Chapter 4:

Standards, Results and Accountability

 
Schools now have the necessary information on pupil performance to develop their own plans for raising standards. But most of them will need support. That support must be based on a clear understanding of the roles of the schools and their partners - the local authorities, OHMCI and the Welsh Office amongst others - and an active engagement by the Welsh Office, both in setting the agenda and supporting schools and local authorities.

1  Standards rise fastest where schools themselves take responsibility for their own improvement. So schools need the right balance of pressure and support from central and local government. They have had plenty of pressure in the past; some of this has been positive, but not all of it has been of a kind which has any effect in raising standards. There has been an excessive concentration on the organisation of schools at the expense of improving teaching and learning. And too many schools in Wales are performing less well than they could. We have to address this through systematic approaches which stimulate and reward constant improvement. The ideal form of pressure on schools is to set clear, ambitious but achievable national targets for raising standards over a defined period and to combine this with a clear framework of accountability. This White Paper for Wales takes a large step forward by publishing challenging and unambiguous benchmarks and targets to the year 2002 - and by inviting views on how they should be refined.

2  It is also necessary to improve the support which central and local government will provide to schools, especially to develop better measures of performance and progress. Schools need help to introduce quality assurance systems within frameworks established by OHMCI which focus on standards of teaching and learning; and within an annual cycle of self-review supported by each local authority and validated by OHMCI. In their turn local authorities need support from the Welsh Office. Alongside systematic school self-improvement, there must continue to be regular high-quality external audit of schools and local authorities by OHMCI, to identify and spread good practice and tackle under-performance. In some cases the excuse has been that 'you cannot expect high achievement from children in a run-down area like this'. Often it has been the reverse: schools in comfortable circumstances have too complacently accepted average performance, where they should be aiming for excellence. There are many examples of primary and secondary schools in Wales that break these moulds. We now need to direct the energy and talents of all into a single-minded drive towards higher pupil achievement across the board. This extends to the needs of all. The recommendations of our Ministerially chaired task group on partnership support for ethnic minority pupils will be applied appropriately for Wales to open up pathways to genuine equality of opportunity.
 
 
Measuring performance to raise standards and expectations

3  Perhaps the most powerful underlying cause of low performance in our schools is to be found in low expectations. Too many teachers, parents and pupils in Wales have come to accept a ceiling on achievement which is far below children's true potential.

National Curriculum assessment
4  Whatever their backgrounds, pupils can achieve excellent results if they are well taught and well motivated. In practice, schools with matched intakes, whether measured by socio-economic factors or by prior attainment, achieve very different results. The difference is a broad measure of a school's effectiveness in teaching and motivating its pupils. We can now make such comparisons because, for the first time, we have in place sound, serviceably consistent measures of pupil achievement at school level at each Key Stage of the National Curriculum. Additionally, once baseline assessment is established, it will be possible to measure any pupil's progress through his or her school career, and also compare that pupil with other individuals or groups. We believe it is essential to put this new information on progress to effective use, both for accountability and improvement. So there will be consultation on proposals for further improvements in the collection and use of pupil performance data.
 
 
Performance data

5  Local authorities should play a much more central role in making pupil performance data publicly available. In future secondary school performance tables will be issued to local authorities ahead of publication.

6  We need to provide parents and others with better information to supplement the current performance tables. These give an indication of absolute achievement at school level. It will soon be possible to show in addition a measure of the progress which pupils have made. This cannot be done immediately, because prior attainment data are not yet available consistently for every Key Stage. But it can be introduced progressively. In addition there is an important role for local authorities in providing their schools with local comparative data. Many of the best authorities already provide high-quality performance analyses to schools.

Keeping track of pupils
7  Progress towards the reliable analysis of pupil performance data at school or local authority level to improve schools is limited by the difficulty of tracking pupils as they move from school to school. So there will be consultation on a simple system of unique pupil identifiers. In essence, a pupil could acquire a reference number on entry to his or her first school, and retain it until leaving the school system. Every National Curriculum or other assessment test result thereafter would be logged by that reference. The individual data would be held confidentially by the school, and then transfer with the pupil to the next school, and eventually become the pupil's own property on leaving the school system.

Setting school targets
8  Publication of performance data is essential to secure public accountability; to celebrate success; and to facilitate comparisons between schools. At least as important is the use of the data to raise standards within schools, through school-level targets. Reliable and consistent performance data enable teachers to assess the performance of their pupils and to change their teaching strategies accordingly. There is clear evidence of the benefits which arise when teachers put this information to good use. Comparisons of performance in different subjects, classes, year-groups and in other ways yield better results and help realise targets for improvement which take full account of the starting points of the children concerned.

9  Schools start from different levels of achievement. Each one must set its own targets, taking account of its present achievements but seeking to improve year on year. This should not be done in isolation. Schools must be able to benchmark their own efforts against a range of targets set for Wales as a whole. Each school should be in a position to check its own performance against that of similar schools, without allowing its ambitions and efforts to be limited by standards achieved in its 'lookalikes'.

Questions for consultation: How can schools and LEAs best ensure that they use target setting most sensitively and effectively to raise standards on both a whole school and departmental basis?

What more can we do to celebrate successful schools and teachers?
 
 
The balance of pressure and support

Clear responsibilities
10  The main responsibility for raising standards and achieving excellent results lies with schools themselves, supported and challenged by better informed parents and other members of their local communities. But schools can only discharge their responsibilities with urgency and success if local authorities, governors, OHMCI and the Welsh Office each play their part.

The local authority's (LEA's) role
11  The LEA's role is not that of control. An effective LEA will create the conditions which encourage local schools to take responsibility for their own improvement. To do this each LEA will need a very good knowledge of its schools, derived from effective monitoring, and the capacity to help them improve. LEAs must demonstrate to their schools, to parents, to the local electorate and to the public more widely that they are doing a good job in improving their schools. Following local government reorganisation in April 1996 most of the 22 unitary authorities have many fewer schools to work with than before. Their scale means that LEAs in Wales have a special opportunity to help raise standards. Many are already taking full advantage of it.

Education Strategic Plans
12  In future, it is proposed that each LEA in Wales will be required to prepare an Education Strategic Plan (ESP), setting out how it will help its schools improve, and including a statement of the performance targets set by the schools after consultation with the LEA. The plan should be drawn up taking account of the LEA's wider responsibilities, for example in planning school places, establishing LMS schemes and engaging business in partnership. It should not be seen as covering simply the work of advisers.

13  The Welsh Office Education Department will offer guidance and help to LEAs in drawing up sound plans which take account of good practice in other LEAs. Once complete, each local authority will submit its ESP to the Secretary of State for approval. OHMCI will be consulted before approval is given. The LEA can then expect to be held to account for the targets and undertakings which it contains. The plan will cover a period of three years, and will be subject to an annual review. In Wales, the style of approach envisaged is very similar to that adopted for the examination of Housing Strategies and Operational Plans, already familiar to local authorities. ESPs will be phased in and fully operational from 1 April 1999.

14  The process of agreeing and monitoring ESPs will be separate from, but related to, the regular programme of inspection of LEAs by OHMCI. Given the experience of LEAs in helping schools to achieve higher standards, and the established relationship between LEAs and the Welsh Office, we would not expect an LEA in Wales to under-perform against objective criteria. However, were that to happen, it is intended that the Secretary of State could direct an earlier inspection. If that inspection confirmed that an LEA was clearly failing to deliver an acceptable standard of support to its schools or to deliver other specified functions, the Secretary of State might then intervene, either by directing officers or by enabling others to perform the functions until the authority had demonstrated its capacity to resume its full responsibilities. The necessary legal provisions will be included in the Education Bill which the Government will introduce in the autumn.

Question for consultation: How much of an LEA's work should be covered by an ESP?

Support for school governors
15  We are considering two options to make the relationship between governors and local authorities still more productive.

16  First, an authority needs to be able to act where it thinks an unsuitable headteacher appointment is about to be made. The quality of the headteacher is a crucial factor in the success of a school. An unwise appointment can cause severe and lasting problems for all concerned. An LEA should not decide on the appointment of a Head: that is the responsibility of the governing body. But before an appointment is confirmed, the governing body should inform the LEA which would have the right, if it believed the proposed candidate unsuitable, to put a formal representation to the governors which they would have to consider and respond to.

17  Second, the LEA's data may highlight serious under-performance. In those circumstances the authority may have a view of the comparative performance of the headteacher, which might assist the governors when carrying out their annual appraisal of the Head. It follows that where there are serious doubts about a school's performance, an LEA should be entitled to make reports to governing bodies, which the governors would have a duty to consider.

Questions for consultation: Are there any other issues upon which governors might benefit from LEA help - perhaps to sustain a good two-way flow of information on school performance?

Should annual all-Wales conferences with governors continue and if so what topics should be discussed regularly to help raise school standards?