Tackling Bureaucracy: update meeting 21-5-14
Jane Renton, Assistant Director, Education Scotland
Education Scotland should:
 Use its inspection teams to challenge unnecessary bureaucracy
in schools.
School inspectors have been fully briefed on the issues highlighted
in the Tackling Bureaucracy report, and regularly challenge overlybureaucratic approaches to planning, assessment, tracking and
monitoring when they see them in schools. For the final meeting of
this group in September 2014, we shall present a full report on the
number of schools inspected since June 2013 where we have
challenged bureaucracy and highlighted it in the letter to parents or
in the detailed record of inspection findings, and the support we have
provided to some of these schools as part of continuing engagement
following inspection.
 Support improvement through professional dialogue and promote
sharing and exemplification of good practice.
The key to addressing many of the bureaucracy issues is to support
teachers’ understanding of Curriculum for Excellence assessment.
The following is a summary of the work of Education Scotland’s
assessment team.
 Assessing progress and achievement. An overarching paper
giving generic information on assessing progress and
achievement was published in December 2013. This has been
followed by the publication of shorter papers for individual
curriculum areas. Related work has been undertaken on
annotated exemplification which shows work by learners typifying
the achievement of a level. These resources will be published in
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June 2014. To support practitioners with progression within a
level, a set of progression frameworks are currently being
published.
 Related to the work on assessing progress and achievement, is
the support provided for monitoring and tracking. Concerns have
been expressed over bureaucratic approaches to monitoring and
tracking. Guidance was published in December 2013. This paper
stresses proportionality, manageability and the importance of
professional dialogue for monitoring and tracking progress.
 Education Scotland’s Assessment Team has engaged directly
with almost all Local Authorities this session. In virtually all
presentations given by the team there has been an emphasis on
tackling bureaucracy.
 We supported a series of four conferences organised by AHDS
(and open to others) in late March in Edinburgh, Kilmarnock,
Glasgow and Dundee. The bureaucracy agenda was a key focus.
Approximately 600 delegates, mainly primary headteachers and
primary headteachers, attended and evaluated the events very
positively.
 Four events have been planned jointly with EIS specifically on the
topic of tackling bureaucracy. One was held in spring in Glasgow,
with events in 24 May (Stirling), 20 September (Edinburgh) and 4
October (Aberdeen) to follow.
 Researchers from Blake Stevenson have been commissioned to
carry out research into the bureaucracy issue, and will provide an
interim report to the Ministerial Action Group chaired by Dr Allan
at the next meeting of the group in September. As well as
exploring the demands for information at local and national level,
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the researchers will aim to highlight areas of good practice. While
a number of local authorities will be asked to contribute to the
research, it is not intended to identify individual schools or
authorities by name when the research is published.
 Through inspections and other engagements with schools,
Education Scotland staff have identified examples of good
practice in tackling bureaucracy. Some filming has been done
recently in primary schools, and innovative practice in tracking
young people’s progress was recently commended following the
inspection of Linlithgow Academy. We are working towards
publishing a collation of these examples in September.
 Ensure that it does not itself create unnecessary paperwork for
schools and staff. This includes working with local authorities and
schools to clarify expectations and making sure that the
documentation required for inspection purposes is kept to the
minimum.
In summer 2013, we updated the briefing note which headteachers
receive when they are being inspected to make clearer what
documentation will be needed during the inspection week. In the runup to the inspection, Managing Inspectors give further advice over
the phone to headteachers about the documentation required,
making clear that inspection teams do not have time to look at large
amounts of paperwork, and find it much more useful to observe
learning and teaching, and to engage in professional dialogue.
Nevertheless, some schools continue to provide too much
paperwork for inspection teams, and we need to keep working on
this agenda.
 Review its CfE website to ensure that national policy
expectations are clear and guidance and support for CfE is made
more easily accessible.
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The following two new features of our website have aimed to
address this point.
Key Curriculum Support
http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/keycfesupport/index.asp
Route Maps through Assessment
http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/nationalqualifications//routema
ps/index.asp
At the series of Senior Phase leadership conferences organised in
partnership with ADES, SLS and SQA in February/March, the
Tackling Bureaucracy report was included in packs, the above new
features of our website were highlighted, and approaches to tackling
bureaucracy were an underpinning theme in presentations and
workshops.
Working in partnership with ADES, AHDS and EIS, we are planning
a similar series of leadership conferences for primary headteachers
in September/October, when again approaches to tackling
bureaucracy will be a key cross-cutting theme in the programme.
We are currently working on new “toolkits” to support primary and
secondary schools in evaluating and improving the Curriculum for
Excellence “broad general education”. The secondary resource will
be published by the end of June, and the primary version will be
launched at the conferences referred to above.
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