Oral evidence: Ofsted's inspection of schools: progress review, HC 1971

Oral evidence, 23 January 2019.

Witness

Amanda Spielman.

Chair

Good afternoon and welcome to the Public Accounts Committee on Wednesday 23 January 2019. We are here to question Amanda Spielman, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills—the title seems to grow every time you are in front of us. We are keen to talk about the work of Ofsted and some wider issues relating to the education system. Digging away at education has been a big theme of our Committee in the past few years. Of course, Ms Spielman appeared in front of us with the permanent secretary not that long ago. Since then we have had a Treasury minute, we have had a very detailed and thorough letter in response to that hearing—thank you—and of course you have published your annual report. You are also consulting on the inspection regime. A lot has happened since we last saw you—you have been very busy. We are keen to talk to you about your role in school effectiveness and how that is working, how the changes you are trying to implement are working, and how Ofsted and the Government are delivering good-quality schools for the children in them. I am going to ask Bridget Phillipson to kick off.

Bridget Phillipson

What sorts of difficult choices are schools having to make to balance their budgets? What are your inspectors feeding back about that?

Amanda Spielman

Schools have a number of choices to make. Of course, they have a choice to make about how much to put into classroom teaching—into both teachers themselves and everything they use in the classroom. They now have a whole variety of support functions—both back-office support and various kinds of education support. Then, of course, there is the whole leadership piece and the piece around provision of wider education experiences—trips, enrichment, sports and so on—most of which carry a cost as well. The second part of your question was what we are doing to look at that. It is not currently in our brief to look at how schools spend their money, apart from two specific pieces: the use of the pupil premium and the use of the pupil sport premium.

Bridget Phillipson

Do inspectors ask explicitly about the impact of such budget pressures on school standards?

Amanda Spielman

No. At the moment the financial monitoring of schools happens through the responsible bodies and, for academies, the contracts with Government. For academies, the responsibility flows through the academy trust. They are held accountable by the regional schools commissioners and their finances are scrutinised by the Education and Skills Funding Agency. The ESFA also now allocates money to local authorities, but local authorities are responsible for the scrutiny of community school spending. Obviously, this is something we have looked at. We saw the recommendation in the Report this morning, and that is absolutely possible. I said in my letter that we would be looking at some of this in a research project. We have a piece of work lined up this year—it will be based partly on school visits and partly on questionnaires to get a wide spread—to look at the decisions schools are taking and how they are taking them. There are two issues. One is looking at spending. That kind of work would involve full scrutiny of what schools do and how they do it. The other is the problem of attribution. To determine that something is not being provided by reason of a reduction in the school budget, you would have to look at all of their allocation to say whether they are prioritising intelligently and allocating their resource to the right things; assuming they are buying the right things or spending it on the kinds of stuff, are they paying the right amount for it, or are they contracting badly? Only by fully reviewing the whole allocation of resources and spending could you attribute the inadequacy in any kind of education standard to budget shortfalls. It is not something that you could just do at the margin; you would have to take into the inspection a very big area that doesn’t exist at the moment. That is absolutely possibly—some inspectorates do that—but essentially, as far as I can see, at this point it is a recommendation for the Department for Education to reconsider the scope of inspection rather than something that I can squeeze in at the margins of an existing framework and the way that we now work.

Bridget Phillipson

Notwithstanding the challenges that you have set out on how you would achieve that, do you think it would be helpful, particularly for parents, to understand what is happening in a school in relation to performance and standards if they had a better grasp of some of those issues, which could be presented through your reporting?

Amanda Spielman

That is an interesting question. Historically, we haven't emphasised giving parents financial reports on schools. The reporting on the education side—

Bridget Phillipson

Sorry, I mean the financial impact then leading to outcomes for their children and how that impact feeds through to outcomes.

Amanda Spielman

It will always be extremely hard to make attributions at an individual school level. There are many kinds of school spending at the moment—for example, spending on some of the programmes on building soft skills—for which the kind of research evaluations that exist so far do not give very much guidance on what is definitely a good use of money and what definitely is not. Thinking about the kinds of conclusions that we are likely to be able to draw, we would probably only in quite extreme cases be able to say at a school level, “Yes, this is definitely because of a reduction in budget.” Taking one step further back, as I wrote in my letter, we went through a very long period of substantial increases in school spending, during which it is not clear that results went up anything like to the same extent as the money went up. If we look at international comparisons, such as the one published by PISA in 2012, we see that above a certain level of spending—in PPP terms it is about $35,000 to $40,000 over a child’s entire school career—there is essentially no correlation between how much a national system spends on education and the outcome. For many years we have been far above that level. It is simply not axiomatic that a reduction in school spending will lead to an immediate fall in outcomes for the children in that school, any more than it is axiomatic that an increase in spend will drive improved outcomes.

Chair

We will have to hold that thought, because we need to go and vote. I urge everyone to be as quick as possible. Once we have a quorum and Bridget back in the room, we will kick off again. Sitting suspended for a Division in the House. On resuming—

Chair

Welcome back. I will hand back to Bridget Phillipson.

Bridget Phillipson

Ms Spielman, I was interested in what you said about the connection between spending and outcomes. My interest is about not just the overall level of spend, but where that spend is being targeted to best effects, particularly in disadvantaged communities, on raising the outcomes for young people from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on that. In your letter you talked about the growth in the number of teaching assistants, although there is no evidence to suggest whether that is a driver of outcomes. Could further work be undertaken to understand the impact that such interventions might have on outcomes for young people?

Amanda Spielman

Quite a bit of work has happened in various places. The Education Endowment Foundation very helpfully drew together research on education support and the circumstances in which it is helpful. It has concluded that it has a low impact for high cost. I think it did its review in two stages. Initially it was essentially zero impact for high cost, then a couple of further studies led them to revise it to low impact for high cost—“low” meaning something like, I think, one month’s additional progress over the school career of a child receiving that kind of help. Sorry—I am not sure that it is over the school career, but it is a pretty small impact. There were a number of sources of that kind of evidence. In deciding what to put into our new draft framework, we have relied quite heavily on that evidence base and ensured that we draw on the existing literature on the kinds of educational activity and intervention that are most helpful. Can I just come back to the point you made about parents? We have done quite a lot of focus groups with parents, and survey work, and the question of money and how schools spend it did not come up once in any of those focus groups. What parents care about is behaviour and education standards, and that is why we are redesigning our reports to focus on the things that parents have told us matter most to them and that they want to read about.

Bridget Phillipson

Can I ask about the form of those surveys and those focus groups, where they were across the country and what methodology was used?

Amanda Spielman

We used a consultancy that specialises in this work and we looked at focus groups all around the country—I think disproportionately in somewhat disadvantaged areas. I have just been passed a note—they included Leeds, Manchester and Nottingham. The focus was towards the lower end of the socioeconomic range, to ensure that we were addressing the parents who were least likely to find it easy to get information in other ways.

Bridget Phillipson

I would not question what you are saying, but surely it is hard to separate out those two areas—parents wanting, quite rightly, to make sure that behaviour standards are high and that outcomes are good and that standards are high from the need to make sure that is properly resourced.

Amanda Spielman

I think parents assume that other people are overseeing the money side. I think most parents are probably by default reluctant to start poking through budgets and talking about exactly how much is spent on this and that. I think that is a reasonable expectation for parents.

Chair

When you are looking at school governance, do you look at how easily governing bodies provide that financial information to parents?

Amanda Spielman

No. I don’t believe we have anything of that specificity in the inspection framework—my colleagues will correct me if I am wrong.

Chair

Someone is shaking their head behind you, so I think you are right—it is always nice to know when you agree with the junior staff. I think we all found that there was some concern about school funding at one of the recent elections we have had. Parents were telling me very openly that they couldn’t get the information out of the school. Does that concern you?

Amanda Spielman

It does concern me. We have a somewhat piecemeal system, with some schools with a governing body overseen by a local authority, and others as part of academy structures. If they are stand-alone academies in a single trust, then the accounts for that academy would be just about that school. If they are part of a multi-academy trust, it is much less clear—

Chair

It concerns you. Do you think parents should have access to the financial information that is available?

Amanda Spielman

I think some kind of account summary, so that parents can understand what resource their school gets and how it is spent is—

Chair

It is taxpayers’ money in the end, of course; it is their own money. Ms Phillipson.

Bridget Phillipson

I think some of the greatest concern that I have heard from parents and schools is about the changes and cuts they have had to make on the support side they can offer and on pastoral care. Again, the letter that you sent to us suggested that the evidence was not necessarily there to support the impact that would have on outcomes.

Amanda Spielman

Indeed. One of the things that is always most difficult is when you have something where public perception, and particularly parent perception of what is of value, does not necessarily sit with what objectively collected evidence suggests actually makes a difference at the end of the day. That is one of the things that is most difficult to reconcile in public policy.

Bridget Phillipson

I appreciate that anecdote is no substitute for some of the longer term work on outcomes, but some of the schools in my community say that even ensuring that young people are at school every day is a major challenge and that, without support staff to ensure that they have good relationships with parents and those young people, they wouldn’t be achieving anything, because those young people would not be fit and present on a daily basis. I appreciate that it is hard to measure, but I think there is growing concern about whether we have the right level of support within schools. You have talked about the impact on young people’s mental health and all those areas, and whether schools are best placed to address that or whether other interventions are needed to tackle some of the problems.

Amanda Spielman

Absolutely, and what support staff do makes a difference. I think some of those studies show that an additional support body in the classroom doesn’t make a significant difference to outcomes, but support staff doing other things, such as helping families who have difficulty getting their children to school, may be more effective. It is still very much a work in progress. Again, looking at international comparisons—if you look across the TALIS comparisons, for example—we have unusually high levels of non-teaching staff in our schools. Over these years of very large budget increases, we have built up very substantial support staff. I think it is hard at the moment for heads to know what are the things that feel good for everybody but are not really contributing very much at the end of the day, and what are the things that are absolutely essential, without which the school would suffer. That is part of why being a head is so hard at the moment.

Bridget Phillipson

You say teaching assistants and support staff have an impact on teacher workload. Is that coming through in inspections? We hear from teachers and teaching unions about teacher workload. Is there a connection there?

Amanda Spielman

At the moment, inspection does not interrogate people on the question of teacher workload. We have just published in draft a new inspection framework that does include, under leadership and management, a point about whether school leaders have regard to the workload of their staff. It is framed carefully—we do not want to drive wedges between leaders and teachers, and we know how the world can overreact to things we say—but we are proposing a step in that direction.

Bridget Phillipson

One final question on this point: are any conversations ongoing with ESFA about assessing the impact of funding on the quality of education in the most poorly performing schools?

Amanda Spielman

We have a continuing strand of discussion with ESFA about information sharing and improving. With the responsibility for monitoring funding sitting with DFE and direct agencies, and the responsibility for education quality sitting with us, there is an interface, and it is a hard interface to manage. I want the connection across that interface to get better. We are having good discussions with ESFA. I hope the pieces of work we are doing this year on decisions that are being taken by schools around funding trade-offs, and the work we are doing on stuck schools—the schools that have been “requires improvement” for longest and have responded least to the various kinds of intervention—will be part of that productive discussion.

Anne-Marie Trevelyan

You mentioned that you do not look specifically at funds, except of course the pupil premium. I wonder whether you can expand a little on how you ensure that your inspectors make an assessment of the effectiveness of the pupil premium and of the service pupil premium. Anecdotally, I have felt that is not being looked at by your inspectors.

Amanda Spielman

Pupil premium is a difficult one, partly because looking at a slice of budget in isolation when you do not have the scope to look at allocation of resources in the whole budget is a slightly artificial conversation. I mentioned the Education Endowment Foundation, which has published quite a helpful toolkit. A lot of schools use that to try to make sure that they allocate the money in sensible ways. But all our inspectors can really do properly is look at the itemisation and see whether it is spent on things that are broadly consistent with what we know about good application. They cannot disaggregate and say, “This part of a child’s results is because the school is doing these things, and that part is from the core teaching.” The outcomes are the outcomes, and at the level of an inspection you can never attribute them to a particular piece of expenditure. We can do limited scrutiny when it is just that little piece in isolation.

Anne-Marie Trevelyan

So your inspectors are not looking at the pupil in question, their record and the additional funding attached to the child in any inspectory kind of way?

Amanda Spielman

It is not pupil by pupil, no. The scale of your typical inspection of a good primary school may be one inspector for one day, up to a maximum of two inspectors for two days. In the context of that kind of inspection of the whole work of the school, you couldn’t possibly do pupil-by-pupil review.

Chair

But are you planning any wider studies of pupil premium? I appreciate exactly what you say.

Anne-Marie Trevelyan

The EEF has done quite a lot of work—I agree—but what about from an inspectorate perspective?

Amanda Spielman

I do not believe we have enough in our evidence base from the kind of work we do to be able to draw conclusions.

Layla Moran

I understand what you are saying about international comparators not necessarily suggesting that more funding means better attainment. Equally, we have a specific landscape in England and schools have specific needs. Teachers in other countries might have more prep time and a higher average of CPD, but do you not accept that in some schools those support staff play a vital role in the attainment of students? I want to press you once again. Do you not accept that in the specific landscape that we have in the UK, funding pressures could lead to lower attainment in schools? That is what we are hearing from heads.

Amanda Spielman

I don’t think there is any reason to think that the UK is dramatically different from other well-off, developed countries in western Europe. Most of the international statistics I have seen suggest that until very recently our teacher-to-pupil ratios are broadly similar to those in comparable countries; we do not have exceptionally high pupil-to-staff ratios. I haven’t said that support staff are not valuable. In the years where schools have built up their budgets, we have perhaps built up larger support staff than most countries have. The choices that schools face at the moment are about what kinds of support are most valuable. That is the choice for a typical school at the moment.

Chair

I am sure we will come back to some of this.

Bridget Phillipson

You have talked about the potential impact of the narrowing of the curriculum on outcomes for young people. Can you tell us what is happening in that area and what is being done to address that?

Amanda Spielman

We have done a number of pieces of research. We have done some curriculum research in three stages looking at that. All the way through primary and secondary—from the beginning of key stage 2 onwards—we found things that gave us significant concern. Primaries are losing subjects that are not assessed at the end of key stage 2 at age 11; everything apart from English and maths tends to get squeezed. Our most recent piece of research suggests that subjects outside those areas are often quite poor quality. In key stage 3, there is a tendency—the intention is to continue the broad curriculum entitlement through to age 14, ahead of GCSE choices—to truncate that and to want to accelerate decisions about GCSEs and lose things like languages, the arts and practical subjects such as design and technology and so on, which children don’t necessarily take post-14. Pupils are not developing a sense of where their interests lie as well as building that body of knowledge of skills that was envisaged of the national curriculum—a real loss. If one takes a narrow, outcomes-based view, one can say, “Well, they’re still getting eight good GCSEs or whatever, so what does it matter?” My view is that that breadth really does matter. That expectation of a breadth of curriculum to age 14, with English and maths as well as sciences, humanities, arts, creative subjects and exercise, is there for a very good reason. We as Ofsted should be concerned and reporting on it if that is being lost.

Bridget Phillipson

And how is that reflected in the reports that you publish?

Amanda Spielman

We have not yet changed our inspection framework, but our inspectors have of course been briefed on these reports. Probably about 15 years ago there was quite a widespread assumption that the curriculum was sorted out with the national curriculum and that inspection did not need to focus on it. It became a very small slice—one of 19 headings under leadership and management. Inspectors are now more aware of it and asking more questions, but the draft framework that we have just published has the rebalancing to bring this question of what is taught—the breadth and depth—back up to the right level, where we can properly look at it and which will link to the resource question. At the moment, the way people assume inspection can be framed means that we don’t see, for example, if a school that has offered a choice of three languages drops two of them. We don’t necessarily see if a choice of three performance subjects drops to one. The kinds of conversations we will be able to have are much more likely to pick that up and lead to us being able to report on losses.

Bridget Phillipson

How will that be married up with discussions you are having with the Department on its approach to the publication of data? There is an expectation that young people will achieve within certain parameters, sometimes perhaps to the detriment of other broader choices they might wish to make.

Amanda Spielman

I have not seen any issues here that I can imagine being a detriment. The range of the performance measures that the Department has used over time and uses now are essentially designed to make sure that there is a broad and balanced curriculum through the period of compulsory education, and that there is a balance between making sure that the breadth of core curriculum is protected, but also leaving quite a lot of space for discretion and choice. We actually give children probably more choice than most countries. We have a very permissive education by default, at the level of the child, on the extent to which children get choices and the flexibility of pathways—in most places, people are channelled much more through the pathways they can take—and at the level of the school. We give more autonomy to schools to decide what they offer and what they don’t offer and how they do it. Having a handle on what choices are being made and how children are being influenced indirectly as well as directly is really important.

Bridget Phillipson

You talk, quite rightly, about the push that schools will often have to focus on those core subjects. There is a push there and they feel that pressure to make sure that they are reaching the right level. You seem to be suggesting that that was having a knock-on effect on the breadth of curriculum that schools might therefore offer.

Amanda Spielman

It can, if it is done in the wrong way. If you are referring to the EBacc, expecting children to study a language to age 16 or to study history to age 16 as well as science and maths and your home language are things that are part of the standard expectation in pretty much every country in the world. Coming from the other end, for most people the idea that you should be able to opt out of a broad curriculum at the age of 14 is quite an odd one. I think the space we have within current performance measures for at least three subjects drawn from anywhere in the list of options gives a good balance of flexibility between the core and the optional area.

Bridget Phillipson

On a different area, why is it that some schools more than others have moved so many of their pupils off-roll in years 10 and 11?

Amanda Spielman

I can only hypothesise on some of this. We know some of the influences here. It is a whole mixture of things. One is around children who, for whatever reason, genuinely struggle at school, notwithstanding the best efforts of the school. There are a few children who, for whatever reason, really struggle to cope in a school environment. We must always acknowledge that there are a small number of those. One is children who, for whatever reason, are excluded, which is never a desirable outcome but there are circumstances in which exclusion is the only course that a school can take and does so properly. But we have other reasons why children are dropping off school rolls, which I am very concerned about, one of which is where essentially the child is being indirectly sort of squeezed out through the back door—[Interruption.]

Chair

Things are moving fast in Parliament. Sorry, we need to adjourn for a vote. Sitting suspended for a Division in the House. On resuming—

Chair

Welcome back to the Public Accounts Committee on Wednesday 23 January. We were with Bridget Phillipson.

Bridget Phillipson

We were discussing how we try to tackle off-rolling. Do you want to carry on from where you were?

Amanda Spielman

Off-rolling is what is left when you have ruled out the legitimate reasons for a child to leave a school. We know there are cases where a school essentially says, “If you don’t want your child to go down the path to exclusion, sign this letter, which is you withdrawing the child on the basis that you’re going to home educate them.” In other cases, it may not even involve that. It is a child coming off a register for no good reason, where it is in the interests of the school that they should come off.

Bridget Phillipson

What can you do to reduce that?

Amanda Spielman

We have very few powers. We can report and we can notify local authorities. We have analysed the pupil data we have at our disposal and published a blog on it. We identified 300 schools that looked possible. We risk assess, and this is a risk flag, but the timing of inspections and various other things mean we have inspected 16 so far. We reported one of those, where a significant number of children came off the roll on the same day for no good reason and the school could not even attempt to explain. We also reported another school, which was not on that original flag list; on inspection, because we have now started asking those kinds of questions, we surfaced and reported on the fact that there clearly was off-rolling happening at that school. That of itself sends a very clear signal that we are asking, looking and reporting, but it is then for the authority responsible for the school—the governing body and, behind it, the local authority if it is a community school; or the academy trust board and, behind that, the Department for Education through the RSCs—to act, not for Ofsted. We have no power beyond reporting.

Bridget Phillipson

Academies, particularly in some multi-academy trusts, appear to be losing a disproportionate number of pupils. Is that correct?

Amanda Spielman

The analysis we did showed a skew towards schools with more disadvantaged intakes. I do not think we can conclude that this is an academy problem. There is evidence in various places. Our list of 300 included all kinds of schools. As it happens, of the two we have reported so far, one is an academy and the other is a community school.

Bridget Phillipson

I would not suggest by any means that it is an issue just for academies. You just said disadvantage is a factor in identifying where this is most likely to happen. What are the other factors and drivers that would lead you to identify problems? What commonalities might there be?

Amanda Spielman

Given that we have only found two cases so far, it is simply too early for me to say. I do not want to speculate about places where we have seen a high level of movement but not yet had inspectors in asking the question. If I’m asked that question in a year or two’s time—

Chair

A year or two. I was going to ask you when you will know.

Amanda Spielman

It depends on how much we turn up. If we ask these questions diligently in inspections—

Chair

So in a year or two, roughly, you think you will have some more information.

Amanda Spielman

We inspect about a quarter of secondary schools every year, so we will have a fair-sized sample by then.

Bridget Phillipson

What conversations are you having with the Department to address the issues relating to multi-academy trusts?

Amanda Spielman

On off-rolling?

Bridget Phillipson

On off-rolling in multi-academy trusts with the Department and the regional schools commissioners.

Amanda Spielman

We are not treating off-rolling as an academy trust issue per se; we are treating it as a system issue. To the extent that any reason can clearly be defined, people typically attribute it to the pressures around reporting good numbers for the school, which is partly about the grades that the children who are in the school achieve and partly about the children you keep out of the calculation of the grades.

Bridget Phillipson

It’s not because I’m suggesting somehow that this is only a problem that you will find in academies. It’s just that, as you outlined, the accountability chain means that when it comes to multi-academy trusts, it will be for the Department.

Amanda Spielman

We have communicated this to DFE, and I put it in my annual report to Parliament. We have made very clear that we see a problem in some quarters, and are pursuing it and reporting on it.

Bridget Phillipson

Is there anything more that Ofsted could do to raise awareness of this issue with parents as part of that process, so that parents understand what rights they have under this system? In some cases, parents will choose to go along with what is offered to them, rather than continuing to complain. They are potentially worried about there being further adverse consequences.

Amanda Spielman

It is a really interesting question about how best to reach parents. We do not have a direct line to parents, other than through the Parent View website that we operate and through our general complaints service. We try to make it possible for parents to feed back on schools in certain ways at any time—on our complaints site, for example, anybody can make a complaint about a school at any time—and the default expectation is that they will have exhausted local routes before they complain to us, but the reality is that we review everything that comes in through that mechanism. We have a waiver mechanism whereby for anything that looks serious, the regional director can waive the normal requirement to have gone through local routes and decide that we will look at the complaint. However, if we find that something looks fishy, we can, first, inspect, and secondly, report to the local authority or another responsible authority. Those are basically the only things that we can do.

Anne-Marie Trevelyan

Do you believe your inspection regime is driving off-rolling in some schools?

Amanda Spielman

I don’t think it is driving it, but this is why in the new framework I want to make really clear that we want to be complementing the pressures that people perceive come from trying to achieve high reported data outcomes, to get a focus on integrity and make sure that we complement, not intensify, whatever pressure does come from the perceived need to achieve high results. I want to make sure that the schools that act properly and in the best interests of children know that that will be recognised and rewarded through inspection.

Anne-Marie Trevelyan

Do you believe that the headteachers making those decisions should do that, or should they defer and say, having made a decision, that they’re sending it back to their local council team to decide? Is that an abnegation of their responsibility as the headteacher?

Amanda Spielman

Sorry, what kind of decision?

Anne-Marie Trevelyan

I will give you an example: I have a wonderful young woman in one of my schools who has Down’s syndrome. She is never going to get great grades, but she is a fantastic part of the school; she has many skills in other areas, and she wants to stay on for A-level. The school is saying, “No, she needs to go to a special school.” She has never been in a special school. This child is part of the mainstream but will not achieve good grades in the traditional sense, and the school is saying, “We won’t keep her—we’ll find you somewhere else.” It has just deferred the responsibility to make a decision to the local council.

Amanda Spielman

It is impossible for me to talk about an individual case—

Anne-Marie Trevelyan

Absolutely, but it is a question of abdicating responsibility, having made a decision. It is absolutely on the grades question that the school is saying that it cannot support her. She has been in a mainstream school through all her education.

Chair

On the grades issue, is this story familiar to you?

Amanda Spielman

The grades issue is very concerning—seeing children being weeded out halfway through A-level courses, for example—but from what you have said, I genuinely do not know enough about the situation. Up to age 16, the expectation is that a school should be able to provide for any child who walks through the door, apart from a tiny minority of children with very special needs. Post-16, the landscape fragments; not every post-16 provider, whether it is a school or a college, provides every kind of course suitable for every child. I do not believe that there is an obligation for an institution to provide courses for everybody at that point.

Anne-Marie Trevelyan

So you are comfortable with it falling on the council as a decision-making body.

Amanda Spielman

I cannot say in this context—

Chair

I think we are in danger of getting bogged down in one case. The general point that you have highlighted, Ms Spielman, is that sixth forms are competitive and there is a whole different landscape. Lots of children in a school are not allowed to continue to sixth form and some do not find anywhere. I should alert Committee members that we and Ms Spielman have been here for an hour, although obviously we have had votes, so we do need to step up the pace a bit. Ms Spielman, we know the general landscape, so if you keep your answers short and we keep our questions tight, hopefully we will not detain you too much longer.

Bridget Phillipson

A final area from me. Ms Spielman, you have talked about the need to address the issue of stuck or intractable schools where there is a cycle of poor performance. Do you believe that the initiatives arising from the Department and elsewhere are enough to address that?

Amanda Spielman

Sorry—the air conditioning behind me is quite noisy.

Bridget Phillipson

I will speak up a bit. You have talked about stuck schools and the need to address the cycle of poor performance in that minority of schools. Is the work that the Department is doing and the initiatives it is bringing forward enough to resolve those difficulties?

Amanda Spielman

It is impossible for me to say at the moment. I absolutely welcome the work that is being done in the opportunity areas. I think the co-ordination of many parts of Government is probably relevant here. What is interesting when we look at the stuck schools is that we have noticed more generally that in areas of high disadvantage, schools judged RI or inadequate are more likely to have a higher outcome for leadership and management than they do overall. That reflects the fact that their leadership is doing the best it can in difficult circumstances, and that is much more likely to be the case in stuck schools. We may often have leadership teams in schools who are genuinely doing everything they can that the education system currently knows how to do, but we may be dealing with wider social and economic problems. The reason I cannot say whether the Department for Education is doing the right things is that there may be things that the Department itself can never solve and that are about wider solutions. I think the opportunity areas are trying to bring in services. Something that perhaps we have not touched on sufficiently in what we have said so far is the importance of other services. Very clearly, one of the biggest pressures on schools at the moment is the disappearance or reduction of other kinds of support services outside the school, and the extent to which they feel that they are substituting.

Bridget Phillipson

What kind of support services do you mean?

Amanda Spielman

Non-statutory children’s services, for example, and mental health support services through CAMHS—those are the things that I hear most often.

Bridget Phillipson

That is borne out by what I hear, but I don’t quite know how that tallies with the discussion we had earlier about the impact of support staff.

Amanda Spielman

It is a slightly different thing. The support staff employed in the school do a range of things. There are some things for which schools have got into the habit of having and using support staff.

Bridget Phillipson

Let’s say we’re talking about pastoral care. Let’s take out teaching assistants and look at those support staff who are dealing with some of the very same issues as CAMHS and others. I know of some schools that have had to take on additional resources in that area just because of the waiting times that will arise from CAMHS.

Amanda Spielman

It should also be a concern for us where things that may be medical needs are being dealt with without the right kind of clinical expertise. There are considerable dangers to non-experts finding themselves pushed towards diagnosis and therapy in schools without the expertise. Only last week there was an excellent piece, I think written by a CAMHS practitioner, in the Times Educational Supplement on the various ways in which excess demands get placed on CAMHS, partly by thresholds being set in the wrong place, too many people turning up for the service, and a lot of therapists’ time being spent explaining to teenagers that things that are making them feel depressed and sad are actually things that it is entirely rational for them to feel depressed or sad about. Something bad has happened in their life; they will feel better in due course, but they do not need clinical interventions. Similarly, some parents, this therapist reported, have become very adept at finding the words that will get their child up the queue. What we have at the moment is partly a shortfall, but also a misallocation of resources. How we get to having everybody in the system well enough co-ordinated that the heavy duty of resource goes to the children who really need it is one of the big challenges facing us all at the moment.

Bridget Phillipson

Just on the issue of opportunity areas that you talk about, the north-east—my region—is one such area. I have to say that the process has been characterised by an air of mystery, to begin with, regarding how areas will be identified and to what end; the datasets that are being used; what the process will involve; and the outcomes that are being sought. I am all for extra money and resources, but it is not at all clear to me what the Department is seeking to achieve.

Amanda Spielman

I am not the Department, so I think that is a question you will have to save for when you have Jonathan Slater or—

Bridget Phillipson

But are you involved with the Department in seeking to understand it? The Department wants to solve the problem that you also want to solve, but I am not sure if the Department is identifying those areas and how that improvement might be delivered, when surely Ofsted would be well placed to offer some advice on how some of those improvements might come about within schools?

Amanda Spielman

The Department for Education strategy is that Ofsted does the diagnosis and reports on education standards, and that support advice commissioning comes through the Department for Education. As things stand, notwithstanding that at various times in the past we have had a broader role, our role is simply what it is at the moment, and I have not been involved in the selection or decisions around these opportunity areas.

Bridget Phillipson

I understand that. It is just that you spoke very positively about what this might present. Yet it is not at all clear to me what it is about, what it is really for, or who it is seeking to help.

Amanda Spielman

That is a good point. I am informed that we do have someone as an observer on the opportunity area board, so you are pointing me at something that I can look to take an interest in.

Chair

Obviously, one would imagine that if it works you will see the results in inspections.

Amanda Spielman

We should. Our ultimate goal is to see good things coming through and to be able to report on that.

Chair

But it is still early days, I think.

Bridget Phillipson

Without seeking to labour the point too much, we know there is a particular issue around schools in the north and the midlands, yet initially when the Department was looking at this they had all but excluded anything north of, I think, Scarborough. I just want to be confident that we are understanding where the problems lie, and that there is some form of system that brings together the data that you hold and the data that others hold in order that the Department seeks to address the very problem that you have identified around those stuck schools.

Amanda Spielman

I am afraid I simply have no insight into how the Department for Education compiles its prioritisation for this.

Chair

Not good enough, I think, from our experience of the Department for Education. We do not expect you to comment on that. We have plenty that you can comment on.

Bridget Phillipson

Finally, our colleague Kevan Jones, the MP for North Durham, raised an issue around a school in his constituency, which was categorised as outstanding. It was then not inspected for 11 years and subsequently became inadequate. He said that he is happy for that school to be named: it was the Hermitage Academy. It came as a real shock to the parents and the governing body that things could have shifted so significantly. What are you doing to try to make sure that we do not see such long periods of time for schools such as that, where all kinds of changes might happen and parents might not be fully aware of what is going on?

Amanda Spielman

Absolutely. As you know, I have quite limited scope here, because an exemption from routine inspection was put into regulations back in 2010 or thereabouts, so I simply do not have the power to inspect outstanding schools as I do others. We include them in our risk assessment and we inspect where we have reason to have particular concerns. I have spoken about that publicly on a number of occasions, because I do not believe parents like it and I do not believe schools themselves like it very much. They perceive it as introducing unfairness among schools. This year we are increasing the number of outstanding schools we inspect; we are aiming to inspect up to the 10% maximum that we can. We are on track to do that. We have inspected and published reports on, I think, 72 so far this academic year. I should say that that is a risk-weighted sample—

Chair

So you would expect there to be higher outcomes.

Amanda Spielman

Yes, we would expect it to be high, but three quarters of schools have gone down in their judgment and about 30% of them have gone not just to “good”, but to “requires improvement”, so we see quite substantial movement when we can go in and inspect.

Chair

Just to be clear, that’s entirely risk-based, so that is not a straight sample of 72 but a sample of the riskiest?

Amanda Spielman

Yes, it is partly on results and also partly on the age of the outstanding judgment.

Chair

So that was an element of the risk. How many have gone as long as the school our colleague from North Durham highlighted? That was 11 years.

Amanda Spielman

How many have gone that long? I don’t have the numbers off the top of my head, but that is about the longest, because schools that were just coming up for inspection when the exemption was put in would not have been inspected for about four years. So yes, we are on about 12 or 13 years for some schools.

Chair

That is a really long time.

Amanda Spielman

I believe it is a very unsatisfactory position and I am very uncomfortable about it but, as I say, I am constrained.

Bridget Phillipson

One final question and then I am finished. You will know as well as I do that there is a big drop-off between primary and secondary attainment in the north-east. Our primary schools do very well and then things start to head downward in our secondary schools. Are you doing any work to understand what is going on there, or any work with the Department or others to try to understand the drivers behind that and what can be done to iron that out?

Amanda Spielman

I don’t believe we have any project that is specific to the north-east at the moment. I am trying to think about our research programme. It is something we can discuss with the team and consider whether there is something—

Bridget Phillipson

Particularly the transition from primary to secondary. The vast majority of our primary schools—

Amanda Spielman

No, I am aware of that apparent imbalance.

Chair

It’s a long time since London Challenge, which turned schools of the sort Ms Phillipson is describing into some of the best in the country in parts of London, including my own constituency. Yet if you are in the north-east, there is a difference of opportunity. We recognise that is not all down to Ofsted, but if you are advising the Government, what do you think could be done to help Ms Phillipson’s constituents?

Amanda Spielman

Two things. First, there has been some fairly credible research done by people such as Professor Simon Burgess, which suggests that the London Challenge effect may actually have been substantially down to differences in populations and not really very much to do with education itself.

Chair

It’s probably a bit of both. I have to defend some of the London Challenge schools, as the only London member of the Committee. Certainly the population and their prizing of education had an effect, but there is some excellent teaching practice going on in those schools.

Amanda Spielman

Correspondingly, one thing that deserves more attention than perhaps it has had until now is the availability of staff. Secondary school is more dependent on specialist staff, and we know that the problems with teacher recruitment are very unevenly distributed around the country. There are potentially a number of areas that could be contributing that could be better understood.

Bridget Phillipson

It’s just very stark when, as you will know, you go from 93% of primary schools in Sunderland being good or outstanding to a drop-off of 50% at secondary school level, with the same very stable population and the same young people going through that system. I hear a lot from headteachers about their thinking on why some of that happens, but there seems to be very little research being done to fully understand what goes on within and through that transition. I would be very keen for Ofsted to give that some thought.

Chair

You have a bid for your research budget, Ms Spielman—but no more money, I’m afraid.

Amanda Spielman

My strategy and research director is sitting behind me.

Chair

If you do that, you will have a fan in Ms Phillipson, at least while you are doing the research—it depends what the results are. Sir Geoffrey wanted to come in on a quick point.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Good afternoon, Ms Spielman. I want just to return you to the cycle of inspections of outstanding schools. You said the current cycle you are on is about 12 or 13 years, which sounds to me highly unsatisfactory. If you had your way, what would be the ideal re-inspection time?

Amanda Spielman

Just to be clear, we are not on a cycle at all. As the law stands, I cannot simply put outstanding schools into a cycle. My preference would be for outstanding schools to be inspected on the same cycles and for the risk adjustment to be factored in as we do for all schools.

Chair

So the same for all schools. At the moment, Ministers have put in a request for you to inspect 10% of those schools. How will you manage to resource that extra activity? We do not recall seeing any additional funding attached to that request.

Amanda Spielman

It comes down to making a lot of things balance. We have ups and downs in our workload for various reasons. For example, in FE and skills a number of mergers happened as part of the area reviews, and new URMs were issued; as a result, those institutions do not come up for three years. Various technical changes in the system give us a slightly bumpier work flow than you might imagine.

Chair

For now—I can see that a merger of an FE college might mean that you do not have to re-inspect it for a bit, but how long can that work in the long term? How sustainable is this request from the Secretary of State?

Amanda Spielman

We’re just coming up to a spending review, and I think we have a number of areas where the very long-standing desire of many Governments to reduce the amount that the system spends on assurance might bump up against the level of assurance that is needed in various areas. We are just at the beginnings of those discussions.

Chair

So you are putting in a bid for more funding to do this through the spending review?

Amanda Spielman

To return to routines, we had a significant slice taken out of our budget to stop inspections of outstanding schools.

Chair

I think we highlight in our Report how much you have been cut. So you are now bidding for some of that back. We keep hearing different dates about the spending review—even that it could be delayed beyond the end of this year. Presumably that would have a serious impact on your ability to do what the Secretary of State has asked you to do.

Amanda Spielman

Indeed.

Chair

Would be unable able to do the 10% if you don’t get the funding? Perhaps a better way of phrasing the question is: how long can you do it for? How long will you be able to keep to that target?

Amanda Spielman

We can certainly do it through this year. This is the final year of our spending review settlement. Like most other parts of Government, we have no clear idea of what we will be working with in the years beyond.

Chair

We may come back to that. I want to pick up some of the points that Ms Phillipson raised. As you know, we published a Report today on multi-academy trusts. One of the concerns we have is that you, as an inspectorate, can inspect individual schools but not necessarily see whether a trust is failing as a whole. Are you happy with that situation and have you looked at what you can do to ensure that, in addition to the individual schools, you are looking at the role of the multi-academy trust and how effective that has been, to see if you can find a pattern where there is a problem or failure?

Amanda Spielman

I’m not comfortable with it; I have said this quite clearly and publicly. There are a couple of reasons. First, inspection was originally contemplated when it was a stand-alone school and its governing body, and you could find out everything there was to know by just going along there. It is so different now.

Chair

It’s obviously changed; we know it is a different landscape.

Amanda Spielman

Multi-academy trust are not just administrative wrappers providing some financial, legal, monitoring and governance services; they are often completely vertically integrated organisations, where many of the education decisions on the curriculum, teaching and many of the things—

Chair

We know how that landscape works. What can you do to keep them on track?

Amanda Spielman

In the first instance, we are pursuing an iteration of the batched model of inspection, which was the first attempt. I’m very sorry, I have forgotten the term for the iterated model that we are putting in. In the long term, I think it is absolutely essential that we ensure that accountability tracks the structures in which the world operates.

Chair

Okay, so practically then, can you explain what that will mean? We have looked quite a lot at what Bright Tribe has done. It had schools across the country, quite geographically spread, and we have had a lot of contact with parents who are very concerned about what is happening at Whitehaven Academy, for example. You can inspect that school alone. If you take that as an example, what would you do now that would be different if you were looking at Bright Tribe’s individual schools? How would you deal with Bright Tribe as a a multi-academy trust?

Amanda Spielman

For MATs, I want to understand the educational model that they operate, how they make it work and the extent to which that is controlled from the centre, so that I understand what decisions are going to be taken at the school.

Chair

So you would inspect the MAT as well as the individual schools?

Amanda Spielman

Not under our current proposals. There would be some MAT conversation, but no inspection of the MAT.

Chair

Would you like to have the power to inspect the MAT?

Amanda Spielman

I would like to have the power to inspect the MAT. There is an interesting parallel. Our closest analogue is the Netherlands inspectorate, which has just shifted to inspecting MATs entirely rather than inspecting at school level for schools in MATs. If the place that is responsible and accountable to Government is the multi-academy trust board, then without an assessment of the quality of work at that level it is very hard to say that there is a well-matched structure.

Chair

We were very struck by the evidence that we heard from Whitehaven and the local MP there. In fact, she was marched off the premises when she was onsite because of a lack of accountability. Bright Tribe maintains that it has worked hard to get a new sponsor body, but as soon as that new sponsor body came in the head teacher left and a new one has been installed. As a parent, as a politician and for you as an inspector, these things seem to flag concerns about a lack of consistency and real issues for the outcomes of those children, yet there were senior people, including, I think, the CEO—I won’t quote him in case I get it wrong—who had never even visited Whitehaven Academy. What is your view on that? Is it something that you feel you should have a bit more of a handle on? You said you want to investigate MATs, but that seems like quite a big breakdown in the governance of the school.

Amanda Spielman

I do find that very surprising. Coming back to something I said earlier, we have a system that is set up on a presumption of integrity—that we need to check people’s competence from time to time, but can fundamentally assume that they are doing things with the best of intentions and more or less responsibly. We are unfortunately seeing quite a few situations where that doesn’t apply. It has probably happened more than we have ever discussed in the local authority world. In some ways there are some good aspects to the academy regime: I think some of the bad stuff that happens surfaces rather faster than perhaps it did in the past. So I don’t take it as just saying these academy sponsors have done things they shouldn’t have.

Chair

Going back, years ago I was a councillor in Islington. I am currently a Hackney MP. Both of those neighbouring boroughs had their education departments taken over—one by a private company and one by a charity—because they had failed. Whatever the arrangements were at the time, they were picked up as failing education authorities, and yet MATs are picked up as failing because we see a catalogue of issues in schools and a lot of dogged determination very often by individuals in the individual schools beginning to try and question what’s going on. You say there have been problems in the past, but I think they were picked up. Can I just be clear? You would like to investigate MATs as an inspectorate. Do you need more resource to do that?

Amanda Spielman

I believe that if we had a strong model for inspecting MATs, just as any auditor of a branch operation involves some of the audit effort going to the centre and some on the branches, it would be possible to adjust the amount of work that is done at school level to make the overall burden no greater. And we could make sure there are better conversations, because it is quite hard trying to extract information from people who are removed from the place where the decisions actually get made. We could get better focus, better value for the public and better input for the trusts.

Chair

Looking at governance in a multi-academy trust, a former governor at Whitehaven came and gave evidence to this Committee and said the governors had received very little information. They had a different name then—they weren’t really governors. The governors were at the centre of a nationwide MAT, so they were in Cornwall—I can’t remember all the areas, but in Cumbria they were getting partial information. It wasn’t really fit for purpose in relation to what was going on in the school. In your inspections, would you pick up that deficit in governance? Or, because it is an academy that is part of a multi-academy trust, is it that you can kind of give it a free pass under the current regime?

Amanda Spielman

I think it is absolutely clear that the legal governing body of an academy in a multi-academy trust is the trust board, not any kind of local governing body.

Chair

Yes, but you are looking at the governance of the school.

Amanda Spielman

We have to look to that trust board, which is part of the reason why simply looking at school level makes it hard to get a proper handle on governance.

Chair

So you are making a clear bid that you would like to be looking at multi-academy trusts. What do you need? Do you need to have different powers to do that?

Amanda Spielman

Yes, we couldn’t do that without a commission from the Department for Education.

Chair

So do you need to have just permission? Just a letter from Jonathan Slater as permanent secretary, or the Secretary of State? What is the mechanism for that power to be granted to you? Does it have to go through primary legislation? I just ask—you may not know either.

Amanda Spielman

There are various kinds of work that we do without primary legislation, under commission from the Department for Education.

Chair

Basically, it could be a letter or a direction from the Department that was required.

Amanda Spielman

I believe so.

Chair

As in fact has happened with the 10% of outstanding academies.

Amanda Spielman

As also with our independent school work, for example, which we do under commission from the Department for Education.

Layla Moran

On the MATs point, a couple of weeks ago now it was said in The Times Education Supplement that you had shared some of the framework or some of the draft framework with multi-academy trusts. Could we ask why that happened?

Amanda Spielman

We have had something over 200 meetings with different stakeholders, including the unions and the heads’ associations—with a very wide range of stakeholders. With a number of them, including the unions and the heads’ associations and others, at the meeting we showed the draft handbooks and had some discussion. One of those meetings was with the Confederation of School Trusts, which is the umbrella body for the big MATs, so they were very much part of that wider stakeholder consultation.

Layla Moran

Okay, so you felt that the reporting of those meetings was unfair.

Amanda Spielman

It did not give the context that it was exactly the same model that was applied for a number of the important stakeholders—

Chair

Okay, we’ve heard the stakeholders that were involved. We are going off on a slight tangent and we’ve really got to keep an eye on the time. You talked a bit about unregistered schools. What more do you think needs to be done to tackle them? Have you got the power to do that?

Amanda Spielman

As I said before, we don’t have the powers that we would like to have. We have the problems around the definition of a school, which are unquestionably being exploited in a number of quarters. Only last week, two of my very senior inspectors went to visit something that was previously a registered school and now is an unregistered establishment claiming to be offering only religious education, which I don’t think was the conclusion of the visit there. This is a real problem: people dance around the definition of what constitutes education; they dance around the hours. We also have our hands tied behind our back on what we can do once we get there. We are so constrained in what evidence we can take. Essentially, schools can walk the children out and they can lift up everything they have got in there and take it out and they can keep the records elsewhere.

Chair

That sounds like that might need legislative change.

Amanda Spielman

I believe that part of what we want is in the legislative pipeline, but there are still going to be some—

Chair

There are potentially safeguarding issues, if it is not a school. There might be fire safety issues and basic health and safety things that are not in your remit.

Amanda Spielman

Yes. Some of these places simply aren't safe. There are questions of physical safety. There are questions of academic quality. It is very unclear in many of these that there is a proper education, and there are questions around the protection from all kinds of child exploitation that we simply cannot be sure is there.

Chair

When you talk about “in the pipeline”, can you be clear about that? You think there are discussions going on in the Department about new legislation. Is that where it is at?

Amanda Spielman

Yes. It is a couple of months since I have got up to date on quite where things are.

Chair

We can chase this with the Department, but if you have any information that you can send us, that would be very helpful.

Amanda Spielman

I don’t have any new information.

Chair

That brings me to different types of education establishments. Obviously, there is the big issue of home education. You deal with other settings, many domiciliary, including childminders, as well as pupil referral units. I had the chance to be a mystery shopper recently. A lot of them are on very different foundations—some charities, some schools and some are under the umbrella of an existing school. Do you have any issues with what you are allowed to go in and look at in pupil referral units?

Amanda Spielman

Registered pupil referral units we inspect and are able to report on, but quite a lot of alternative provision is outside the definition of a school and does not require registration. They are the children typically with the greatest difficulties, who have struggled in mainstream education and who need the greatest expertise. I am very worried about children who go into unregistered provision in those circumstances.

Chair

At least one of them in my constituency is a charity. That means there is a difference in the sort of teachers they can appoint, because they appoint at a point rather than on a scale. That potentially—not necessarily—impacts the quality of teaching or the turnover of teachers. Is that something that Ofsted looks at when you go into a PRU that is a charity?

Amanda Spielman

No, we don’t look at the terms on which people are hired.

Chair

When you look at them, do you make any recommendations about those sorts of things, or even in your private letter to the Secretary of State include things that are of concern to your inspectors when they go in?

Amanda Spielman

When we draw from a number of inspections some insight about problems, that is the kind of thing that generates an advice note about an emerging problem.

Chair

Do you have a particular approach to how you inspect hospital schools, which similarly are on many different types of foundation, with a moving population and quite small numbers?

Amanda Spielman

I don’t have anything specific to say about hospital schools. They are a very specialised kind of provision for children who have significant complications.

Chair

But you do inspect them.

Amanda Spielman

We do inspect them.

Chair

I know that, but I may take some of that offline with you separately, because I think we have some information that might be helpful.

Shabana Mahmood

Good afternoon Ms Spielman. When your inspectors question Muslim primary school girls who are wearing a hijab about why they do so, what is the line of questioning that they pursue?

Amanda Spielman

In every inspection, our inspectors have meetings with groups of pupils to talk to them about issues of concern to them. Every inspector has been a school leader in their time; it is a minimum requirement that they have five years of experience. Typically, there a meetings with a couple of smallish groups of pupils of different ages, to get a sense of the issues of concern to them, whether there is anything they feel under pressure about and whether there are things where they are uncomfortable with how they are handled. They are meetings at which things like bullying—the things that can go wrong and can make pupils unhappy or their lives difficult—can get to the surface. We try to make sure that that conversation surfaces anything that may be a source of pressure for that child.

Shabana Mahmood

That is quite a general answer, Ms Spielman. This was a policy change announced by you in November 2017, when you made your comments in a speech. It is very specific about Muslim little girls wearing the hijab; it was a very specific announcement you made about questioning those girls about why they wear it. With respect, I would like some more detail from you about how those conversations are handled on the specific point that you spoke about in 2017.

Amanda Spielman

I am not involved in designing individual inspector conversations; I would have to write to you about that.

Chair

For instance, would there always be a teacher in the room, for safeguarding purposes?

Amanda Spielman

No; this is a conversation with the inspector, and our inspectors are fully DBS checked.

Chair

So the children could be on their own with an inspector without a familiar adult in the room.

Amanda Spielman

I don’t believe a teacher is there, precisely because this is where children can express concerns about something that is going on in the school.

Chair

What age are children on their own with an inspector answering questions?

Amanda Spielman

That is why our inspectors—

Chair

I know, but I just wanted to know the age range, that’s all.

Amanda Spielman

Whatever the age range the school encompasses.

Chair

So it could be a four-year-old in a reception class, potentially.

Amanda Spielman

I am trying to remember—when I have been in a primary school, I don’t recall children younger than six or seven.

Chair

it would be very helpful if you could write to us with the detail, particularly to answer Ms Mahmood’s questions about the guidance you give to the line of questioning, or if there is no guidance, which would also be important to know.

Shabana Mahmood

I am interested, Ms Spielman, that you said that you do not design the line of questioning, yet you decided that a new line of questioning was going to be introduced. You made great play of that yourself. Could you address who you consulted before you introduced that new line of questioning for inspectors to engage in when they carry out inspections?

Amanda Spielman

We spoke to a number of groups.

Shabana Mahmood

Who? Can you name them?

Amanda Spielman

No, not off the top of my head.

Shabana Mahmood

Could you write to us as a Committee to tell us who you consulted with?

Amanda Spielman

I am happy to, but I have written back to many people who have written to me about this, so I can send you that letter as well.

Shabana Mahmood

The names of the organisations and who they purport to represent would be very helpful. Can you tell me—I would imagine you would remember—whether you consulted with Muslim parents before you made this announcement?

Amanda Spielman

First, I have just been reminded that we have done a considerable amount of training with inspectors on faith issues more generally and how to approach sensitively.

Shabana Mahmood

With respect, Ms Spielman, I am interested in the specifics that result from your comments.

Chair

We did not actually warn Ms Spielman that we were going to ask for these specifics, but if you can write to us on that, that would be helpful.

Shabana Mahmood

Did you consult any Muslim parents?

Amanda Spielman

We spoke to a number of people. I cannot off the top of my head remember. We had several meetings about this that I attended myself. The concerns surfaced originally via schools about pressure emerging between different groups of parents. It was not about faith versus non-faith. It was about pressure—

Shabana Mahmood

It came up as a result of school uniform policies and a change in a school on Newham, I believe. That is from memory; we are going back a bit now. It would be helpful, when you write to us, to show us which parents you consulted and how those consultations took place. That would be helpful to know. You also made a speech in which you said, “Rather than adopting a passive liberalism, that says ‘anything goes’ for fear of causing offence, schools’ leaders should be promoting a muscular liberalism.” Can you define “muscular liberalism” for me, please?

Amanda Spielman

Yes, it is the expectation that all children, no matter what their faith background, should have a full education and a full childhood experience and grow up thoroughly prepared for life in modern Britain. When, for example, we hear from various quarters, as we do, about groups of parents wanting this and that taken out of the curriculum for girls, for example, you see cumulatively a significant risk of some children getting a dramatically narrowed experience. We have to be very careful about letting a well-meaning desire to be sensitive to parental preferences on any one issue to then accumulate into something that means that some children are getting substantially short-changed.

Shabana Mahmood

Apart from in the context of Muslim parents and little girls wearing the hijab, for example, what other examples do you find in the education system for other communities where you believe that muscular liberalism is the order of the day, as opposed to passive liberalism?

Amanda Spielman

I can think of at least three different examples in different faiths where there has been this kind of narrowing.

Shabana Mahmood

Can you tell us?

Amanda Spielman

I have been provided with some of that information privately, so I do not think I can disclose it. People have asked me to respect their confidence, but I know of a number of examples.

Shabana Mahmood

We are talking about, from what you have just said, requests that parents make that you feel would narrow the curriculum. I do not see what is so confidential about that.

Chair

Can you give a generalised example? We are not asking for names and places.

Amanda Spielman

Okay. With the three different cases I am talking about, the sensitive stuff is that parents have approached me to talk about pressure, essentially from religious community groups, for schools not to do things. I cannot name the schools where those parents have approached me.

Chair

We are not asking you to name the schools; we are talking about the general point.

Amanda Spielman

Haredi schools are a good example of where the girls’ experience has been shut down quite significantly. For example, following our inspection of Yesodey Hatorah, which is a fully funded state school, we reported a few months ago on the extremely limited education the girls were receiving. The books in the library were drastically redacted so they would not see many things that it would be absolutely normal for a teenager to see in a book available in a school in this country.

Chair

I visited that school in its old premises, which were in an appalling condition. I know that the Government of the day wanted a modern school, so the curriculum was broadened. I also know that some of those girls would not go to school at all in certain circumstances, and some of those girls do go to university. I appreciate what you are saying, but there are sensitivities—getting those girls as good an education as they can get is also important.

Amanda Spielman

I know that the hope in establishing that school was that it would contribute to broadening the education. What we saw when we inspected it did not make it clear that that hope had been fulfilled.

Chair

But you would agree that some of those girls do go on to university now.

Amanda Spielman

A fairly small number. They mostly go to a seminary.

Chair

But often to seminary before university. I cannot pinpoint examples, but it was certainly the case many years ago that when they got to 15, that was pretty much the end of their education for a lot of those girls—actually, at the time, that was probably the case for a lot of other pupils in Britain, to be fair—but they are now going on to education beyond 16, which is a big improvement. You would acknowledge that, at least. I hear what you are saying, but you would acknowledge that some of those girls are now getting a much longer and richer education than they would have hitherto.

Amanda Spielman

Longer, yes. I am not sure, on the basis of what we saw, that we can say richer.

Shabana Mahmood

Ms Spielman, you said you had three examples. That is obviously an example from the orthodox Jewish community. What are the other two?

Amanda Spielman

I am sorry; where a parent has approached me in confidence to tell me about concerns, I simply cannot—I am thinking about two of these places—

Shabana Mahmood

Without naming the school, the parent or the organisation—

Chair

I hear what you are saying, Ms Spielman. Will you write to us? We reserve the right to write back to you to get more information, but we obviously do not want you to break a personal confidence. I did hope you might generalise, but if it is that specific that you feel you cannot, we hear what you say and we can pick it up elsewhere.

Shabana Mahmood

Just a couple more questions on this point. Obviously, promoting muscular liberalism is about social attitudes and how society negotiates how people relate with one another. That is normally a responsibility of, say, Parliament. You have assumed that responsibility for yourself and your inspection organisation. Under what authority have you done that, and what are you doing to bring about some of the wider social changes to do with access to education that we all want to see, regardless of what background we are from?

Amanda Spielman

We are not attempting to take anybody else’s authority. We have to apply the Equality Act, which sets a number of protected characteristics, of which religion is one but there are many others.

Shabana Mahmood

But how that is done—

Amanda Spielman

I am sorry—may I answer, please?

Shabana Mahmood

Of course.

Amanda Spielman

What we see repeatedly, first of all, is the extension of religion to culture—people trying to expand a religious requirement or preference into a cultural requirement or preference. We see a creep around that, which can lead to the kind of shutting down we have talked about. We also see claims that the protection given to religion should get priority over all the other protected characteristics. For example, the arguments advanced by Haredi schools essentially say that religion should justify, in some respects, not having to have regard to all the other aspects of the Equality Act. We are saying that we are a public body to which the Equality Act and the public sector equality duty apply; we must, in inspecting, make sure that all those characteristics are given proper regard. We have to report where we see that the claims of one are being used to justify not having regard to others.

Shabana Mahmood

The boundaries of every part of the protected characteristics under the Equality Act are contested territory across society; we see that in the context of biological sex versus gender identity, for example. I am afraid I have to challenge you again. Why are you uniquely able to police those boundaries and decide what is acceptable and what is not acceptable in terms of religious freedom, when that is not your core business? It actually resides with Government and Parliament, which is sovereign.

Amanda Spielman

The public sector equality duty does bind us. We have taken advice very carefully to make sure that our inspections cover exactly what they are absolutely required by law to inspect, and we have reviewed very carefully to make sure that there is no gold-plating whatever, and we are doing exactly what we are required to do.

Shabana Mahmood

If one of the outcomes of your pronouncements around Muslim girls and the hijab is that they are the only type of child in this country who are scrutinised and challenged by adults, who are state officials, for basically wanting to look like their mum, would you consider that to be an acceptable and a successful outcome?

Amanda Spielman

We do not say that. Every school in this country is entitled to set a uniform policy for its children. We do not say to any kind of child, by default, that you are entitled to look like your mum or your dad, come to that. It is perfectly possible that any kind of group of parents or any individual could say, “I always wear these kinds of clothes at home, so why can’t my six-year-old wear them?”

Shabana Mahmood

I am talking in the very specific context of a headscarf, which I wore as a child because my mother wore it as well. What I am asking you is if one of the outcomes of your comments is that little girls now feel challenged and scrutinised by adult state officials, for the basic human act of wanting to copy what their mum is wearing on her head, would you personally consider that to have been an appropriate and successful outcome of what your colleagues have done?

Amanda Spielman

My concern is that children at school should be free from the pressures that exist in many communities outside school. We know that some children are feeling pressurised to wear headscarves and that it can make children unhappy to be told that they are not good because they are not wearing a headscarf. This is something that is difficult and is, as you say, contested, but I don’t think that simply saying that children should be allowed to look like their mothers is the solution.

Chair

We will leave that there. We look forward to the letters that you are sending us. I want to go back to a point that you discussed with Ms Phillipson. You told us about the focus groups that you had. I think I am right in saying that in those focus groups and in other feedback you have not really had any parents raise issues about finances. We were a bit puzzled with that answer, because we can think of parents in our constituencies who have all raised issues about finances. How were those focus groups created? Was there an opportunity for parents to raise their concerns about school finances?

Amanda Spielman

I only attended one of the focus groups myself, but my recollection is that the parents were given a great—the point of it was to explore what parents were really concerned about and wanted to know about their children’s schools, precisely to surface what it was that we could change.

Chair

So there was not a preamble saying, “We don’t deal with the finances at the school; we don’t inspect that”, or anything like that, which might have reduced the line of questioning? I am not saying that it was necessarily intentional, but quite often the way the questions are shaped determines what answers you will get.

Amanda Spielman

The one I attended must have been about a year ago. I honestly can’t remember the preamble, but it certainly wasn’t a shutting down. The whole point of the group was to open up and to get discussion and conversation, and to really get parents talking about what was a concern to them. A very large part of the group, as I remember, was allowing parents to range over absolutely anything that was of concern to them. I would be very surprised if we had all those focus groups and if there had been a substantial concern among those groups that hadn’t surfaced.

Chair

You gave us a brief list earlier, but it would be helpful if you could write to us about exactly when those focus groups were and when they took place.

Amanda Spielman

I would be very happy to do that.

Chair

I suspect if you visited most of our constituencies you would get a lot more questions about finance. As we rushed off to the vote, we were considering whether that might be because we are members of the Public Accounts Committee—but I doubt it somehow, because we are a rare group of MPs. I wanted to go through a couple of quick points, so please could your answer be brief on these, and then I will ask Layla Moran to pick up. I am aware that you have been sitting in front of us for nearly two hours—apologies that the vote delayed us. Sir Geoffrey will be coming in briefly as well. In our last report about your work, we were very concerned that you hadn’t met your statutory reinspection target and it was misreported to Parliament. What assurances have you got that those controls that you introduced are now working and that you are meeting that statutory target?

Amanda Spielman

It was a reporting control. The reasons why roughly two schools a year—

Chair

We know the reasons why. I am asking where things are at now.

Amanda Spielman

We used an external firm to do a review of our wider selection and scheduling, which has picked up a few things where there is room for improvement, but also gave us the reassurance that fundamentally it is well controlled. The particular wrinkle that was picked up was around some changes made to the annual report. We have no schools at the moment that are overdue on a statutory inspection, and as always we have a small handful of schools which are being inspected just beyond our framework targets. We give ourselves a tiny bit of flexibility—it is the fingers of one hand, in each region, and it is the schools which are subject to the main intervention.

Chair

The key thing is that information is reported accurately, and reporting it accurately to Parliament is obviously a very serious matter.

Amanda Spielman

Indeed.

Chair

So you are confident now—

Amanda Spielman

I am. Chair:—that Parliament will be getting accurate information, and that problems have been smoothed out, and that if there is a problem you would know it and be able to explain it?

Amanda Spielman

I would know it.

Chair

I wanted to ask about the short inspections that we have also mentioned. We were concerned, as you know, about having the one-day inspections. You are now looking to much more two-day inspections. We welcome that announcement you made recently. How are you going to fund that? How are you going to provide support? You are managing to do some magic for the extra outstanding school inspections. You have got this to do as well.

Amanda Spielman

It is not magic—

Chair

Well, to manage your resources carefully. I am sorry; I shouldn’t be so flippant.

Amanda Spielman

We are planning to the envelope. Remember, an inspection is slightly bigger than the actual on-site piece, because it has got planning and writing up—

Chair

Our point, just to be really, clear, to remind you—the point of our recommendation was that the one day was not particularly useful to anybody. It was simply a quick assessment. It was not helpful in school improvement, particularly, because you did not get to see much in the actual classroom.

Amanda Spielman

I think we are working towards something which is a stronger conversation that has more value for the school. I think in terms of providing the assurance to Government and parents, it was fulfilling that function. I think what we are proposing is something that will have more value to the school as well, and be more welcome. It is essentially around making better use of inspector time. We have been able to replan and to think this model through to make the very best use of inspector time that we can, and to have that as one of the key planning drivers from the beginning. That is what is making it possible.

Chair

You have got the new replacement for Parent View going live soon. When will the options for that be tested? How is that progressing?

Amanda Spielman

It is phased. One of the most important things that came through from parents was their desire to have better questions to answer, so we are piloting sets of questions at the moment and we will expect to have those revisions in place for September when the new framework comes in. Then there are a series of pieces after that.

Chair

So parents, in September, if their school is being inspected, will be using the new version.

Amanda Spielman

It is not a brand new Parent View at that point, but the first piece of the change will be in place then.

Chair

One of the concerns we had before is about the inspectors—HMIs and other inspectors—and the time they have got. So with the two-day inspections of course a lot of stuff goes on behind the scenes before they go. How are you going to try and make sure that those inspectors have more time in schools, and how are you improving the recruitment rate of HMIs? There are two slightly separate questions there.

Amanda Spielman

Around the inspector time in schools, it is by really looking at all the things inspectors spend their time on over the course of the year, and saying which things inspectors really need to do, and which things could be done better by back office teams. Some of that is coming by shifting responsibilities around. On HMI recruitment, the shortfall that was reported was driven off—the budget is constructed off planning assumptions, not the model that regional directors actually want to operate in terms of the mix between HMI and part-time OIs. We actually, in historical terms, are operating with rather a high proportion of HMIs. The planning assumptions reflected by predecessors are that every inspection should be led by an HMI, which historically has not been the case. We have relaxed that a bit, and regional directors can run the mix that they think is best. On the latest information I have, which is from, I think, Monday this week, seven of my eight regions say that they have all the HMIs they want. One says that it is below complement. Turnover has also dropped.

Chair

That is an interesting phrase—“the HMIs they want”. So you are not saying from the centre, “You should have this number of HMIs.” You are saying they need to tell you what their requirement is.

Amanda Spielman

We give our regional directors the budget and the flexibility to decide the staffing mix that they want for their work, so no, we don’t say, “You must have 14 HMIs.” We let them decide.

Chair

How can you be sure, then, that they are not just intentionally recruiting fewer than they need, because they recognise that the markets in some areas of the country are more difficult and they have got used to working with 10 rather than 14, for instance, and have managed to work around that? How are you going to be sure that they have what they really need, rather than it being the case that they are capable, clever people, with able other staff, who can find a way of getting through with fewer than the optimal number?

Amanda Spielman

My COO, who is a very experienced inspector himself, has a pretty thorough regular review programme with each of the regional directors about what they are doing and how they are doing. And we have quite a number of quality assurance checks of various kinds. I am pretty confident that, if corners were being cut or things were being stretched, those would pick it up very quickly.

Chair

Do you have any particular regions where there are difficulties with recruiting HMIs?

Amanda Spielman

London, unsurprisingly, given that with Government pay scales it’s quite difficult to flex and London is the most expensive place to live. It is not easy for us, because 20 or 25 years ago HMI pay was set to be comparable to heads’ salaries and we are now well below that and obviously constrained from significantly increasing what we pay. But we do our very best to make it an interesting and attractive job. I am talking about the changes we have made over the last two years and the kinds of work we are building into HMI programmes. I am extremely pleased about the drop in turnover. For the year to December, we were down from a peak at the end of 2016 of just under 30% turnover; we are down to under 14%, so it has halved.

Chair

So London is the one region that has not got enough.

Amanda Spielman

Yes, but again, we have some flexibility between regions. This is not something that is a cause of enormous organisational anxiety. But we will be writing to you in April, as you requested.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Do you have any evidence that resources are linked to standards? I ask this question because Gloucestershire, part of which I represent, has one of the lowest funding levels per secondary school pupil; it’s 130 out of 149, yet our good and outstanding Ofsted result is 74% as opposed to the national 85%.

Amanda Spielman

Off the top of my head, I don’t think we do. I have recently looked specifically at the analysis of social care, where we found the relationship to be weak, and I think you have received this morning a report from the NAO saying that there is relatively little relationship.

Chair

That was on children’s services.

Amanda Spielman

That was on children’s services, but it is a finding across quite a lot of types of public service that the relationship between spend and quality is often weaker than people would expect. But the short answer is no, I don’t have anything looking at that.

Chair

Let’s go back to the points made about the PISA list. You seemed to take that as a straight international comparison, but you would acknowledge, surely, that there are differences between, say, the French education system and how teachers work in that, and the British system, and that our support staff, for instance, have always played more of a role, or a different role, than they do in France. So is that a fair comparison? When you are looking at the international comparison, are you using just those issues or do you actually have an in-depth look at what is going on in the other schools? You are very relaxed about the funding issues, if I may say so.

Amanda Spielman

I am not relaxed, but equally I am being very careful about being pushed to a default position. It is very clear that we didn’t see that every year funding increases pushed results up, so I am being extremely cautious about going beyond what our evidence shows us. So far, in the context of the inspection framework we currently operate, it has not shown school standards declining.

Chair

Even with teachers having to leave because there is not enough money to pay them?

Amanda Spielman

It may be partly because people have been extremely good at covering and filling gaps, which often works in the short term, not the long term. It may be because, as I have mentioned, the inspection frameworks of the last 15 years haven’t really looked at the breadth of what is on offer to see whether trade-offs are being made. I want us to be looking at that. So I cannot at the moment say why it is. I am not saying that there is nothing building up to come down the line. I am just saying that, on the evidence of the inspections that we have done to date and reported on, I cannot say that there is something that I can attribute to—

Chair

What I would echo is that, certainly in my schools, the heads and teachers are working very hard to make sure that they manage with what they have got and keep the pupils supported.