OfSTED critics - an ever-increasing community - frequently attack the inspectorate’s judgement scale. Virtually very time that OfSTED publishes national evaluations of how schools are doing, the teaching community protests that they have ‘raised the bar’. In light of how deep the inspectorate’s flaws run and how fundamentally defective the very premise of the inspection system is, concern about OfSTED’s grading system has always seemed to me to be redundant.
However, looking at criticisms of OfSTED’s latest findings on the state of secondary schools, their faulty scoring system does command attention. OfSTED has difficulties with the concept of averages just as New Labour has demonstrated it does. Both government and inspectorate have adopted the view that the act of raising the bar will automatically make pupils jump higher. Not only is this unlikely to be effective, it’s illogical. Within this raising of the bar, the average becomes unacceptable; yet however high standards may be, there is still going to be an average. In the primary sector, this defiance of normal distributions has been intrinsic in the government’s improvement drive. For example: Under the Conservatives, the primary literacy and numeracy achievement level, Level 4 was set as the average level of attainment for Year 6 pupils, meaning that roughly 50 per cent could be expected to reach or exceed it. New Labour, however, took Level 4 as the expected level. In other words, this government envisaged every Year 6 pupil achieving Level 4. OfSTED frequently adopts the same type of strategy, described here in The Times Education Supplement:
“Ofsted verdicts now place great weight on statistical judgements about how good a school’s test and exam results are. The TES has seen copies of inspection packs in which inspectors are asked to use statistical tools in reaching a verdict on how high standards are in a school. Each of these tools is framed in the same way: a comparison is made as to how good the school’s results are, compared to the national average. This can be plotted graphically, with the national average represented as a line in the middle. Those schools which finish well above the line are likely to be “outstanding” for standards. It is not surprising, in a regime constructed like this, that many schools will be average, and many will be below average, since by definition all schools cannot be above average. Yet OfSTED… appears to be saying it is unacceptable that more schools are not above average. Given how this measurement system worked, how could it be any other way?” [Warwick Mansell, 01.12.06, TES].
Nevertheless, ultimately the flawed premise of OfSTED’s judgements means that a distorted portrayal of standards doesn’t really matter; even a ‘accurate’ analysis by the inspectorate would not be much more enlightening about the state of schools in terms of learning standards.