Education (Scotland) Bill - Detailed call for views

AHDS is a trade union for promoted teachers (primarily Head Teachers, Depute Heads and Principal Teachers) from Scotland's primary, nursery and additional support needs schools. We represent over 80% of primary HTs and have over 2700 members in total.

Broadly, these provisions are as would be expected. However, some confusion emerges as the provisions progress.

Section 30 indicates that the Chief Inspector will determine the frequency of inspections of relevant educational establishments. It then goes on to say that Scottish Ministers may make regulations specifying the frequency of inspections. Such regulations may only be made after consultation with the Chief Inspector and the planned Advisory Council.

This power for Ministers appears to constrain the independence of the Chief Inspector, the real-world implication being that the Chief Inspector would be seeking Ministerial approval for their inspection plans and schedule.

Further, Section 35 requires the Chief Inspector to have regard to the advice of the Advisory Council. This seeks to give control of inspection systems to the professionals in the charge of the Chief Inspector and those education professionals (and others) likely to be affected by the Chief Inspector’s functions. This model has plainly been designed to ensure that inspection is responsive to the needs of the system rather and to insure against political direction skewing process or practice.

If this power is maintained, some way should be found to ensure it is only used in exceptional circumstances – eg when the Chief Inspector and Advisory Council hold irreconcilable positions.

AHDS is content with this section.

The opportunity should be taken to make HMIe the sole agency involved in inspection of local authority nursery schools and classes. This would be similar to the provision which sets out that HMIe would only be able to inspect initial teacher education but not other functions of local authorities, as there are already other scrutiny arrangements in place.

The purpose of this change would be to tackle the over-inspection of nurseries and would be more cost effective. The remaining early years provision could stay under the Care Inspectorate inspection systems but no longer have HMIe visits.

AHDS recognises that the work of HMIe goes beyond school education but we restrict our comments to that.

It is plain that the legislation is designed to establish a separate body for inspection in Scottish Education. However, as drafted, there has been no attempt to reimagine inspection to develop a more modern, efficient and effective system which better supports school improvement.

It is our view that individual school inspections do not strategically contribute to system assurance or system improvement. Very infrequent school level inspections resulting in a moment in time summative report cannot perform these roles effectively. Further, this approach fails to recognise the important statutory role of local authorities in relation to school improvement.

Instead, in relation to schools, the Inspectorate should inspect local authorities to ensure they have staffing and systems in place that allow them to effectively know and support improvements in education provision. (The exception to this would be grant-aided schools and independent schools where individual inspections might continue to take place.) This would provide much greater reach for the inspectorate, streamlining and simplifying accountability models and offer more meaningful and regular system level assurance in relation to education provision and improvement.

In relation to ELC, the same approach should cover local authority provision with the Care Inspectorate no longer involved. Other early years settings should continue to be inspected by the Care Inspectorate, without HMIE involved. This would reduce the over-inspection of the ELC sector and would be more cost effective.

No.