School improvement and the middle tier

The future role of local authorities in education, the shape of the new middle tier between central government and individual schools, and the way that school improvement is organised are all in a state of flux. These issues are inter-related and need a strategic solution, sooner rather than later, to replace the creative chaos that currently passes for government policy.

It is time that England had a planned system for supporting schools. For many years much thought has been given to accountability, with sharply targeted national inspection and increasingly detailed performance tables at the pinnacle of centrally driven accountability. No such strategic thinking has taken place on how schools should best be supported when they are in difficulty, although schemes such as the London Challenge, City Challenges, the National Challenge, National Leaders of Education (NLE) and Local Leaders of Education (LLE) have created a patchwork of support mechanisms that have generally been very effective where they have operated. However, this has been in a minority of areas and, where local authorities have been expected to fill the gap, they have often been found wanting.

The heavy hand of central government has frequently been felt by heads and governing bodies of schools that are under-performing, as ministers and officials have used direct intervention to improve results in a wide range of schools.

One of the mechanisms adopted by central government has been to ask chains of schools to take on the task of improving other schools and there have been some notable successes, as recounted in a report by Robert Hill and others for the National College, published in March 2012 at www.nationalcollege.org.uk/academychains/.

For schools in this situation, the headquarters of the chain has become the new middle tier. In some parts of England, and all of Wales, the middle tier remains the local authority. But, for other schools – notably standalone convertor academies – the middle tier has effectively disappeared, apart from the administrative function of the Education Funding Authority (EFA).

Local authorities still have a middle tier role in the wider children’s services, but the situation has moved on rapidly from what was set out as recently as December 2010 in the government’s white paper, The Importance of Teaching (https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/publicationDetail/Page1/CM%207980 ), and it is already difficult to see how local authorities, slimmed almost to the point of disappearance, can any longer have a leading role in school improvement. Most now have no expertise in secondary school improvement and, although some have retained a core of primary school experts, they are insufficient in number (and, often, in recent school leadership experience too) to provide a high quality school improvement service. The school improvement house must be built on something much stronger than sand.

The government appears not to have a policy on the future of the middle tier, with ‘creative chaos’ being the most complimentary term I have heard used. As ASCL general secretary, there was nothing I liked better than an empty policy vessel into which to pour ideas. I do believe that there is a good solution to the ‘middle tier’ question and it is inextricably linked with the development of a strategic school improvement system.

There are four stages to school improvement:  Identify problems in the school;  Broker solutions to the problem;  Commission people to support the school; and  Deliver the support.

Experience in recent years means that we know how to do the delivery. Expertise in school improvement lies within schools and so school-to-school support can be used to produce the necessary improvements.

Where a school has problems, the head and governing body may well not be identifying the critical issues or know where to look for the right kind of support, so identification, brokering and commissioning often require an agency beyond the school itself. As recently as 2009-10, school improvement partners (SIPs), whose role was ‘support and challenge’, did the identification and local authorities (sometimes at the behest of central government) did the commissioning. Brokering, however, has always been done haphazardly in most parts of England, through a lack of solid information on where expertise lies.

In 2012, SIPs have disappeared (except in schools that have wisely employed someone in a SIP-type role) and most local authorities no longer have the capacity to broker support or the funding to commission it. Most chains of schools are demonstrating how all four stages of the process can be done efficiently and effectively.

A successful education system, however, needs universal coverage of each part of the four-stage process. Underpinning each of the six models set out below should be a database of excellent practice on which schools can draw for advice and support. The National College, co-ordinating the network of teaching schools, trains and monitors the support activities of National Leaders of Education (NLEs), Local Leaders of Education (LLEs) and the new Specialist Leaders of Education (SLEs), the latter being identified by teaching school alliances.

In addition, Ofsted has a much bigger part to play in this aspect of school improvement. It is culpable that Ofsted has, for so many years, had the biggest database of excellent practice in the country (possibly, in the world) through the evidence gained in its school inspections and surveys; yet it has never revealed the contents of this secret treasure chest of outstanding (to use its word, although excellent would be much better) practice. It has now dipped its toe into this water, but should be providing a much more comprehensive and easy-to-access database.

McKinsey research has shown that all the highly successful school systems in the world have a middle tier between central government and the individual school – and most of the jurisdictions in the McKinsey study are much smaller than England. The Department for Education cannot run 20,000 schools, so I take it as axiomatic that a middle tier should exist. The questions are: What form should it take? And should it be the same across the whole country?

Of the six options for the middle tier, two are national systems, relying on national democratic accountability for their control and two are local systems, with local democratic accountability. One proposal – local commissioners – could be either nationally or locally accountable and the sixth option is a mixture of national and local.

1. Local commissioners of schools

Rick Muir has argued in Progress for local commissioners of schools, appointed by the local authority or elected mayor. (http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2012/04/10/the-missing-middle/). In his view, these appointees would commission (but not run or manage) schools in their area, including free schools and academies, and have a focus on school improvement. If schools coast or underperform, the schools commissioner would have the power to intervene, including the replacement of the head and governing body. Commissioners, Muir proposes, “would act as a mediating layer for the majority of schools that are not part of academy chains, supporting them to improve through collaboration, promoting the professional development of teachers and ensuring schools respond effectively to national policy changes. They would be responsible for making sure that the needs of all children in their area are being met.”

There could also be a system of nationally funded local area commissioners, as suggested by Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector of schools, and reported in http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/dec/28/new-ofsted-chief-failing-academies Wilshaw argued that, as more schools became academies, local commissioners are needed to help to identify problems. “I speak as someone who believes in autonomy and who believes in independence and as a great supporter of the academy programme, but we know there will be some academies that won’t do well,” he said. “It is no good just relying on Ofsted to give the judgment. By that time, it is too late. We need some sort of intermediary bodies which can detect when things aren’t going well, look at the data and have their ear very close to the ground to determine when there is a certain issue.”

Sir Michael suggested that the local commissioners would report directly to the secretary of state, monitoring the performance of schools and chains in their area and bringing in other agencies where necessary.

Wilshaw’s model, which could be based on areas containing about 1000 schools each, has national democratic accountability; Muir’s model has local democratic accountability. Both are feasible options, although my preference is for the national model, as the local model would be likely to be as variable in quality across the country as local authorities have been.

2. Area HMIs

Up to the 1980s, HM Inspectorate included District Inspectors – HMIs based in areas whose job it was to make links with local authority chief education officers and to know what was happening in local schools.

A network of about 40 District HMIs could be reinvented for the 2012 context, charged with monitoring performance of schools in their area, getting to know head teachers and keeping an ear to the ground for good and bad practice in local schools.

With a truly independent Ofsted, this could provide valuable intelligence to the system, helping to spread good practice and advising Ofsted and the government on where intervention is needed at an earlier stage than tends to happen now. Their remit would cover all types of school and issues between local authorities and academies would be entirely avoided by this nationally-led system.

With Ofsted increasingly seen as an arm of government, there is a danger that the District HMIs could come to be seen as the men and women from the ministry, as their predecessors often were in the second half of the 20th century.

3. Chains of schools and/or teaching alliances

For an increasing number of schools, the central office of a chain of schools is their middle tier. As teaching school alliances grow, a larger number of schools will be part of an alliance and, since teaching schools have responsibilities in the school improvement field – not least through the deployment of national, local and specialist leaders of education – chains and teaching school alliances form an important part of the middle tier in the school improvement field, although they will never have universal coverage.

The effectiveness of the chains has been discussed in Hill et al www.nationalcollege.org.uk/academychains/ but the effectiveness of teaching school alliances is still unproven. There is the possibility that one or more of these groups of schools will fail and therefore they themselves need to be monitored, either by the Department for Education itself (as happens currently) or by an agency other than the local authority, since no substantial chains confine themselves to a single local authority area.

4. Single local authorities

The 150 local authorities in England are (to use a much discussed educational term) a mixed ability group in school improvement terms. A good, but declining, number still offer a school improvement service to primary and special schools, but few have the expertise or capacity to do so for secondary schools.

Local authorities have a hugely important role to play in wider children’s services and this is important in helping many disadvantaged young people to achieve their potential, but the days when expertise in school improvement lay in County Hall or City Hall are gone. The expertise now lies firmly in successful schools.

The opportunity to drive school improvement through groups of local heads, facilitated by the local authority, has now passed as the number of academies has grown. These local heads’ groups are a good area school improvement model, used in some successful jurisdictions such as Alberta, and it could still be implemented in the UK in Scotland and Wales, but England has passed the point of no return and local authorities now need to concentrate their efforts on providing a good service in areas other than school improvement. Muir’s local commissioner model is perhaps the only way in school improvement could now be overseen by local authorities.

5. Groups of local authorities

Local authorities do not have a good record of working together collectively. Where there has been collective action, such as in the London Challenge or in the City Challenge, the driving force has been central, rather than local, government, with local councillors tagging along because they had little alternative. In theory, sub-regional groups of local authorities could set up a school improvement system, but it is difficult to imagine that groups of local authorities in England, some of which have already thrown in the towel in the face of advancing academy numbers, have the will or the imagination to create such a system. In Wales, however, this may well the right model for the future and the government in Wales is moving in that direction.

6. A mixture of chains, teaching schools and national or local structures

In reality, this is where we are now – a somewhat chaotic situation that leaves huge gaps in the school improvement system. Chains are driving forward their improvement agendas; teaching school alliances are starting to feel their way in the school improvement field; some local authorities have good systems for identifying where schools are under-performing and work with central government and the National College to broker support where it is needed. But this still leaves huge gaps.

7. Conclusion

Governing bodies have not been mentioned so far, but the variation in quality of governing bodies is at least as great as the variation in overall school performance. In some schools, the governing body is part of the problem. Regrettably, therefore, they cannot be a significant part of a national solution.

The system of school improvement in England has never been strategically planned and executed, with clear responsibilities set out for each of the four stages outlined above. With the increase in academies, the need for a strategy is both greater and harder to achieve. Of the models above, the reinvention, in an up-to-date form, of district HMIs would be beneficial, not least because it would force Ofsted to play a stronger role in school improvement, as well as in accountability.

Although such a development is necessary, it is not sufficient. A nationally funded network of local school commissioners is probably the only way in which universal coverage of the country can be achieved in an effective manner.

For many schools the middle tier will be the office of the chain; for others – mainly primary and special schools – it will still be the local authority. For convertor academies that are not in chains, the middle tier will be the local school commissioner, keeping a watchful eye on their performance and intervening when progress falters.

With autonomy in any public service comes greater accountability for the efficient and effective spending of public money. The issue is not whether there should be this accountability, but whether it is intelligent accountability and by whom it is exercised. In the mixed economy of schools in England, the area commissioner may be the best way forward.

No-notice inspections: a question of trust

“Forty-odd hearts might be heard thumping when at last came the sound of wheels crunching on gravel and two top hats and the top of a whip appeared outside the upper panes of the large end window. … Her Majesty’s Inspector was an elderly clergyman, a little man with an immense paunch and tiny grey eyes like gimlets. He had the reputation of being ‘strict’, but that was a mild way of describing his autocratic demeanour and scathing judgement. … What kind of man the inspector really was it is impossible to say. He may have been a great scholar, a good parish priest, and a good friend and neighbour to people of his own class. One thing, however, is certain: he did not care for or understand children.”

Thus Flora Thompson recalls school inspection in Lark Rise to Candleford. The image came to mind as I read of the intention to consult on moving to no-notice inspections for all maintained schools. (No such discourtesy would ever be visited on independent schools.)

The reason given for this in the Ofsted announcement is that the notice period for inspections has been gradually reducing over time, but that the difficulty of gathering parent views prevented Ofsted moving fully to no-notice inspections in the last consultation. Ofsted states that, with the Parent View website operational, the move can now be made. The small number of parents who have used this website suggests that there is a long way to go before Ofsted can gather as much information from parents as it does currently through the questionnaires that are generally completed in huge numbers by parents on the first day of an inspection under the current regime and which give a good sample of parent views about the school.

Another, parallel trend is not mentioned in the Ofsted announcement. At the same time as notice has been reducing, Ofsted inspections have also been inching towards becoming more of an integral part of a school’s improvement process, with the main focus being on the validity and accuracy of the school’s own self-evaluation. The starting point for an inspection has increasingly become the school’s own view of itself and the job of the inspector is to investigate the extent to which this is an accurate view, notably by doing joint lesson observations with senior staff in order to validate internal judgements.

Inspection is still tough and stressful but it has become a process done with the school’s leaders, not done to them.  Only in schools that are doing badly is the inspection not carried out in this way.

It will be much more difficult to carry out inspection as a collaborative quality assurance process. Instead the system will return to being quality control, rather than quality assurance, in a way that was long ago rejected by industry.

In her 2002 Reith Lectures, entitled A Question of Trust, Baroness Onora O’Neill drew the parallel between the type of accountability prevalent in the public sector and the lack of trust in public servants. Her notion of intelligent accountability, applied to education in schools and colleges, certainly embraces a rigorous inspection system, but it is one that takes place in an atmosphere of trust between inspector and inspected. All too often, however, the lack of consistency between inspection teams and the use of data driving grades to the exclusion of human judgement and good sense have made for some very unintelligent accountability, resented by the inspected and leaving few, if any, traces of improvement in the schools visited.

It was a mistake to exempt schools judged outstanding (40 per cent of which are not outstanding at their next inspection) from future inspections and it is a further mistake to move entirely to no-notice inspections.

A sensible inspection system works with the grain of a school’s self-evaluation, building in knowledge of the school from a local HMI (as used to be the case with HMIs who were District Inspectors) and exploring with the school’s leaders areas in which the school is doing particularly well – and how these could be shared with other schools – and areas that need improvement, what the school should be doing about them and where it might find excellent practice to assist the process.

Tough – yes; rigorous – yes; but done with the school and clearly marking out areas for improvement and ways in which that improvement might be achieved. Only in schools that do not have this capacity to improve would the inspection be done differently.

Rather like the head in the film Clockwise, I had a clear view of the school gate from my office when I was a head teacher. In the distant past, it was called a study, but there isn’t much time for studying in head’s offices now, unless it would be to study who is entering the school car park and whether they might be an inspector – in a top hat and carrying a whip, of course.

Ten things learned on my leadership journey

1.    Be creative

Dream your dreams and go into school the next day and put them into action. Although many people complain about the pressures of accountability – with some justification – there is still plenty of space for creativity in school leadership. Being creative does not necessarily mean thinking of original ideas. Creativity and innovation can come through using ideas from elsewhere and adapting them to the context of your own school.

2.    Water the plants

When I was appointed as a head, I told the appointment committee that it was my job to water the plants. My predecessor had been an autocrat (It was said that his catch phrase was ‘No’) and I needed to nurture the staff and get them thinking about the job and taking real responsibility, not just passing decisions automatically upwards.

But, as in the garden, not all the human plants need the same amount of water and nurturing. And, again as in the garden, some human plants need something much stronger than water to make them successful.

3.    Work with other schools, not against them

School leaders are part of a great movement to increase the life chances of young people by raising their aspirations and achievement. That is not confined to your own school. When you are appointed to a school leadership position, you are also being appointed to the co-leadership of education in your area. It is time that governing body appointment committees recognised that.

Of course, all school leaders want their school to be the best and work long hours towards that admirable goal, but this should not be at the expense of other schools.

Twenty years ago, when the school down the road was in trouble, the prevailing culture set by the government of the day was to encourage other local schools to celebrate the fact that they would get more applicants. Now, when a local school is in difficulty, school leaders pick up the phone and say ‘How can I help?’ The system has (or should have) moved from a culture of competition to a culture of collaboration. The benefits of partnership working between schools are proven. It is possible to both compete and collaborate. That happens in the commercial sector and can happen in the public sector too.

4.    Leadership style should suit the occasion

An inspector once asked me about my leadership style and I told him to go and ask the people I led. In fact, good leaders do not have a single leadership style. You adapt to suit the situation. The appropriate leadership style to develop a new school policy on teaching and learning is very different from the style adopted when the fire alarm goes off.

5.    Hold to your values

A values-led school is almost always a good school. Successful school leaders are open and clear about the values that underpin the work of the institution. Values are constantly reiterated to staff, students, parents and the community.

6.    Focus on learning

There is so much change in education and so many new (and renewed) policies to implement and demands to answer that it is all too easy for school leaders to lose focus. Part of the job of a good head is to act as a sieve and only let through to others the things that really matter. In that way, school leaders can keep their focus on what should always be the top priority – the quality of teaching and learning.

7.    Look outwards, not upwards

The teaching profession has spent over 20 years in a suffocating centrally directed policy climate, in which governments have told heads and teachers what to do and, increasingly, how to do it. This has created a culture in which school leaders and teachers have grown accustomed to looking upwards to see what they are being told to do.

The coalition government is saying that schools and teachers should have more freedom, so let’s stop looking up and start looking out to the many amazing projects and ideas that are happening elsewhere.

Let’s build strong professional communities that encourage the sharing of excellent practice, which is out there for all to see.

8.    Good leadership is 10 per cent action and 90 per cent communication

When a school leadership team makes a decision, it is completely useless unless it is communicated in the right way to all the right people. Change will not come without good communication – to staff, students, homes and the community. Spend more time on well directed communication, and policies and actions will be much more effective.

9.    Smile

‘There is no degree of enthusiasm that cannot be reduced with sufficient discouragement from the top.’ So school leaders, and heads in particular, need to go about the job cheerfully. After all, if the people at the top look as if they aren’t enjoying the work, there is little chance that others will do so.

10.  The 4Hs of leadership

Humility –  There are 7 billion people in the world as important as you are.

Humanity – Every child really does matter and needs to be cared for.

Hope – Every leader needs to be an optimist and believe that all children can succeed.

Humour – The sine qua non of school leadership.

 

Is it time to re-think the shape of the school year?

Now that the Easter holiday has ended for schools that continued the traditional pattern (a week before Easter and a week after) this year, it may be time to look again at the pattern of the school year. 

Because of the late Easter, around half of schools this year started the summer term on the day after Easter Bank Holiday Monday. 

Schools opting for the traditional pattern were given an extra day off on Tuesday 2 May as they would otherwise have missed out on the bonus of the Royal Wedding bank holiday. They returned to school on 3 May. 

For these schools, the first half of the summer term will be just 18 working days. Even for schools returning immediately after the Easter weekend, this crucial half-term for final exam preparation will be only 24 working days.

The school year is 38 weeks for the pupils, 39 for the teachers. Both long terms and short terms are very disruptive to learning patterns, so it would surely be sensible to divide the pupil year up more evenly, creating a better rhythm for the year. An obvious division would be into two ‘terms’ of seven weeks each (in the autumn up to Christmas) and four ‘terms’ of six weeks each.

Had that been the case in 2011, the terms after Christmas (terms 3 and 4 in new-speak) would have been 4 January to 11 February and 21 February to 1 April. Term 5 would then have started on 18 April, with long weekends off for Easter and May Day, providing six weeks of learning before the Whitsun break.

The year 2011 has been exceptional in that Easter Day has fallen on 24 April, just one day before the latest possible Easter date. Two years ago, Easter was as early as it can be – a full month earlier than Easter 2011. It is no wonder that the Christian calendar plays havoc with school term dates.

The situation may get worse, especially for parents with children at different schools. One of the freedoms of being an academy is that the governing body can decide the shape of the school year, including the dates of holidays and terms. With potentially thousands of academies, holiday dates could become chaotic.

There is something to be said for the French system of nationally directed school holidays, with the North, Middle and South of France taking co-ordinated turns in having earlier and later breaks in order not to put too much pressure on the holiday industry at key times, such as the February break when many French families like to go skiing. One year the North has the first of the three possible weeks, the Middle the next and the South the last; and they take turns in a nationally planned three-year cycle.

I was a member of the Local Government Association Commission on the Organisation of the School Year, which reported in 2000. Press reports at the time include these from the Independent and the Times Educational Supplement.

 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/school-year-should-be-divided-into-six-terms-say-experts-698419.html

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=331712

The rhythm of the school year – and it has a rhythm to it – is important to learning. The length of the summer holiday and the very long term from September to Christmas, with a break of only one week, each creates its own problems.

Recent research from the government links slower progress in the autumn term among primary age pupils to the long summer holiday “requiring pupils to retain their learning from the previous academic year over several weeks away from school.” So a break of five weeks, instead of six, would be an improvement.

November and early December are often difficult times for school discipline, with more strained relationships between tired teachers and tired pupils. A two-week break in October, as is already the case in some parts of the country, would be a great improvement.

 Some problems cannot be solved. Holiday dates in the Isle of Man are dictated by the dates of the TT races, those inNorthern Irelandby the long summer marching season. But it is time that the rest of us moved on from the 19th century agrarian calendar that has dominated the school year to something more sensible.

Based on the LGA Commission report, here is my suggestion:

Term 1                        7 weeks           Late-August to mid-October

Two-week break

Term 2                        7 weeks           End-October to around 21 December

Two-week break for Christmas and New Year

Term 3                        6 weeks           Early January to around 10 February

One-week break

Term 4                        6 weeks           Around 20 February to around 1 April

Two-week break

Term 5                        6 weeks           Mid-April to end-May

One-week break

Term 6                        6 weeks           early June to mid-July

Five-week break

The Department for Education needs a Chief Education Officer

It is good to see that the Education Select Committee has backed my proposal for a Chief Education Officer in the Department for Education, emphasising that it is the only major government spending department that does not have a senior professional giving policy advice. The Dept of Health has a Chief Medical Officer and a Chief Nursing Officer, DEFRA has a Chief Veterinary Officer, there is a Chief Scientific Officer and others less well known.

During the foot-and-mouth crisis, it was the Chief Veterinary Officer, not the Minister, who regularly appeared on television to explain the situation to the public. During flu epidemics, real or threatened, the Chief Medical Officer, not the Secretary of State for Health, is the public voice of government policy.

There is a good reason for these people to appear in public at these times – they explain the situation in a non-partisan way and they outline policy without any party-political overtones.

Equally important, when Ministers are making decisions about important policy issues, they have the advantage of independent advice from a senior professional, who is widely respected by peers and public alike.

In education, this role was filled up to 1992 by the Senior Chief Inspector, who was a Grade 2 civil servant (just below the Permanent Secretary) with direct access on demand to the Secretary of State. This independent professional voice in the policy-making process meant that, whenever education policy was being made at the most senior level, the breadth of experience of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate was available to the decision-makers. This was replicated in the middle levels of the Department by Staff Inspectors, who were the leading people in their field, participating in policy discussions.

The greatest loss to the education system in the creation of Ofsted in 1992 was the loss of this independent professional voice in the policy-making process.

There are advantages to Ofsted being outside the Department and I would not advocate the return of HMI into the Department for Education, but the knowledge gleaned from Ofsted inspections can be used by the Chief Education Officer in framing advice for the government.

The Department for Education has various mechanisms through which it consults head teachers, and this is welcome, but, however successful these heads are, they do not have the breadth of up-to-date knowledge right across the system that the Chief Education Officer, drawing on Ofsted and other evidence, would have.

The Select Committee went further and, in line with its recommendation to split Ofsted into two, suggested that the Department should have both a Chief Education Officer and a Chief Children’s Care Officer. This is a sensible proposal, as the two areas of expertise are different.

Michael Gove reacted positively when I proposed the idea of a Chief Education Officer in September 2009. This is an idea whose time has come.  It should be implemented now.

Extract from the Select Committee Report, The Role and Performance of Ofsted, HC 570

44.  It is important that Ofsted—which has a unique overview of the education and well-being of children across the country—is a serious voice in the policy-making process, and that its evidence is considered fully by Ministers. As one inspector summed it up, “If we are to have an inspection system that is independent of political influence, then the least that can be done is to listen to….the reports that are made by it!” The Committee, for that reason, sees merit in the proposal—put forward by Baroness Perry and Dr John Dunford—for a new “Chief Education Officer” role to be created within the Department for Education. Dr Dunford outlined to us what that role would entail, and how it would sit alongside—rather than replace—the Chief Inspector:

The Chief Education Officer] will be the senior professional voice in the policy-making process with direct access to the Secretary of State, as the chief inspector used to have, and use evidence from Ofsted. Ofsted’s role should then be to stand between the Government on the one hand and individual institutions on the other, reporting without fear or favour, on the performance of not only the institutions, but of Government policy, and feeding that back into the chief educational officer’s advice.

45.  Furthermore, the Committee is inclined to agree with Baroness Perry that the Department for Education, in lacking such a figure at present, stands alone within central Government:

The only major Government spending Department which does not have a chief officer to help it with policy is the Department for Education. The Department of Health has a chief medical officer… and a chief nursing officer. The Home Office has chief officers in all its various range of expertise. The Department of Education… does not have a chief education officer, which seems very strange to me.

46.  In light of our recommendation to split Ofsted into two new inspectorates, we feel that this proposal has significant merit, but should be applied not only to the education aspects of the Department’s remit. These two professional officers, whilst playing no part whatsoever in inspection judgments and therefore in no sense replacing the important roles of the Chief Inspectors of both inspectorates, would act as senior policy advisers to the Secretary of State, using inspection findings alongside other evidence to ensure that Ministers had access to recent and relevant experience of the settings they are dealing with around their table in Whitehall. There is no reason why these appointments could not, in the interests of financial efficiency, be either part-time or advisory, if the Department is so inclined. They could even be current senior practitioners on secondment from their own institutions.

47.  Furthermore, and conversely, the Chief Officers would be able, where necessary, to temper any indication that Ofsted judgments were being over-used in the policy-making process. The Institute of Education shared a concern with us that “the inspection process is [currently] being asked to bear too great a weight in policy development”, for example in the approval of early applications for Academy status, and Professor Tony Kelly agreed that the existing evidence base is not strong enough to support some of the policy burden it is asked to bear.

48.  Ofsted’s independent status is broadly valued by inspectors, by professionals, and by the public, and we strongly support the retention of that status. However, the Committee is concerned that there is no front-line voice within the senior echelons of the Department for Education, working alongside the inspectorates and Ministers to ensure that policy is informed by recent and relevant experience through a more direct means than consultation. We recommend that the Department considers appointing two new senior advisers within the Department—a Chief Education Officer and a Chief Children’s Care Officer—along the lines of the chief professional officers of other Government departments. These roles would in no way replace the Chief Inspectors of Education or Children’s Care; nor would they seek to replace the important existing relationships between civil servants, senior inspectors, and special advisers. Rather, they could work alongside those people within Government, ensuring that the inspectorates can retain their independence.

Fukushima

I visited Fukushima (pronounced Fu-ku-shi-ma with the same stress on each syllable, as in almost all Japanese words) in 1998 as part of a school exchange between Durham Johnston Comprehensive School, where I was head, and four Japanese high schools.

The exchange had started 10 years earlier when Nissan had established its factory in the north-east and I decided that, as the young people of Japan and England probably knew very little about each other, I would start an exchange. I telephoned the Japanese embassy the next day and thus started a life-changing experience for the many young people who subsequently took part in the annual two-way exchange.

All the schools we linked with treated us like royalty and Fukushima was no exception. Festivals took place in the school; we visited a fireworks display in the town like no other I have even seen; we climbed one of the many local mountains together and ate watermelon at the top, cut with a large sword carried to the top by a teacher for that purpose.

I had experienced an earth tremor in Tokyo on the first night of an earlier exchange visit. As I was 12 floors up in a hotel and it was the middle of the night, this was a scary experience. But this was a gentle runble in comparison to the Fukushima earthquake of 2011.

The school presented me with “Fukushima Today and Tomorrow” and I have now re-read the story of the area, with its mild climate and prodigious fruit trees. I am wondering what has happened to the people I met in 1998.

Japan is well prepared for earthquakes. Its buildings are as quakeproof as any in the world and its people prepare more thoroughly for every eventuality than any I have met. Its culture of politeness, where Yes often means No, where crime is minimal and where everything is carefully done to make life as good as possible for everyone else, should mean that things are as ordered as they can be, even in the post-tsunami chaos.

Fukushima is just an hour by shinkansen from Tokyo. My book states that the area used to be known as ‘the back country’, an unsophisticated but dependable producer of rice and electricity for the denser population to the south. The effect on the area of the tsunami and the nuclear explosions will therefore be huge, but the biggest challenge will be for the whole Japanese culture as the people seek to come to terms with this disaster. We can only watch and pray.

Vocational education – we just don’t get it in England

I had a problem the other day with the double glazing on my house, so I phoned the company. The person answering the call consulted her diary and said: “We can send our engineer to you on Friday”. Pleased as I was with this prompt service, I reflected on what qualifications the “engineer” might have. When Friday came, I discovered the answer – a short company training course and then a brief period working with a more experienced “engineer”.

I feel pretty certain that, in Germany for instance, double glazing operatives would not be called engineers. This all encapsulated for me the idea that I have long held that we just don’t understand vocational in England. We love academic, but we relegate the vocational to second best – except, of course, vocations like medicine and law, which are high status jobs and for which you need strong academic qualifications. There aren’t many doctors with GNVQs.

It isn’t the same elsewhere. I recall a Romanian, now a senior executive in London, telling me why he had become an engineer. His father was a doctor, a poorly paid and low status job in Romania when he was a young man, so he went into engineering instead of medicine.

Alison Wolf’s conclusion that too many vocational courses have no real progression is so true. One has only to think of the unlamented GNVQ Part 1 – for which there was never any Part 2! What an outcry there would have been if academic courses had been planned in this way.

Our lack of understanding of vocational is further illustrated by the way that so many people refer to the diploma qualifications as vocational – they aren’t. As Ken Spours and Ann Hodgson have shown so clearly, they are the latest – and best – attempt in a long line of lost acronyms that tried to fill the space between the academic and the vocational.

We need high quality, widely recognised vocational qualifications in England. And we need to recognise that they are not better or worse than academic qualifications – they are just different.

It is particularly disappointing that their value is being undermined in school and college performance tables. The equivalences between some vocational or quasi-vocational courses and GCSEs may have been too generous in the past – and I agree that they were – but this should be a reason to correct the equivalences, not abolish them. No discincentives must be placed in the way of young people doing vocational qualifications if that is what is right for them.

Better still, vocational qualifications should be part of an over-arching baccalaureate structure, with a strong core of learning and plenty of choice of main study. That is one of the reasons why the English Bac isn’t what we need and why Whole Education and others have formed a coalition to Build a Better Bac.