A Great Education for All

The Headteachers Roundtable

POLICY PAPER:
INTELLIGENT ACCOUNTABILITY

Education Election Manifesto 2015

Media contact: Ros McMullen
ros.mcmullen@leafacademytrust.org.uk
@RosMcM

We are a non-party political group of Headteachers operating as a think-tank,

exploring policy issues from a range of perspectives. Our goal is to provide a
vehicle for people working in the profession to influence national education
policymakers so that education policy is centred upon what is best for the
learning of all children.
Twitter: @HeadsRoundtable
Find us at: http://headteachersroundtable.wordpress.com
Contact us at: headteachersrt@hotmail.co.uk

A Great Education for All

Less is always more. If we try to change too much we often end up changing very little and
damaging what we didnt want to change in the first place.
Our ten policy proposals are a modest collection of coherent ideas which, if implemented
fully, would result in a huge improvement to the education system of this country.
Implementing our proposals will take the will of politicians and a commitment to investing
in education; without investment, growth is very difficult to establish.
If we are going to grow great teachers and provide a great education for all, we have to
invest in improving the quality of education in this country.
Its that simple.

Ten Policies towards a Great Education for All

1a:

1b:
2a:
2b:
3a:
3b:
4a:
4b:
5a:
5b:

To introduce the entitlement to a professional development programme leading to

QTS for all teachers after a maximum of two years induction and a masters-level
professional qualification after five years.
To implement the blueprint for the Royal College of Teaching.
To introduce a National Baccalaureate framework following the Headteachers
Roundtable model.1
To introduce progressive qualifications in English and mathematics up to Level 3 to
facilitate continued study to 18 for all learners.
To implement an Intelligent Inspection Framework.
To stabilise Performance Measures.
To harmonise freedoms across maintained schools and academies.
To Introduce Transition Standards Grants to incentivise innovation towards systematic
primary- secondary progression.
To develop a National 0-5 Parent Support Strategy.
To establish a National Recruitment Fund.

http://headteachersroundtable.wordpress.com/2014/01/19/htrt-english-baccalaureate-trial-update-jan-2014/

Intelligent Accountability
We believe in a rigorous and credible accountability system which delivers excellence for our
young people by:
assisting schools and academies to continuously improve
giving parents accurate pictures of their local schools and academies
enabling providers to better understand their schools and academies in order to
support
enabling accurate system review for government to inform spending priorities
The high stakes nature of the current accountability frameworks has created a culture in schools
which restricts the rate of improvement we need and deters high calibre school leaders from
seeking headship. Inspection processes are flawed and the use of data measures too simplistic
given the consequences for falling below progress and attainment targets. Our education
system has become more orientated towards compliance than innovation; more preoccupied
with short-term gains than deep level improvement. This has caused serious damage to the
credibility of the inspection service with parents, providers and professionals. We believe this is
unhealthy.
Whilst we welcome recent clarifications to the current OFSTED framework and the move to the
new Progress 8 measure , there is still much further to go to restore credibility, reduce
inconsistency, mitigate against the damaging effects of a the high stakes involved, and ensure
that high calibre school leaders are motivated and utilised.
Judgement based accountability
There is a need to re-engineer away from inspection (an historical review of the effectiveness of
a school) to a continual quality assurance system. This will necessitate:
Executive Headship and Headship training involving quality assurance.
All schools and academies to have a mandatory involvement in quality assurance
process.
Peer Review to be a fundamental part of the process.
Peer Review to be validated by HMI as a critical friend.
A re-engineering on these lines will prevent schools from getting into cycles of underperformance which are currently only picked up after the event. The involvement of HMI will
ensure a dissemination of best practice in quality assurance work throughout the system.
Data based accountability
With the exception of refining and ironing out any residual flaws in the new Progress 8 measure,
performance measures should not be amended for the period of the next parliament in order to
ensure stability.
The EBacc measure should be dropped as it is redundant with the new Progress 8 and it detracts
from the National Baccalaureate development.
In order to avoid the continuing over-simplification of data such that important details are lost,
schools and academies should be required to provide a standardised annual data commentary
on their website accounting for their performance outcomes and trends over time. This will
facilitate intelligent evaluation of performance against a range of criteria. The commentary
should include a statement of action against areas of relative concern.
3

The First 100 Days

We believe the following actions should be taken in the first 100 days of any
new government:
1. To work with professionals to re-engineer the system as described in this
paper on Intelligent Accountability.
2. To halt reviews to the current OFSTED framework.
3. Pending the new system, to focus resources on ensuring a trained
Headteacher is part of all inspections teams.
4. To direct HMI to support schools in a category.
5. To ensure that all paperwork involved in an inspection should be
released, including desk-based decision making and evidence forms.

Twitter: @HeadsRoundtable
Find us at: http://headteachersroundtable.wordpress.com
Contact us at: headteachersrt@hotmail.co.uk