This year promises to be a significant one for the Department for Education, shaping how this government is seen by those working in schools, and the wider public, for a long time to come.
In the autumn, for example, we will see the full report of the Francis review into curriculum and assessment. At the same time, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will lead to changes to long-held academy freedoms, including around teacher pay and following the national curriculum.
The autumn will also see the introduction of a new approach to accountability from the DfE and a new Ofsted framework.
Rapid turnaround
Changes to accountability could have the most far-reaching impact on the sector, given its implications for teacher turnover and wellbeing, and the financial implications of shifting parental preferences.
Few would say the current accountability system does not need reforming in some way. But inevitably, what people would prioritise in that reform can vary considerably. And the timescales for reform are tight.
Indeed, when I worked as a statistician in the Department for Education and Skills in the early 2000s, I recall that the introduction of new performance measures could sometimes take years of consultation and piloting.
Why change is needed
Ahead of expected consultations from the DfE and Ofsted, we have today published a short discussion paper on what we think the key challenges are and what a reformed system could look like.
A long-standing concern is that we have an accountability system that does not paint a fair picture of school effectiveness.
Schools serving disadvantaged communities are far more likely to be labelled as underperforming - about one in three highly disadvantaged schools have Progress 8 scores that are well below average, compared with just one in 50 schools serving the least disadvantaged communities.
Meanwhile, the same measure, based on the average progress of pupils in mainstream schools, is used for special schools.
Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming majority of special schools whose Progress 8 scores are published (and a large number are not published) have scores that are “well below average”.
Such a performance measure is unlikely to tell us anything meaningful about the quality of education and support received by pupils in these schools.
Performance measures can also act as a disincentive to inclusion for all pupils. Our previous work has shone light on the scale of “unexplained exits” - pupils leaving school rolls for reasons that did not seem to be instigated by family events. Three-quarters of exits were by pupils who were in a vulnerable group.
The report card confusion
Alongside recognising the context of a school, measures that provide a more rounded assessment of school performance could go some way to help mitigate some of the risks associated with perverse incentives.
In recent months, we have heard a lot about the school report card, but we do not yet know what it will look like. Bizarrely, it is not entirely clear whether it is the DfE or Ofsted that is leading its production. Is it a DfE replacement for performance tables, a new approach to Ofsted reports, or both?
The overlap between Ofsted and the DfE on the report card speaks to wider tensions around the role of Ofsted. To maintain its independence, and the independence of inspections, it should not have a role in school improvement.
However, it will come as little surprise that we at the Education Policy Institute (EPI) are broadly supportive of a report card approach to school accountability.
Last year, we published our own effective school groups metric tool that we hope can serve as a blueprint for what the report card should contain.
A mix of metrics
Today, we have so that school and trust leaders, the DfE and Ofsted can view the latest data we have on pupil outcomes, pupil intakes, and workforce and financial management.
It is always tempting to use these kinds of datasets to try to identify “who is the best”. Indeed, our first release at the EPI was a league table of multi-academy trusts and local authorities.
But such tables present only one dimension of school performance, one that is perhaps oversimplified and risks inducing some of the perverse incentives that we have been critical of.
What is most striking about the data we have published today is that it highlights how few groups score highly on every measure and how few score badly on everything.
We have deliberately avoided combining all of the measures into a single metric - the reality is always more complex than that.
It will hopefully lead to a more intelligent accountability system, one that does not attempt to reduce everything a school or a group of schools does to a single number or a single judgement.
Jon Andrews is head of analysis and director for school system and performance at the EPI
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