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 is the third county-wide survey evaluating the services HIAS sells to schools under service level agreement (management partnership). One of the outcomes of the Best Value review of the sold services of HIAS (2001) was to undertake a more regular evaluation of the sold services and to build this into the business unit's budget. This evaluation is part of a range of evaluations to survey the quality and impact of the work of the inspection and advisory service.

1.2 This paper supports Aim 1 of the Corporate Strategy (maximising life opportunities). By continuing to improve the advisory service, the impact on schools will be increased. Enabling school improvement raises standards of achievement by pupils.

2 The Survey

2.1 The evaluation was undertaken through a rolling sample of schools purchasing work from HIAS from April 2004 to March 2005. 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.

2.2 A total of 388 responses was received from 525 surveys sent out, a response rate of 73.9%. This is a lower response rate than last year. This represented 81.0% of the maintained schools in Hampshire contacted, as some schools were contacted on more than one occasion. 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.

2.3 The survey was sent to named schools with the member of HIAS identified against the day and date of visit. Headteachers were invited to respond to a number of questions as follows:

The inspector/adviser:

1. a) established a good rapport with me
b) established a good rapport with staff

2. gave good information in advance about what would be involved in the visit

3. wrote helpful reports about the school when required

4. was professional

5. challenged me/the school to strive for higher levels of performance

6. helped me use data to evaluate school performance and set targets

7. had good knowledge/understanding of school improvement issues

8. provided effective support through giving practical and relevant advice

9. was not afraid to give hard messages when necessary

10. delivered messages sensitively

11. has had a positive impact on this school.

2.4 Headteachers were invited to grade responses to these questions on a scale from 0 (not applicable), 1 (very strongly agree) to 6 (very strongly disagree). Headteachers were also invited to write any additional comments on the response sheet.

3 Results

3.1 The overall average grade across all responses from all phases of schools was 1.69 (1.72 in 2003/04) representing agreement with items on the survey between "very strongly agree" and "strongly agree". The trend over the three years of this survey is an increasing overall level of satisfaction. The primary school aggregate score was 1.65 (1.70), secondary 1.82 (1.86), and special 1.47 (1.37). This represents across all phases generally strong agreement with all the statements in the survey and indicates the work purchased by schools from HIAS, as part of the schools' plan 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.

3.2 Across all items there was a generally high level of agreement. There was, relatively, least satisfaction in response to question 2 "Gave good information in advance about what would be involved in the visit" and question 6 "Helped me use data to evaluate school performance and set targets", although in both cases greater satisfaction was expressed than in previous years. With only the exception of questions 5 and 9, all responses showed the same or improved levels of satisfaction compared with the previous year's survey. The improved responses to question 2 and question 10 "Delivered messages sensitively", suggests HIAS staff have tightened up on procedures in communicating with schools and have continued to develop their professional skills in communicating with teachers.

3.3 Items with the strongest agreement were "Was professional" (1.38 average grade), "Established a good rapport with me" (1.52 average grade), and "Provided effective support through giving practical and relevant advice" (1.54 average grade). All items 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 (1.75 average grade compared with 1.77 in the previous year's survey).

4 Legal implications

4.1 None.

5 Financial implications

5.1 None.

6 Personnel implications

6.1 None.

7 Impact assessment

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

8 Crime prevention issues

8.1 None.

9 Views of the Local County Councillor

9.1 Not sought in the drafting of this report.

Recommendations

1 That the report is noted.

2 That further work is undertaken to assess the impact of the work of HIAS on standards of achievement and the quality of education in schools.

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