. This evaluation report will lead to development in the delivery of the service.

2 Introduction

2.1 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.

2.2 The attached inspector has been 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. HIAS has a successful track record of working with schools so that they improve, and in helping schools to remove the special measures or serious weakness Ofsted designation in less than 24 months. However, 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 the progress of these schools.

2.3 In previous years, the effectiveness of this system has been checked through an annual survey of schools, which, while being reassuring about the high quality of the processes and the level of satisfaction expressed by headteachers with the system, gave little clue as to the impact on outcomes for children. Consequently, this evaluation attempted to capture the opinion headteachers had about the impact of attached inspectors' work, as part of the service looking continually to improve its practice.

2.4 This report is the result of 26 face-to-face interviews with headteachers undertaken during the summer and early autumn terms 2004 as a method of evaluating the impact of the work of attached inspectors (AIs) and other HIAS staff whose time is paid for from the centrally retained education budget through the EDP. The schools selected for these interviews were all schools categorised as in need of some or substantial improvement in the 2003/04 financial year, and therefore susceptible to monitoring and evaluation visits termly, or half-termly, throughout that period of time.

2.5 The interviews with headteachers of the schools invited to take part in the survey followed a semi-structured form. In secondary schools the headteachers were asked about the impact of the work of the attached inspector, the school improvement manager (SIM) and the strategic school improvement manager (SSIM). They were also asked to comment if they wished on the work of Key Stage 3 consultants (although a more detailed evaluation of the work of these staff was undertaken separately) and of the sold services of HIAS generally. In primary schools the attached inspector's work was evaluated, as well as that of the SIM, SSIM and English and maths primary consultants. In special schools and education support centres all the work supported by centrally funded HIAS budgets was evaluated.

2.6 In addition to these interviews, data analysis was undertaken in primary phase schools to compared the changes in the value added from one period of time to another, taking into account the period of time when AIs were working in those primary schools. The annual categorisation of these schools would have been undertaken during the autumn term 2002 and spring term 2003 on the basis of the 2002 SAT results and other agreed criteria. This evaluation is therefore looking across an 18 month period when the work of HIAS staff might have had an impact. The interviews were carried out by HIAS staff who were themselves attached inspectors, but working in schools with which they had no connection.

3 Results

3.1 The work of attached inspectors has had greatest impact in challenging headteachers' thinking about the implementation of school improvement, verifying their judgements and supporting them in the actions they wish to take. The work has had impact, particularly, by encouraging headteachers to continue with the actions planned and thus giving them and their senior staff the confidence to take hard decisions and to tackle difficult matters in the pursuit of school improvement. For some headteachers this has become a mentoring role on the part of the attached inspector, hugely helped by the attached inspector's understanding the context of the school and by being a consistent person in the school's support network. Helping schools to identify their priorities for school improvement, often based on a sharp analysis of data and a refining and better focusing of the strategic plan, has been a significant contributory factor to the impact that attached inspectors have had. In one example given, the attached inspector's data analysis highlighted the performance of girls in a secondary school as an issue, something the school had not fully appreciated until that point, and this analysis enabled the school to develop the action plan, related to issues of attendance, and make improvements, verified a year later by an Ofsted inspection.

3.2 The work of English and maths primary consultants in the small number of primary schools who commented on this has had a variable impact, depending on the subject. The work of consultants has contributed positively to improved continuity and progression, better teacher knowledge and better active planning, for example investigations in maths. The English consultants have contributed in schools to better identification of priorities for improvement, improved benchmarking of the quality or levels of children's work, and improved short-term planning. In common with the work of attached inspectors, however, much of the impact of the work of consultants has been to improve the processes by which the school plans and identifies improvements needed, or better actual teacher knowledge of the subject.

3.3 Many headteachers represented the attached inspector's support as a sounding board for developing ideas and someone with whom the headteacher could have a professional discussion rooted in a common understanding of the context of the school. In some cases this has led to improved governance by the governing body because they had come to a better understanding, through the reports written by the attached inspector, of the direction the school should be taking and of the, sometimes difficult, actions necessary. In a number of schools the attached inspector has been able to help the governing body understand its statutory responsibilities, and in many schools led the governing body to undertake better monitoring and evaluation of the school's work. In one or two schools the Strategic School Improvement Manager has contributed to the improved work of the governing body as well. Many headteachers report that the personal, professional support they receive from their attached inspector is instrumental in their being able to discharge their leadership and management responsibilities effectively.

3.4 The schools report difficulty in attributing improvement in pupils' standards of achievement and behaviour directly to the work of attached inspectors and other HIAS staff. This is unsurprising as school improvement is always dependent on work done by the headteacher, teachers and others in the school. However, the analysis of data showed that in 13 out of 20 primary schools visited, there had been improvements in seven year old or eleven year old children's progress in 2004 over the relevant key stage compared with children who were the same ages in 2001 or 2002. Determining impact is difficult and requires greater analysis of all the other factors involved, like change in headteacher, changes in staffing and Ofsted inspection outcomes. Such a multi-factorial analysis is being attempted currently by the Information and Research Unit .

3.5 The single area where the most impact was directly attributable to the work of the attached inspector was in benchmarking the quality of teaching and of learning, often and most effectively in conjunction with a member of the senior management team in the school. Because a number of schools categorised as in need of some or substantial improvement were also schools with significant staffing difficulties, much of the work of attached inspectors has related to the support for new or acting headteachers. A number of schools reported the positive effect of the attached inspector in shaping the outcomes and activities flowing from a new head's review. Some headteachers have quite clearly seen the work of the attached inspector as contributing to their professional training in headship, either in an acting or new headship role.

3.6 The issue of confidence occurs in a number of responses. The work of the attached inspector contributes to the head being confident of the basis upon which actions were taken, and the appropriateness of those actions. Where difficult staffing or personnel issues were encountered, including tackling underperformance and poor teaching, the reassurance that this external view gives the head helps with the impact on school improvement by encouraging the headteacher to persist with the necessary management actions to cause the school to improve. In some schools the attached inspector has worked with other staff through in-service training, staff meetings, joint observations, coaching and mentoring so that the attached inspector has become, in the words of one school "a trustworthy critical friend leading to greater self confidence in the staff". This sort of work by the attached inspector has contributed to the improved capacity of the school to improve itself, better self evaluation strategies in school and support to the school improvement process in tackling underperformance, which has led to better and more accurate assessments by teachers of children's performance.

3.7 The most powerful impact that attached inspectors have in schools is when they work alongside staff undertaking pupil interviews, work sampling and the observation of teaching. This joint working achieves at least a dual purpose of improving the evaluative skill of the staff involved and benchmarking and verifying the opinions of those staff about the quality of pupils' work or of what is happening in the classroom. When this is followed by practical solutions to implement changes, the impact is reinforced. Raising the expectations of teachers about what good quality teaching means and how this impacts on improved pupil performance was another important aspect of an attached inspector's work in a school.

3.8 There were, however, phase differences in the strength of this impact. In primary schools the attached inspector's impact was being able to work directly in classrooms, whereas in secondary schools, because of the subject specific nature of much of the work, the attached inspector acted more as a broker of other services, or particularly, a verifier that the school's plan to use its delegated budgets to purchase external evaluation was sensible and appropriate. In secondary schools, because of the number of staff likely to be working there, particularly in schools in need of some or substantial improvement, the attached inspector's distance from the organisation, its direction and the focussing, particularly, of the work of Key Stage 3 consultants, minimised the attached inspector's impact on the school.

3.9 The work of school improvement managers and strategic school improvement managers was most effective in enabling networks to support headteachers, particularly those new or in acting roles. The centrality of the SIM and SSIM role to the management of school improvement activities has greatly increased in the past year, taking on some of the functions previously expected of AIs. Since the period covered by this survey, the LEA has significantly enhanced the role of the SIM to direct and organise the range of support offered to a school from the county council budget. With the SIMs taking the lead in discussing with the headteacher and, often, governors, the priorities for improvement; marshalling the services of the county council, HIAS staff and staff from other branches; and encouraging persistent attention to the matters for improvement, these schools, managed as projects by the SIM, are expected to make rapid improvement.

4 Improvements

4.1 There were a number of areas mentioned in the interview responses where the impact of the work of attached inspectors or consultants could be improved. In all cases these negative responses occurred in only one or two schools.

4.2 Where HIAS personnel have changed, the effect of the work was significantly reduced. Where the attached inspector or consultant did not take into account the context of the school, such that the advice offered was not sufficiently tuned to the particular focuses the school had in mind for improvement, then impact is significantly reduced. In more than one school the effect of the English consultants was judged to be less because of the process they were seen to have to go through as part of the implementation of an externally decreed strategy, rather than an adjustment of the tools of improvement to the context of the school.

4.3 Education Support Centres need faster response from HIAS staff in both the sold services and from Key Stage 3 consultants, where greater support is needed. In secondary schools, a monitoring visit undertaken after the GCSE and Key Stage 3 results were available, but before any comparative data were available, was seen as of little use to the school as the report tended to tell the school what it already knew.

4.4 Headteachers in their second headship looked for greater support from the local authority than they were receiving, except through the coaching and mentoring of the attached inspector, as referred to earlier. In primary schools where the effect of the leadership programme, part of the national primary strategy, was investigated, its impact was significantly lessened where there was either staff change or staff resistance. This leads to the conclusion that external strategies were far less effective in schools where there is instability either in governance, leadership, management or teaching.

5 Conclusion

5.1 In many of the schools requiring some or substantial improvement, the quality of teaching and the security of staffing is a prime concern. The regular monitoring visits alone by attached inspectors contribute little to improving these situations, but where the work has been more diverse and adapted to the circumstances in which the school finds itself - often, recently, under the direction of the SIM or SSIM - impact is greater. Conditions for improvement, like secure staffing and better teaching, need to be tackled first. The work of primary consultants needs to be tuned specifically to the context of the school and directed by the SIM to tackle the particular identified improvement focus for the year. By mentoring, supporting, coaching and encouraging headteachers, the attached inspector is likely to have an impact on improving the quality of leadership and management, but only gradually. Where this quality is poor or weak, then the chances of the school building capacity for self-improvement are slim. The use of attached inspectors is most beneficial where the scope of their work has broadened to support the school's capacity for self-improvement by, for example, engaging in joint monitoring of classroom practice with subject inspectors on a more regular basis in all phases of school. Many of these refinements to the way HIAS works with weaker schools have already been put in place since April 2004 and will be further sharpened from April 2005.

5.2 Because of the complexity of attributing impact to any particular cause, it is hard to determine the specific effect of the work of attached inspectors. Seeking the perceptions of those at the centre of the process may not be the best way of establishing the link between the work done by staff external to the school and its eventual improvement. However, the accretion of individual actions tuned to the context of the school and the personalities of the heads leading those schools, has contributed significantly to the improvements in process which over a period of time leads to improvements in outcomes for children.

6 Legal implications

6.1 None.

7 Financial implications

7.1 None.

8 Personnel implications

8.1 None.

9 Impact assessment

9.1 Race and equality impact assessment has been considered in the development of this report and no adverse impact has been identified.

10 Crime prevention issues

10.1 None.

11 Views of the Local County Councillor

11.1 Not sought in the drafting of this report.

Recommendations

1 That the report is noted and gratitude expressed to the headteachers who contributed to the evaluation.

2 That HIAS continues to make the improvements set out in this report.

Section 100 D - Local Government Act 1972 - background documents

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

NB: the list excludes

1. Published works

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

None