ATL

Schools on report?

Changes to league tables and inspections, and the introduction of school report cards, are all part of the government's vision of 21st-century schooling. Report explores the implications. Words by Warwick Mansell

Teachers can expect sweeping changes to the school accountability system within the next three years, with the government finally having acknowledged there are serious problems with its league table regime.

But will the moves, which raise the prospect of a 'report card' setting out schools' performance in aspects of education ranging from their pupils' exam success to their popularity with parents, really make a difference in the classroom? And are they radical enough?

These will be the questions uppermost in ATL members' minds after announcements in a government paper about major reform of the English accountability structure, in which league tables are central. To league table sceptics, this was intriguing. In the first instance, the paper set out some of the weaknesses of the current method of ranking school against school.

League tables, it said: "could be significantly improved", in an admission which could be taken as representing a remarkable departure for a government that has been wedded to the rankings for more than a decade now.

The paper said the existing tables could be difficult for parents to understand; did not signal clearly the "relative importance of different academic outcomes"; and contained little information about pupils' wider well-being or happiness. They were narrowly focused, did not report schools' success in raising the attainment of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, and could lead to teachers focusing extra attention on certain groups of pupils who were statistically more important to their schools.

And the strains for schools of league tables and other forms of accountability, such as Ofsted inspections, "can make schools feel they are placed under undue pressure, potentially distracting them from their greatest priority - to provide excellent education and development for all their pupils".
 
The paper came two months after Robert Hill, a former government education adviser, had penned an article that began: "School league tables are in a mess, practically and intellectually."

The solution proposed in that article, and in the government's paper, is modelled on a system introduced recently in schools in New York. Called the report card, but also sometimes dubbed a 'balanced scorecard', it has the twin goals of both broadening and simplifying the information handed to parents in judging schools.

The card, likely to be published on a single A3 sheet for each school, would widen the range of statistics available to parents by introducing new measures to be published alongside pupils' academic achievement. These are likely to include statistics on the progress children make in their learning; the school's success in promoting the "wider outcomes" of education, such as how happy its children are; its ability to improve the exam performance of disadvantaged groups of pupils; and its popularity with parents and pupils.

The paper says that each of these measures would be presented as, for example, a number out of 100, or as a colour, with green indicating good, amber satisfactory and red underperformance. Finally, all of these measures would be combined into one overall indicator of the school's success.

Ministers hope this will make it much simpler for parents to judge which are the more effective institutions.

The report cards are also likely to influence Ofsted inspections. Schools with successful overall judgements on the cards are likely to go six years without being inspected, the paper said.

After an initial consultation period, the card is to be trialled from autumn 2009 until early 2011, after which it is likely to be introduced nationally.

Although the cards will incorporate some league table data, it does not appear they are going to replace the achievement table rankings themselves any time soon. The paper says league table information will still be available to parents, so this could mean more accountability, not less.

These developments are very specific to England, with no plans for similar measures in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.

In fact, the accountability systems in all these parts of the UK are very different, with no official league tables published outside England and no plans for them.

ATL generally finds less unhappiness among members with the way politicians and civil servants treat the profession in those areas (see page 15 for more on accountability and inspection in Wales and Scotland).

Back in England, the reverse is true. Nansi Ellis, ATL's head of education policy and research, says that teachers will be very wary about the new report cards. There are problems with both the attempt to broaden the range of indicators used and the claim that the cards will be simpler for parents to use.

Nansi says: "A lot of the information the government is going to use for the report cards is going to be the same as it uses for the league tables, and we all know the problems with using 'raw scores' data to judge schools: this can be very unfair to schools in disadvantaged areas. The extra elements they are putting in, especially the well-being indicators and the views of parents, are very difficult to quantify in a way that makes sense."

She adds that the claim the cards will be simpler could be misleading for parents, and potentially dangerous for schools, as families might simply ignore all aspects of provision, other than that presented in the overall grade, when choosing a school.

Nansi continues: "What the government is doing is attempting to present to parents in a single number, or letter, or colour, a measure that seems very simple and straightforward, but actually is not, when you consider the different factors that go into the measure.

"Parents are going to look at the overall judgement, for example, see that it is red and then say 'I'm not going to send my child there'. But it might have good things going for it that would make it right for that child."

Martin Johnson, ATL's deputy general secretary, agrees: "League tables have been made more complicated because of a refusal of successive governments to accept that they can be misleading. Schools are complex places. Getting a rounded picture of the achievements of a school is not done by looking at raw figures, and it's certainly not done in one grade."

Nansi adds: "You cannot disagree with the government's reasons for wanting to move away from the current accountability system. We do find the focus on the test, or on the pupils who will help the school do well in the league tables, is not right. But I do not think the report cards are going to help."

The report card proposals were published in support of another government paper on the future of education, entitled 21st-century schools: a world-class education for every child. This proposes schools increasingly working in partnership with each other and outside agencies.

But Julia Neal, ATL's immediate past president, says publishing report cards for individual schools would work against this: "If the report cards are still making schools compete against each other, this will be a barrier to collaboration. I still think the government is promoting a name-and-blame culture, which is divisive, and I don't think these cards move away from that."

For Lesley Ward, a primary teacher from Doncaster with more than 30 years' experience who is ATL's senior vice-president, the report card would still be a form of league table. And rankings of all kinds tend to undermine teachers' effectiveness, since most are genuinely committed to helping children and do not benefit from the threat of being labelled as underperforming.

She says: "You might not be very high up in the league tables, but you might be doing the best you can with your children. They [league tables] are a very crude indication of teaching success. There are very few of us in teaching for the money. We all want the children we teach to do the best they can."

If ATL has problems with league tables of all types, this does not mean it rejects all accountability. Indeed, ATL's position statement on the subject says "there is no longer any argument that there is a need for accountability in the public sector".

The question is, though, accountability to whom? Lesley makes the point that teachers are held accountable informally to parents all the time, simply by talking to them. League tables were, then, set up more to provide accountability to government than to children and their families.

Lesley continues: "I see the parents most days, and if they have a worry, they can come in and see me. Having spent decades working with parents, I can tell you that they are not really interested in league tables. They want to know how their child is doing - whether their child is doing the best they possibly can, and if not, why not, and what is being done about it; and whether they are happy."

ATL's position statement says that all national tests should be abolished and replaced by testing a small sample of pupils for the purpose of monitoring national education standards. Ofsted would also be scrapped in its current form, with local inspectors and advisers working to challenge and support schools and ensuring they were accountable to their local authority. In this way, there would no longer be direct accountability to the government.

For Martin Johnson, the government's enthusiasm for the report cards suggests that, while it accepts there are some problems with league tables, it has not addressed the fundamental difficulties with data-driven systems of all kinds.

He says: "Ministers are trying to look both ways on this. Despite what they say in the paper about the problems of league tables, they still believe in data, and they still believe that what a school does can be summed up in a pupil's grades, or their levels. I think this just shows confusion and incoherence on their part.

"We would make the argument that you can only get to a rounded view on the quality of a school with an extended discourse."

This spring, the government will be consulting further on the details of its plans. The response it will get from the profession will be mixed, at best.

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