The Independent Schools Inspectorate’s plans to overhaul its inspection regime

The Independent Schools Inspectorate (‘ISI’) has proposed changes to its inspection regime amid concerns that assessments focus on bureaucratic health and safety guidelines instead of the real issues of quality of teaching, educational performance and classroom success. It is envisaged that the final arrangements, which are not yet announced, will be piloted from September 2011 and fully implemented in January 2012.

The proposals follow the recent changes to the Department of Education’s (‘DfE’) health and safety guidance on the legal duties of schools, which have been reduced from 150 pages to just 8 pages, meaning that the ISI must now change its inspection process to meet the new national standards. These measures, which apply to activities that take place on and off the school premises, have been introduced to encourage teachers to adopt a ‘common sense’ approach to health and safety, and reassure them that not every school requires hundreds of pages of risk assessment and consent forms for routine, local visits. This change is in line with the coalition government’s remodelling of the vetting and barring scheme introduced by the Labour government back to ‘proportionate common sense levels.’

The changes will undoubtedly be welcomed by those independent schools which despite providing high standards of education were criticised by inspectors under the current regime. This was because they breached minimum standards covering safety and welfare required by the ‘tick box’ inspections, such as by not storing CRB checks in a single central record, failing to tell parents that they had the right to see the school’s plans to meet the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act 2002 or even having a shower with low water pressure in a boarding house.

Fundamental to the ISI’s approach is its aim to streamline its inspections so that they are more proportionate to the educational and welfare needs of pupils. In general, the intention is that schools which care for boarders or pupils in the Early Years Foundation Stage will continue to be inspected once every three years, whilst other schools will be checked once every six years. Inspection intervals will however additionally be determined by a number of other factors, such as the outcome of the school’s previous inspection, with those found to be underperforming being inspected more frequently. The ISI also proposes a single inspection visit of four days with only the first day dedicated, as far as possible, to regulatory issues, leaving the remaining three days to be spent on classroom observation and other activities. This will allow the ISI to increase the amount of time available to inspectors to focus more on what really matters for pupils and understand what it is like to be a pupil at a given school. In support of this aim, the ISI also plans to change the size of its inspection teams to ensure that more reliable sample lessons can be examined during a single visit. Team sizes would be calculated in proportion to the number of full-time staff working at a school rather the pupil size, which previously left smaller schools feeling overburdened and larger schools feeling that insufficient evidence was gathered.

In response to feedback from schools, the ISI intends to move towards clearer, more accessible inspection reports in order to engage with parents more effectively. It plans to make it easier for parents to compare the ISI reports with Ofsted reports for state schools whilst retaining the benefits of less formulaic writing and clear distinctions in the range of quality assessments. Key changes could include the use of fixed grade descriptors, an overarching grade for the school, grade tables, questionnaires response tables and more benchmarking data.

One aspect which appears to remain unchanged is the retention of the short period of notice of 5 days in advance of an inspection visit.

Whilst it has been suggested that the recent health and safety reforms are not sufficiently detailed enough to minimise the risk of litigation against schools, it is worth noting that in the past 5 years, only 2 cases have been brought by the Health and Safety Executive in relation to schools and that these were in situations where there was a clear failure to follow sensible precautions. It is therefore difficult to see how the ISI’s proposals to reduce bureaucracy and judge schools against their quality of teaching, instead of arduous compliance with pages of health and safety regulations, will not be met with widespread support from independent schools and parents. 

The consultation period on the ISI’s proposals ran from 3 May 2011 until 10 June 2011 and the ISI is due to publish a summary of its findings this month. The final regime will be subject to the results of the consultation and the approval of the DfE.