Month: February 2023

Searching for similarity in a sea of difference

I was invited recently to give a talk at a conference dedicated to school inspection in Wales.

An interesting focus given the very many changes – and challenges – facing educators currently.

I had anticipated, given that Estyn was cited very clearly in the conference title, that representatives of the organisation would have been present in the audience, if not on ‘stage’.

And it was on that basis that I accepted the invitation; there were, I felt, certain messages that needed to be aired, that were not necessarily being aired elsewhere.

As it transpired, I’m not sure there was anyone from Estyn actually present at the conference (I have no idea whether they were asked or not), so I thought it prudent to share – more succinctly – some of that thinking here.

First, I must confess to being fairly reassured by what I read and heard following the recent publication of Estyn’s annual report.

Reassured not because the garden in Welsh education is in any way completely and undeniably rosy, but because chief inspector Owen Evans highlighted – in such a high-profile document – many of the worries raised already in this blog, and by teachers and leaders up and down the country.

The chief inspector’s concerns about subject-specific qualifications hampering curriculum development; a lack of sharing between pioneer and non-pioneer schools; the potential pitfalls of cross-departmental working; and shortcomings in regional support for schools, were important – and very welcome – observations.

Shining a light on Covid recovery

In fact, for those immersed in Welsh education policy and reform, there were very few surprises – and Mr Evans merely underscored much of what has been said before.

Particularly important, I thought, was his unequivocal denunciation of Covid and its impact on education.

Mr Evans warned that “most pupils” had been “negatively affected” by the pandemic, and “the system would continue to feel the impact for years to come”.

A far cry from those intent on downplaying Covid’s effects on children and young people – and those critical of the phrase ‘learning loss’.

It is I think imperative that we continue to shine a light on our Covid recovery – and retain pressure on government and other publicly-funded organisations, to do good on their promise to support those who missed out on what others before them had benefitted from.

We must, to coin a phrase, hold ministers’ feet to the fire – and to ignore the true effects of Covid on our education system, would be doing our children and young people a great disservice.

Equally important, however, was the chief inspector’s recognition of the ‘resilience and innovation displayed by educators across Wales’ during this period of unprecedented challenge.

History will, I think, look very favourably on what our teachers, leaders and support staff did from a distance what they couldn’t always do in person.

And so to the main focus of my blog, I’ve called: ‘Searching for similarity in a sea of difference’ – all will become clear soon, I hope!

*SPOILER: there is some covering of old blog ground here, but it’s important for context*

Navigating the curriculum malaise

‘Education is changing’ is a strapline used by the Welsh Government to raise awareness of the new innovations currently underway in Wales’ education system.

Changes to professional learning, educational leadership, qualifications and supporting learners with additional needs, form part of that landscape.

But it is change to Wales’ national curriculum that holds everything together.

Marking what Sinnema and colleagues (2020) call a ‘radical departure from the top-down, teacher proof policy of the previous National Curriculum’, Curriculum for Wales (CfW) requires our teachers to play a much more prominent role, in the shaping of what and how children learn. 

The days of government diktat and centralised prescription are over, and we are moving into an era that recognises the professionalism and agency of those best-placed to make pedagogical decisions.

This notion of subsidiarity, upon which the entire curriculum is based, does however pose some challenging questions.

The most common relates to the tension between local and national; and how best to accommodate the nuance of school context, while at the same time guaranteeing a level of consistency from one setting to the next.

In education, perhaps more than in any other public service, equity of opportunity is written in tablets of stone.

But there are serious, and in my view legitimate concerns, that the shift from prescription to what sociologist Michael Young (2008) terms ‘genericism’, will result in an even bigger disparity in the knowledge and skills available in our schools.

There are, by my reckoning, two possible ways around this. The first, largely ignored by policymakers for fear of subverting teacher agency, is that we introduce some sort of ‘common core’, or list of non-negotiables that all schools, in all parts of Wales are required in law to teach.

A more descriptive statutory content, over and above that which exists already, would ensure at least some degree of uniformity across the piece; how detailed that compulsory list might be could, and probably should, have been subject to a ‘national conversation’ on learner diet.

There is, I think, still room for that conversation to be entertained.

The second and alternative route out of our curriculum malaise, is the provision of high-quality professional learning, that is readily available and accessible to all.

Playing all the right notes

Far from empowering teachers, it could be argued that CfW has actually de-skilled those in our system who were not already involved in curriculum co-construction, and have had no prior exposure to curriculum design.

All of a sudden, and through no fault of their own, teachers have gone from a position of strength – based on many years’ experience of teaching in a certain way, in line with a particular framework – to one of relative weakness.

This does not mean that good teachers become any less good as a consequence, more that they need additional support – and new skills – in order to respond most appropriately to what is being asked of them.

I like to think of this as a form of musical composition – if we take away teachers’ score, they’ll need absolute confidence that they can play all the right notes together, in the best possible order.

The problem, as it stands, is that professional learning is of variable quality and, rather like curriculum documentation, light on detail; which leads to mixed messaging, misinterpretation and the potential adoption of approaches that do not align with CfW principles.

Recent attempts to develop a more coherent approach to professional learning, by virtue of the ‘Professional Learning Entitlement’, have not, to my mind, plugged those very noticeable gaps in provision.

To his credit, Education Minister Jeremy Miles has recognised, beyond all doubt, that a national professional learning offer ‘must be consistent and of the highest quality’.

And to do this, a new validation process ‘to ensure all national professional learning is quality assured and recognised’ is being introduced.

An important and long overdue step in the right direction – our failure to authenticate and legitimise professional learning resources has long been a cause for concern.

What I don’t yet understand is how the validation process will work in practice – in other words, how and by whom will quality professional learning be kitemarked?

The entitlement states that ‘there are 3 levels of recognising professional learning; accredited, endorsed and recognised’.

‘Accredited’, we are told, means that the professional learning leads to a national or internationally recognised qualification. That’s fair enough.

‘Endorsed’ denotes that a third party has undertaken quality assurance of the professional learning, as is the case with professional learning for leaders endorsed by the National Academy for Educational Leadership. That too I can understand.

What bothers me is how professional learning will be classified as ‘recognised’.

Heightened pressure on those inspecting schools

According to the entitlement, ‘recognised’ means that the professional learning ‘will be recognised within the education profession across Wales’.

I’ll be honest, I have no idea what that actually means.

Are we really suggesting that all with a stake in education will be empowered to determine what gets ‘recognised’ and what does not?

As the saying goes, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure – and this is a minefield sure to claim many victims.

So why then is all this relevant to a conversation on the inspectorate’s role in driving standards?

Well the answer is simple.

Without a consistent professional learning offer, and in the absence of a ‘common core’ to level the playing field in Wales, there is heightened pressure on those inspecting schools to monitor and assess quality effectively.

In other words, pupils, parents and politicians need confidence that what the CfW promises, is being delivered.

Those tablets of stone I referred to earlier, must be upheld – and it falls on the inspectorate, as one of the few remaining purveyors of standards across our system, to ensure that equality of opportunity is maintained.

But there are potential issues here, also.

In his independent review of Estyn, published in 2018, three years after his seminal review of Wales’ curriculum and assessment arrangements, Graham Donaldson put forward 34 recommendations ‘intended to ensure that inspection continues to provide assurance about the performance of the system’ while also contributing to the ambition ‘to have schools at the heart of reform and improvement’.

A new commitment to self-evaluation, with schools actively identifying the factors that affect the quality of their children’s learning, does indeed contribute to the positioning of schools at the heart of reform.

This particular intervention, in keeping with Wales’ newfound respect for teacher professionalism, shifts responsibility for monitoring and assessing progress, back to schools.

There appears a working assumption here that those working in a school day in, day out, have a much fuller, more complete view of that school’s strengths and areas for development.

‘A culture of fear’

As the Welsh Government itself states: ‘The outcome of a school’s self-evaluation provides more meaningful transparency about areas of strength and priorities for improvement, which will be reflected in their school development plan, than un-contextualised attainment data’.

Donaldson himself notes, however, that school-led self-evaluation is not by itself sufficient as a rigorous and robust benchmarking tool, and it ‘requires an element of external perspective if it is to benefit from necessary challenge and not be compromised by the interests and experience of those most directly involved’.

Put plainly, how else will the Welsh Government ‘ensure that inspection continues to provide assurance about the performance of the system’ more generally?

The transition to more qualitative inspection reports, with descriptive evaluations replacing summative grades, is another important development that reduces the potential for ‘naming and shaming’, and provides a richer, more lucid account of a school’s relative strengths and weaknesses.

In essence, we are trying to move away from barriers to collaboration – and reduce the gulf between ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ (typically manifested in the media celebrating excellence and criticising inadequacy, to use known Estyn terminology).

Donaldson’s articulation of the negative unintended consequences arising from high-stakes accountability systems, that employ one-off grades as a key indicator of performance, is well worthy of consideration.

Writing in his independent review, ‘A learning inspectorate’, Donaldson notes that:

‘In addition to the stress that these systems inevitably place on schools and their pupils, such cultures can divert attention from meeting the needs of young people as individuals, as schools seek to disguise weaknesses and present themselves in as good a light as possible.

‘Undue attention may be given to those pupils whose marginal improvement will affect performance figures, or attempts may be made to select the school population at the expense of young people with the greatest needs. At its worst it can inculcate a culture of fear, inhibiting creativity and genuine professional analysis and discussion. Pupils can come to serve the reputation of a school rather than the school serving the needs of the pupil.’

Donaldson’s description of high-stakes accountability, and its unintended consequences, is sobering and a reminder of why the inspectorate, like so many other facets of Wales’ education system, is having to adapt to its own new ways of working.

But what Donaldson’s vision for inspection in Wales assumes, perhaps naïvely, is that every teacher, in every school, will be treated and looked upon in the same way; that all schools will be subject to the same level of scrutiny, and be measured against the same quality threshold.

‘8 contributory factors’

With a stronger focus on self-evaluation, and a reliance on validation from various middle-tier partners, Estyn’s work in ‘providing assurance about the performance of the system’ is made all the more complicated.

The difficulty is compounded by a lack of summative judgements, and agreed criteria on which to gauge relative performance between schools.

Estyn’s plan to inspect schools more frequently within a six-year inspection cycle from 2024, matters little if there is no consistent and credible way of benchmarking school standards over time.

The Welsh Government’s school improvement guidance, together with the inspectorate’s strong interest in curriculum implementation, offers a clear demonstration of this issue in practice.

The guidance sets out what it calls ‘8 contributory factors’, that describe the key attributes that schools successfully realising the curriculum will possess.

They are as they appear below:

Welsh Government (2022)

Enabling all learners to progress, ensuring the school environment supports learner wellbeing, investing in ambitious professional learning, being at the heart of their communities – so many of these ‘contributory factors’ are open to interpretation, and nigh on impossible to assess objectively without clear guidelines.

The guidance makes clear that Estyn’s new approach to inspection ‘reflects these contributory factors throughout’, albeit they are not designed to be an ‘exhaustive checklist for schools’.

Nevertheless, in order to demonstrate their successful realisation of the curriculum, one suspects that schools will be using these factors to frame their self-evaluation, and given they form such a strong basis for Estyn inspection, there is little doubt that they will be lent upon as important milestones in a school’s development.

But we return again to the same problem – that a lack of detail, and a reluctance to map out much more clearly what it is inspectors are looking for, will likely lead to many different variations on a theme.

The core challenge, then, is how to inspect consistently an education system that promotes variation?

Greater surety of judgement

Now granted, I fully recognise that the new curriculum, and Wales’ vision for education, is designed to celebrate difference, acknowledging that no school, teacher or learner is the same.

But in order to ‘provide assurance about the performance of the system’, and deliver what the Welsh Government describes as ‘regular, consistent, comprehensive and accurate inspections of schools’, there needs to be a level of commonality over and above eight indeterminate contributory factors.

As with so many things CfW, there is to my mind a missing layer here – a missing layer that would give schools confidence they are progressing in line with expectation, and inspectors greater surety of judgement.

It was interesting to note during the preparing of this blog, that within Estyn’s three main objectives is the building of capacity in the improvement and delivery of education in Wales through inspection evidence…. By promoting the spread of best practice through case studies; information sharing; and celebrating excellent practice.

But how can this celebration of excellent practice happen, if there are no summative judgements on which to base those decisions?

Or to put it another way, how can we promote the spread of best practice, if there is no hard and fast way of knowing what best practice looks like?

The new approach to inspection is further complicated by the Welsh Government’s very noble commitment to learner progression, which enables individual children to make progress at an appropriate pace, and with an appropriate level of support and challenge.

But progression is not a simple, linear process – and a learner’s journey through education is typically complex; there are different start points and learners progress in different ways and at different speeds.

What is more, there is strong research evidence to suggest that regular and ongoing dialogue between learners and their teacher, is key to affective assessment for learning.

As colleagues and I wrote in a recent publication, ‘learners need to be empowered to be active assessors of their own progression’ and ‘they need to feel that their perspectives matter’.

One wonders what capacity Estyn has to monitor such interactions, as well as monitor and adjudicate on the appropriateness of individual learning journeys.

Contrasting interpretations of the same thing

I’ve written previously and at length about the professional learning journeys teachers themselves are having to make as they transition from a curriculum that was nationally-imposed and fixed, to one that is flexible and constructed locally.

A curriculum that was prescribed within a culture of performativity, to a curriculum offering autonomy and a renewed sense of professionalism.

From passive, to proactive; from de-skilled, to highly-skilled – our teaching workforce is having to evolve and adapt, so as to remain relevant in an ever-changing educational landscape.

In my experience, those who are best managing that transition, tend to be those closest to the curriculum design process; teachers and leaders who’ve ‘pioneered’ and benefitted most from their school’s first-hand involvement in early conceptualisation.

But for some, the safety of prescription and ‘what we have always done’ is too big a draw, not least because of the long shadow of a data-driven performativity culture and, let’s face it, mistrust in a more punitive school accountability system.

And therein lies the conundrum: of conditioning oneself for the new world, whilst at the same time erasing from memory what has happened for much of the last 30 years.

The same conundrum is almost certainly applicable to school inspectors, particularly those not involved in co-construction or with only surface-level understanding of the intricacies of curriculum change.

So whilst we cannot realistically expect teachers at all stages of their professional careers to jump seamlessly from one way of working to the next, unaided, neither can we assume that those whose job it is to monitor school standards can do so, either.

Like teachers, inspectors must be supported in making that passage through, and should have access to the same professional learning opportunities.

If there is any sign of disconnect between what the inspect-or and the inspect-ed has or is being told, then we have a fairly serious problem.

A problem that stems from having two contrasting interpretations of the same thing.

Building confidence in the system

The question that follows then, is what is being done to iron out these creases and ensure that all in Estyn are singing from the same hymn sheet?

I don’t, as it happens, have a definitive answer to that question – and neither, I would assume, do you. We simply don’t have enough information, or insight, into the professional learning being made available to school inspectors.

With that in mind, and as an important first step, I would strongly suggest that Estyn makes much more visible its own preparation for the new curriculum, so as to build confidence in the system that everyone with a stake in school standards is going through the same journey of transformation.

In short, if we are expecting school staff to change practice in line with new ways of working, then so too must those responsible for assessing how effectively those changes have been implemented.

The potential for misinterpretation, contradiction and inaccuracy is the same for inspectors as it is teachers, and it is important that steps are taken to avoid all in education from slipping back into old habits.

There is a tendency within the education fraternity to think of Estyn as being one, single entity – an organisation that is much greater than the sum of its parts.

When a school is inspected, it is inspected by Estyn – not an individual – and it is Estyn that passes judgement.

We think of it as speaking in concert, a ruling body operating from on high, with a collective voice and bird’s eye view of the entire school stock.

But of course, that is not an entirely accurate portrayal – schools are inspected by inspectors, under the banner of the inspectorate – which is an important distinction to make.

For each inspector has their own background, lived experience and personal interest that all contribute to their forming of a particular judgement.

Inspectors, like near enough every profession, are a product of their own environments – and see the world through a particular lens.

A value-laden exercise

In his paper on the future of inspection in England post-Covid, Colin Richards (2020) likens the role of the inspector to that of the theatre critic:

‘Theatre critics appraise a performance or run of performances, as school inspectors appraise schools, based on a series of observations. Critics judge the quality of the acting; likewise, inspectors judge the quality of teaching. Critics judge how far the performance reflects the content and intentions of the play text; similarly, under the current Ofsted framework, inspectors comment on the rationale and implementation of the ‘text’ of the curriculum.’                                                   

And I suppose this comes to the nub of the issue – the so called ‘text’ of the curriculum in Wales is, by definition, much more open to interpretation under the new CfW.

Like theatre criticism, inspection is a value-laden exercise that involves observation and discussion at a particular moment in time.

Inspectors cannot, as Richards writes, comment with any plausibility on what has happened in the past or predict what will happen in the future.

Many of these realities are well understood, but the difficulty for Wales, and what makes this more of a problem now, is that a rowing back from raw attainment data as a benchmark of performance is putting more pressure on Estyn to get its judgements right.

In other words, Welsh ministers are putting many more of their eggs in the Estyn basket – and the inspectorate’s voice will carry much more weight moving forward.

So what then does all of this mean?

Well, if we accept that Estyn’s role in raising and maintaining school standards is absolutely pivotal, then it is imperative that inspectors – like those they are inspecting – are given the most appropriate tools to do the job.

That is not to suggest that school inspectors, as they currently sit, are in any way incapable of fulfilling their duties – more that they need support, and their own bespoke professional learning pathway, so as to respond effectively to the needs of the system changing around them.

This is about making inspectors’ lives easier – and giving them, as well as teachers, confidence that what and how they assess is fair and in line with shifting expectation.

References