HM Inspectorate of Education
Directorate 5, 1-B South, Victoria Quay, Leith, Edinburgh EH6 6QQ
t 0131 244 0747
f 0131 244 0653
Mr Keir Bloomer
Chief Executive
Clackmannanshire Council
Greenfield
Alloa
FK10 2AD
e hmi.qsa@hmie.gov.uk
w www.hmie.gov.uk
Our ref: QSE/4/5/md
21 December 2004
Dear Mr Bloomer
INTERIM FOLLOW-UP TO THE INSPECTION OF THE EDUCATION FUNCTIONS OF
CLACKMANNANSHIRE COUNCIL
The report on the education functions of Clackmannanshire Council was published in
September 2003. HM Inspectors made an interim visit to the Council in September 2004 to
evaluate progress made in responding to the main points for action in this report.
The authority was addressing the main points for action in the report with purpose and
determination. The new team of Quality Improvement Officers had significant potential
once it had established its role in challenging schools more rigorously. The clear lead of
the Directorate in taking forward the wide ranging agenda for improvement is recognised
but the current focus will need to be strongly maintained to ensure the required impact
on pupils’ attainment and achievement, particularly in secondary schools. Overall the
authority’s work in the year since the original inspection had set in place a number of
significant improvements, but these were necessarily still at an early stage and had still
to impact fully on the intended outcomes for young people.
Around one year after the publication of this report, HM Inspectors will re-visit the
authority to assess further progress in meeting the main points for action.
I attach an evaluation and brief account of the response made by the education authority to the
main points for action in the report.
I am sending a copy of this to the recipients of the original inspection report.
Yours sincerely
Ian Gamble
Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector
Directorate 5
HM Inspectorate of Education
Interim Follow-up to the Inspection of The Education
Functions of Clackmannanshire Council
Main points for action
1.
The Council should ensure that educational services has a period of more stable
and consistent leadership.
The Council had taken important steps to establish more stable and consistent
leadership and enlarge its capacity to improve the quality of pupils’ experiences
and their attainment. The actions taken had resulted in establishing a more
coherent framework of support and challenge for schools. The new arrangements
for providing support and challenge had potential to bring about significant
improvements, once they are fully and consistently implemented.
The Leader of the Council and the Convenor of the Learning and Leisure
Committee had given a strong lead in following up the main points for action in
the inspection report. In order to identify more clearly the factors inhibiting
improvements in pupils’ attainment in each of the secondary schools, the Council
had commissioned a study from an independent consultant who had quickly
produced a report, known as the Gavin Report. The Leader and Convenor had
specified that the Director of Services to People and senior members of his
educational services team should ensure that secondary schools were addressing
the consultant’s recommendations, and required reports on progress in
implementing them. By approving the permanent appointments of a senior quality
improvement officer (QIO) and three permanent QIOs, the Council had ensured
that educational services had the capacity to give support and challenge to schools
in a consistent way.
The composition and remits of senior managers with responsibility for educational
services had remained stable since the initial inspection. As a result, key policies
had been completed and were now shaping developments in schools. To ensure
that senior officers were able to focus on key developments designed to raise
attainment and provide more integrated services for children and families, the
Director of Services to People himself had taken responsibility for overseeing the
Public Private Partnership (PPP) initiative for replacing secondary school
buildings. The Head of Education and Lifelong Learning had established a more
rigorous and clear quality assurance framework and had just completed the
recruitment of the quality improvement team which was under the strong and
effective leadership of a senior QIO. He had also completed major elements of the
Teachers’ Agreement, including imaginative deployment of a very effective team
of physical education specialists to reduce primary teachers’ class contact time
and, at the same time, extend and improve pupils’ programmes. The Head of
Policy, Planning and Special Educational Needs was in the final stages of putting
in place a revised set of arrangements for promoting the inclusion of pupils with
2
special needs and supporting them as much as possible in mainstream schools.
The Head of Child Care, Pre-Five and Criminal Justice was progressing more
integrated working within the pre-school sector. These developments had
strengthened the capacity of centrally-deployed staff to address weaknesses and
promote good practice in schools. Although it was too early to see significant
impact on pupils’ experiences, there were some encouraging signs. Headteachers
reported that the approach to professional review and development had improved.
A recent follow-up inspection of a special school had identified positive features of
arrangement for including pupils with significant learning difficulties in classes in
a secondary school. All in the Council understood clearly that they had a great
deal of work to do to bring about significant improvements in the achievements of
pupils, particularly at the secondary stage.
As the result of a review of the effectiveness of his Senior Management Team
(SMT), the Director had taken action to promote more integrated working among
the various services they led. Heads of establishments interviewed reported that,
while they had confidence in each of the Heads of educational services, they did
not think that they took a collective approach. Some headteachers thought that
they had to consult with too many members of the SMT to resolve issues or take
forward developments. They also reported that they were not convinced that they
could influence decision-making. Some of these concerns centred on a perceived
uncertainty about the roll out of the integrated community schools initiative. The
Director had plans to address such concerns within the context of taking forward
greater integration of services within school clusters. The Heads of Service
themselves needed to consider how they could work more closely together and
ensure that those they served understood their respective roles.
2.
The new quality improvement framework should be fully implemented to ensure
robust and consistent approaches to support and challenge for schools and
other educational establishments.
The Council had made slow but significant progress in putting in place a revised
quality improvement framework with the potential to impact positively on schools
and the attainment and experiences of children and young people. The time
required to recruit key members of the Educational Development meant that new
and revised approaches had not yet had time to secure improvements.
The revised quality assurance policy, recently disseminated to all schools,
provided much clearer and more robust guidance on the authority’s expectations of
schools in monitoring and evaluating their work. Special schools had been
included in the framework and there were plans to include the pre-school centres.
The more clearly defined roles of the members of the new quality improvement
team suitably comprised providing advice and support to schools, auditing and
evaluating their effectiveness and being the first point of contact between them and
the education authority. The Senior QIO’s well considered approach to
supervision and training of QIOs was ensuring that they were being well prepared
for these roles. They had already developed a strong sense of being members of a
coherent team and adopted a thoughtful approach to their work. They were well
3
informed about the education authority’s expectations of them, had established a
calendar of visits to schools and were taking part in activities designed to make
their practice consistent. Headteachers interviewed were positive about the revised
framework and the potential of the new QIO team, but were reserving judgement
about its implementation until convinced that it was being applied consistently. To
be fully effective in improving quality, the QIOs and headteachers required a more
effective approach to collecting and analysing data on pupils’ performance, as is
outlined in section 3.
Educational services continued to deploy full and part-time education development
officers (EDOs) to provide support for various initiatives and to provide specific
assistance to individual schools. The team was well regarded, particularly the
support given for science and the arts in primary schools. However, secondary
schools still lacked co-ordinated support for subject departments and for
undertaking the improvements to learning and teaching outlined in the Gavin
Report. Educational services need to review whether the composition of the EDO
team matched precisely priority developments.
The positive steps taken to assure quality in provision for pupils with special
educational needs included the completion of the evaluation of the teams providing
additional support for pupils with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties.
As a result of this review, a single team had been formed covering both primary
and secondary schools and providing part-time tutorial support in two bases.
During the previous session, the Heads of educational services and a Continuing
Professional Development Co-ordinator (CPDC) had implemented the revised
policy on professional review and development (PRD). Centrally-deployed staff
and headteachers had all been reviewed in line with the new arrangements. Those
interviewed had found the review meetings helpful. A very effective system was
in place for recording and addressing teachers’ requests for courses and other
forms of staff development.
While the Council had reported on progress in overtaking its Education
Improvement Plan, plans to produce a report on the standards and quality of
educational services had been delayed.
Services to People had made very good use of the report of the inspection and the
Gavin Report to revise and strengthen the quality improvement framework. The
Council now had a team of QIOs to work with Heads of educational services and
schools to implement it and make sure that it serves its purpose of raising pupils’
attainment and achievement and improving the provision made across its schools.
3.
Educational services should improve its collection and use of statistical data to
provide a means of monitoring and helping schools to improve.
The Council had made some progress in addressing this main point for action but
much remained to be done to ensure that the collection, analyses and use of key
performance data contributed effectively to school improvement.
4
Slow progress had been made in establishing a systematic approach to the
collection, analysis and use of 5-14 data in both primary and secondary schools.
As an interim step, the Senior QIO had produced for the QIOs spreadsheets with
some analysis of overall performance at levels C1 and D in primary schools and
differences in performance of boys and girls. At the time of the interim inspection
this information had not been shared fully with schools although discussion of
5-14 attainment data was on the QIO’s agenda for forthcoming discussions with
senior staff in schools. QIOs and headteachers reported feeling frustrated by the
difficulties encountered in trying to obtain accurate information on 5-14 attainment
from the current management information system. Headteachers in primary
schools currently preferred to use their own paper based solutions for tracking
progress and trends in attainment. Some had developed effective approaches.
The QIOs and senior managers in secondary schools were using detailed national
analyses of attainment in national examinations (STACS) to look at trends in
performance, including areas of underperformance. An external consultant was
providing valuable support and training, and further staff development and support
for QIOs and headteachers in schools were planned. This approach was helping to
identify overall trends in attainment in each of the secondary schools, and a start
had been made to identifying and addressing the strengths and weaknesses in
subjects. The Council and headteachers should ensure that senior managers and
principal teachers improve their competence in using STACS and other analyses of
data to assist them to identify good practice and areas requiring improvement and
to monitor the effectiveness of action taken. The QIO team had started to
implement its remit of working with senior managers in schools to audit
underperforming departments as part of the new quality assurance framework.
They had also initiated work to identify subjects or departments with strong
performance, such as in technological education in one school, and to disseminate
good practice.
The authority was not consistent in using performance data to evaluate the impact
of particular initiatives designed to improve learning, teaching and attainment.
More needed to be done to assess the value gained from these initiatives. To
provide an effective tool for QIOs and schools to monitor and improve pupils’
progress and achievement, there was an urgent need for the Council to develop
effective and efficient means of collecting, storing, analysing and retrieving
accurate information on the performance of pupils and related training for staff at
the centre and in schools. The Director and his staff had recognised the
importance of such a development. As a first step, they had visited another
authority with good practice in this area. The Council’s new corporate Research
and Information Unit (RIU) had the potential to provide a comprehensive set of
data and data analyses for the authority and its schools to support the school
improvement agenda. In response to a request from educational services, it had
already provided useful analyses of a parental satisfaction survey, providing a clear
picture of strengths and areas for development across the authority’s schools as
well as in individual schools. A leaflet summarising the outcomes of the survey
1
Level C should be attained by most pupils by the end of P6 and Level D by most by the end of P7.
5
had fed back the main points to parents and members of the public. The authority
and the schools were addressing issues raised. The RIU had the potential to work
with educational services on vital and urgent work to improve quality in
measuring, monitoring and reporting on the performance of pupils and schools and
improving on it.
Educational services had begun to make effective use of the Council’s COMPEL
system for managing and recording CPD activities. The system was being rolled
out to schools in the autumn with training being provided for headteachers and
CPD coordinators in schools. It had been used initially to collect and collate CPD
needs but it had the potential to track CPD needs and the uptake of, and trends in,
CPD activities. As a management information tool it had great potential for
targeting training and support for staff in school improvement but it was too early
to assess its full impact.
The authority was aware of the need to make progress in the collection, analyses
and use of performance data. The information and communications technology
infrastructure and the research and information capacity were now in place to
support the process and they should be fully utilised. However, problems with
accessing information from the current MIS system had still to be resolved.
School managers and QIOs require to have ready access to relevant and useful
performance and management data which can be consistently shared across the
service. In order to enable it to implement fully its quality assurance and
improvement framework, the authority should give greater priority to making
progress in this area.
4.
Priority should be given to raising attainment of pupils in the upper primary classes
and in secondary schools. In achieving this goal, the authority should enlist further
support from parents and the community.
The Council’s commitment to combat educational under-achievement through
effective teaching and removing barriers to learning had been clearly specified in
the long established Learning to succeed in Clackmannanshire document. Since
the initial inspection, the Council has taken further steps to realise this
commitment by putting in place a quality framework and QIO team, and
commissioning the Gavin Report. Educational services had taken action to enlist
the support of parents and local employers. All of these developments were too
new to have had impact on raising levels of attainment. However, previous
initiatives had resulted in some improvements in attainment. The Council fully
accepted that it still had much work to do to improve significantly pupils’
achievements and engage parents and the community as well as pupils themselves
in this endeavour.
In primary schools, standards of attainment in reading, writing and mathematics
had improved from 2000 to 2003. Although attainment in these areas remained
below national averages, the authority had reduced the gap between
Clackmannanshire, the national average and the average of other authorities with
similar characteristics. At S1 and S2 in 2004, the number of pupils achieving
6
Level E2 has risen to above the national average in mathematics, although it
remained below in reading and writing. However, rates of improvement in reading
and writing were faster than national and comparator rates. At Standard Grade,
there had been some improvements in attainment at General and Credit levels, but
performance remained below that of authorities with similar characteristics and the
national average. At Higher Grade, pupils’ achievements were significantly below
the national average, with only slight improvement in standards over the last three
years. Performance in the 2004 diet of SQA examinations had been disappointing.
The Council had given practical expression to achieving the priority of raising
attainment through the measure described in sections 1 to 3 above. The QIOs were
beginning to support and challenge schools more systematically through a
programme discussing and providing feedback on each establishment’s
development plans and standards and quality reports. The Heads of educational
services and QIOs fully understood that success in challenging and supporting
schools depended on a consistent partnership with each school where expectations
were clear and levels of support provided in proportion to needs. Progress on
raising attainment in primary schools had continued. Guidelines and EDO support
had helped schools to improve pupils’ experience in writing, science and physical
education. The authority believed that it would improve achievement in the upper
stages of primary schools as a result its early literacy initiative, improved
mathematics programmes and the development of thinking skills in a project
known as Thinking through Philosophy. Rigorous evaluation of these approaches
were required to prove that they were fully effective in raising attainment in the
upper stages of primary schools.
The Gavin Report had given an unambiguous message to secondary schools that
significant improvements in learning and teaching were required to raise pupils’
attainment and achievement. This message had been clearly reinforced by the
Director of Services to People and the Head of Education and Lifelong Learning.
As outlined above, the schools were receiving support to tackle underachievement
by analysing examination data. Secondary schools required some further
assistance in identifying a range of measures proven to raise attainment and
achievement that they could take forward systematically. Staff in schools needed
also to learn from each other’s good practice.
Educational services had started to be more systematic in involving parents in
raising attainment. Representatives of School Boards reported that the authority
had made clear the priority it was giving to raising attainment and the importance
of parents in this process. The representatives had been disappointed that some
parents were reluctant to play their part despite the positive action taken by
schools. They reported that some schools had followed up the parental satisfaction
survey by suggesting ways in which parents might help their children to learn.
There was enthusiasm for some workshops run in schools. Implementation of the
Council’s Determined to Succeed initiative to promote education for enterprise
was creating opportunities for employers to make clearer their expectations of
pupils’ attainment and to offer work experience for them. The developments in
2
Level E should be attained by most pupils by the end of S2.
7
relation to integrated community schools should have the potential to engage more
parents and carers and members of the community in activities designed to raise
attainment and achievement.
The Council continued to demonstrate its commitment to raising achievement but
had a great deal still to do to ensure that it achieves its target of an annual 2%
improvement in attainment.
5.
Educational services should complete its review of SEN and implement the revised
policies and procedures to support pupils and schools.
Under the leadership of the Head of Policy, Planning and Special Educational
Needs, educational services had made significant progress in further improving
support for, and the experiences of, children and young people with special
educational needs.
The review of provision for pupils with special educational needs had resulted in a
more coherent and improved framework of services and support. The new
structure of services was well designed to take forward the Council’s commitment
to support pupils with special educational needs as far as possible in mainstream
schools and to ensure that schools had the services required to support pupils
across the range of additional support needs. The pre-five services for children
with special educational needs had been amalgamated into the new structure with
the commendable aim of improving continuity of support over the period of
transition to formal schooling. Only visiting teachers for pupils with learning
difficulties in the primary school had yet to be integrated into the new framework.
The review had also led to firm plans to rationalise special school provision to
provide an appropriate range of off campus provision for pupils whose needs could
not be adequately met in mainstream schools. With the agreement of parents, one
special school was to close and relocate as a department in the new building of a
secondary school. The Council’s new arrangements for managing services for
pupils with special educational needs had also addressed the problem of multiple
roles for headteachers of special schools, one of whom had also acted as adviser.
The headteachers now had more reasonable remits being responsible for school or
unit provision and co-ordinating related outreach services. A recently appointed
member of the QIO team had an appropriate dual remit of being QIO/adviser in
special educational needs and primary education. The new management structures
for services for pupils with special educational needs now ensured that all
members of staff were well led and supported. Responsibilities for monitoring and
evaluating the quality of provision for pupils with special educational needs were
clearly defined. While it was too early for the new approaches to impact fully on
improving provision, primary headteachers commented positively on the improved
support given to pupils with challenging behaviour.
Educational services were engaged in the process of updating and attempting to
streamline the procedures for determining the levels of support individual pupils
required. Headteachers had recently been introduced to the new procedures but
8
were uncertain about how they would work and needed more explicit guidance.
The procedures known as staged intervention had the merit of providing an
improved approach to monitoring the effectiveness of arrangements made to
support individual pupils.
The Council had continued with its successful approaches to integrating increasing
numbers of pupils with special educational needs in mainstream primary schools.
A special school had achieved considerable success on a project run with
secondary staff to provide some lessons each week in the mainstream school.
Pupils were very enthusiastic about their experiences which had also incorporated
opportunities to eat in the school’s dining room. The revised Accessibility
Strategy was helping to inform the design of the new secondary schools as well as
highlighting ways of giving pupils with special educational needs access to the
curriculum. The successful project run in conjunction with a voluntary agency to
promote the involvement of parents of children with special educational needs had
secured further funding to allow it to continue.
In updating its framework of support for pupils with special educational needs,
educational services had consolidated the very good, well established aspects of its
provision and created new structures to take forward effective practice on
inclusion.
6.
Further plans to improve and make more efficient use of educational buildings
should be taken forward.
The Council was in the process of taking forward ambitious plans to improve and
make more efficient use of educational buildings.
The Council was progressing a PPP scheme to address the condition of the
secondary school estate. Updated and ambitious plans currently under
development involved rebuilding all three secondary schools rather than one and
just refurbishing the others. The Council’s view was that such re-development of
the secondary estate would lead to an improved environment for pupils and make a
significant contribution to improving pupils’ attainment and achievement. It was
also of the view that building new schools, rather than refurbishing them would
provide better value for money. The revised scheme had the potential benefit of
eliminating, or at least minimising, the disruption to schools and pupils during the
development phase of the project. However, in order to deliver this revised
scheme, the authority had to address a funding gap, which it hoped to fill in part
through capital receipts. The Council was also considering the implication of the
project for council tax levels. While the revised scheme offered several
advantages, the disadvantage was the delay in progressing the project.
In order to address the rest of the school estate, the authority had recently
developed a schools estate management plan. In preparing this document, it had
commissioned a survey of each property, the conclusion of which was that there
was a significant backlog of repairs due to under-investment. The Council had
been able to access some additional capital monies over a period of three years to
address the problems. Due to the proposed PPP scheme, only essential
9
maintenance was being carried out in the secondary sector releasing capital monies
to be used on improving the remainder of the education estate.
In attempting to make more efficient use of educational buildings, the service had
continued to research innovative ways of utilising the spare capacity within the
school estate. This has included, for example, using excess capacity in the primary
school estate to accommodate the new physical education teachers and staff
recruited as part of the government’s specially funded sports initiative. The
proposals for rationalisation of special schools would free one old building for
other uses. Educational services continued to monitor closely the configuration
and use of school accommodation and consider ways of preventing wasteful excess
capacity.
7.
Improvements should be introduced to the authority’s systems for financial
management, as outlined in this report. Further improvements should be made to
ICT developments.
Some good steps have been taken towards improving the financial management
systems within the service, although there had been delays in introducing the
revised devolved school management (DSM) scheme. Considerable improvements
had been made to the infrastructure and use of ICT.
The authority had addressed the requirement to move all schools on to the
Council’s ledger system, resulting generally in significant improvements in the
quality and reliability of financial information, despite the initial short-term
disruption to administrative support for schools. Authority staff were working to
resolve some remaining technical problems which were preventing some schools
from making the most of this enhanced service provision.
The Council’s commitment to further improve financial management was evident
in the appointment of a new Director of corporate finance. The authority had made
progress in developing three year revenue and capital budgeting. As a result, the
Council was in a better position to evaluate its resource constraints over the longer
term and had used a budget working group of senior officers and members to
review base budgets. This process may identify resources which could be better
deployed. Educational services as other departments within Services to People
were in the process of linking service planning more closely to budgeted resources.
The support provided to schools, specifically by financial administrative officers
(FAOs), continued to be very good. In addition to the day to day support provided,
depute headteachers in primary schools had received useful and necessary training
on general financial awareness. In an effort to benchmark the support they
currently provided to schools, the authority had visited another authority which
had been reported to provide very good financial support to schools. Following
this visit, the authority has developed an action plan outlining areas for
improvement.
10
The revised DSM scheme had not been rolled out in schools because it required
further upgrading to take account of the changes in costs of staffing brought about
by the implementation of the Teachers’ Agreement, particularly the introduction of
principal teacher posts in primary schools. Educational services had identified
further resources which they had devolved to schools. This had included, for
example, budgets in relation to classroom assistants and technicians.
Very positive steps have been taken towards improving the provision and use of
ICT. All schools within the authority were now connected to the Council’s
network. In completing this work, the previous network reliability issues have
been overcome. Consequently, teachers and pupils were making good use of the
network.
Conclusion
In the short time since the inspection, Clackmannanshire Council had made
encouraging progress in addressing the main points for action in the report. It had
ensured a period of settled leadership for educational services which had allowed
major initiatives in progress at the time of the inspection to be concluded. Of
particular importance was the establishment of a team of quality improvement officers
under the leadership of a strong senior officer as part of a more rigorous framework of
quality assurance and support for schools. This team, only just fully in place, had the
potential to bring about significant improvements by providing consistent and
sustained relationships with primary and secondary schools. They and schools
urgently required access to an effective and efficient management information system
and further support to collate, record and analyse key data for tracking and evaluating
pupils’ attainment and progress. The Council’s commissioned report on secondary
schools had identified areas of strength and made recommendations to improve the
quality of learning, teaching and achievement. Secondary schools required further
support to assist them in their priority task of putting in place a coherent set of
strategies to fulfil these recommendations. The new framework for supporting pupils
with special educational needs built on long established very good practice and
addressed weaknesses in aspects of support. Financial and resource management was
being improved.
The authority was addressing the main points for action in the report with
purpose and determination. The new team of Quality Improvement Officers had
significant potential once it had established its role in challenging schools more
rigorously. The clear lead of the Directorate in taking forward the wide ranging
agenda for improvement is recognised but the current focus will need to be
strongly maintained to ensure the required impact on pupils’ attainment and
achievement, particularly in secondary schools. Overall the authority’s work in
the year since the original inspection had set in place a number of significant
improvements, but these were necessarily still at an early stage and had still to
impact fully on the intended outcomes for young people.
Around one year after the publication of this report, HM Inspectors will re-visit
the authority to assess further progress in meeting the main points for action.