Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): I welcome Dr David Hughes, the director of curriculum, qualifications and standards, Noelle Buick, chief inspector of the Education and Training Inspectorate (ETI), and Paul McAlister, the assistant chief inspector of the ETI. I ask you to make an opening statement, and we will go to questions after that.

Mrs Noelle Buick (Education and Training Inspectorate): Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you very much for your welcome this morning. I will start off with a statement, and my colleague David Hughes will complete it.

I take this opportunity to put on record the thanks of the Department, including that of the ETI, to the Committee for the report on its inquiry into the ETI and the school improvement process. We welcome the report, particularly where it can add value and help us to promote improvement in the interest of learners.

The Department's vision for school improvement is set out in Every School a Good School, which you will be aware of. The inspection, support, advice and challenge provided by the ETI in its work to promote improvement in the interests of learners is an integral part of the school improvement process.

Moving on to the recommendations; you have received the briefing paper with a response to each recommendation. I will provide a high-level outline of our response to the recommendations related to school improvement and the contribution of inspection. In responding to the inquiry, we gave careful consideration to the three main areas covered by the recommendations: first, the role of inspection in the improvement process; secondly, the operational aspects of inspection; and thirdly, the school improvement policy. I will cover the recommendations that relate to the ETI and inspection — points one and two — and Dr Hughes will cover those related to the Department at point three.

Moving on to the specific recommendations and turning to the role of inspection in school improvement and the structure of inspection support services — recommendations 2, 15 and 16 — Every School a Good School articulates that there are many elements to the school improvement process, and inspection is an integral and significant part of that process.

It is positive that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study of evaluation and assessment systems in Northern Ireland, published in December 2013, recognised the value of inspection, and I welcome the Committee's acknowledgement that professional, independent and broadly based inspection of schools is, and should continue to be, an essential component of the school improvement process.

Inspection is a catalyst for improving the quality of education for our young people, simultaneously raising expectations and building capacity. The ETI has the learner at the centre of all its work. Inspection promotes improvement by ensuring that best practice is highlighted and that poor provision is identified and improved. It is the Department and the ETI's position that the ETI should carry out its inspection functions in a manner that is fully independent of the Department and can report without fear or favour. The evidence of follow-up inspections and the findings of post-inspection surveys is that the inspection process does support schools to improve. In the last business year, 80% of organisations improved by at least one performance level at the follow-up inspection.

While much has been said about the benefits of the system in Scotland, it remains a relatively new system, and it would be prudent to conduct a further study of its advantages and any possible drawbacks once it becomes embedded. The Department has no plans to establish a new organisation or rename the ETI, but it will continue to have in mind the Committee's view on the structure of school inspection and support services.

Moving on to recommendations 3 to 10 and 13, which relate to the operational aspects of inspection, the ETI goes to considerable lengths to communicate the inspection methodology through guidance material, presentations and conferences, and pre-inspection visits by the reporting inspector. The moderation process is clear in the guidance, and the summary of main findings is left with the school. As I said during the inquiry, this autumn we have begun to pilot having a representative from the school in our team and moderation meetings.

The complaints procedure is reviewed regularly and meets the requirements of the ombusdman's best practice principles. Recommendations 5 and 6 relate to surveys and questionnaires. In drafting its surveys, the ETI agrees in principle that external stakeholders should be consulted as part of the development process. Post-inspection surveys are carried out on the ETI's behalf by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA), and it is responsible for the survey methodology and design.

The ETI repeats that it does not use anonymous questionnaires. All questionnaires have to be signed by parents or have a teacher reference number. On inspection reports, the ETI considers best practice and reviews its reporting regularly. We have also identified the need to consider the performance level descriptors. Work is already under way to review those.

In relation to recommendation 9, district inspectors do have a role in inspection in their districts, but they will not be the reporting inspector. The ETI is committed to the role of the district inspector and intends to continue to allocate as much resource to that as possible.

In relation to Irish-medium education, the Department, including the ETI, has considered the recommendation carefully in relation to the statutory duty to encourage and facilitate Irish-medium education. The ETI seeks to deploy the most suitable teams to all of its inspection work, including Irish-medium education, and we are exploring ways of strengthening our capacity in that provision.

In relation to recommendation 13, district inspectors already have a considerable role in promoting self-evaluation leading to improvement, and the ETI will do as much as it can to promote that further. We already use a risk-based approach to inspection, and we are developing that further through the sustaining improvement pilot inspections of very good and outstanding schools.

That was a high-level response regarding inspection and improvement. I hand over to Dr Hughes, who will look at the recommendations related to school improvement policy.

Dr David Hughes (Department of Education): I start by reiterating the point that inspection is an integral part of the school improvement process. As the Minister has stated, a key strength of our system identified by the OECD was the coherence of our school improvement policies and the appropriateness of their focus on self-evaluation. That report also recognised the benefit and importance of inspection in supporting and encouraging self-evaluation. A number of the recommendations relate to issues which are central to our school improvement policy, including resources to support school improvement and self-evaluation, as well as the specific issues of measuring value added and the importance of parental engagement.

Let us look at recommendation 1. The Every School a Good School policy makes it clear that the primary responsibility for school improvement rests with schools themselves. It is recognised, of course, that in striving to ensure that the characteristics of a good school are embedded universally, schools may require support to develop and deliver school improvement. The nature and source of that support differs, depending on the school's particular context and issues.

To ensure that all pupils receive a high-quality education, there must be a focus on ensuring that underperforming schools, identified through inspection or by managing authorities, receive the support they need. The focus of the formal intervention process is on ensuring that pupils receive the highest possible quality of teaching and learning, so that they can achieve their full potential. However, support for school improvement is not limited to those schools.

The Department recognises the importance of maximising the impact of finite and increasingly constrained resources and is currently looking at the support available for schools and teachers. Our aim is to identify what gaps exists and how they might best be addressed.

The Department welcomes the Committee's recommendation to adopt measures more effectively to promote a self-evaluation culture. That is set out in recommendation 12. Effective self-evaluation leading to sustained improvement is, as I have said, at the heart of the school improvement policy. The Department, including the inspectorate and managing authorities, have all worked to promote and support this process across all schools. Internal self-evaluation that is complemented by external evaluation helps to ensure objectivity. However, we acknowledge that more work can always be done. We welcome consideration of any additional measures that might usefully be adopted, building upon the advances that have been made in recent years in developing self-improvement and self-evaluation in schools.

Reflecting the Every School a Good School policy, the inquiry highlights the importance of schools being connected to their community and particularly to parents. I am referring to recommendation 14. The Department, including the inspectorate, accepts that it would be beneficial to have a more structured means through which to involve and consult with parents at a system level. We have given consideration to how this could be best achieved and resourced.

The Department also noted the point made in the inquiry about the measurement of added value. I am referring to recommendation 11. It remains of the view that moderated teacher assessment at the end of key stages 1, 2 and 3 of those cross-curricular skills of communication using mathematics represents the best means of introducing a common measure that can be used to determine not only the level of attainment but the progress made by pupils. The Department is taking steps to build confidence in the reliability and validity of that process.

Additionally, however, the Department is undertaking work to develop what we have referred to as a dashboard of measures, which together will provide a quantitative profile of a school's context and performance which complements the qualitative evaluation of a school provided by inspection. In line with the Committee's recommendation, the Department has already visited schools and had discussions around potential measures. We are also planning to establish a panel involving practising teachers, principals and teacher representatives to inform this work.

Those are the high-level points reflecting those recommendations. We would be pleased to answer any questions.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): OK. Thank you very much.

Unfortunately, I was not on the Committee while it went through this process, but I was here for the terms of reference. Obviously, now, it is interesting to have read the report and your response to it. I am aware that the Committee spent considerable time collating information. I know that a huge number of witnesses wished to come forward and make representations to the Committee and that you have had the report for around five months. I suppose it is quite disappointing that your responses are quite vague and, at times, unclear. I believe that that does not really give the report the justice that it deserves.

To get much more clarity for Committee members and me, I hope that you do not mind if we look at each recommendation in turn and get a very clear steer from you on whether you are considering moving forward with it; if so, the timescale for doing that, and if not, the reason for not doing that. I also encourage members, as we move through each recommendation, to indicate whether they wish to ask a question on it.

If we look at recommendation 1 on the adequate resourcing for school improvement, could we get a response from you on whether that is something that you propose to move forward with and whether you have considered making changes to the formal intervention process? Obviously, the Committee highlighted concerns about the vague wording and what it may actually mean.

Mrs Buick: Thank you, Chair. I will begin and maybe Dr Hughes can pick up on it. What we outlined a moment ago was just a high-level response to the recommendations. You have received a memorandum with a more detailed background note on our position on each recommendation. You will see that the Department accepts recommendation 1 on adequately resourcing the school improvement service. I will speak from the inspection side about our role in school improvement. Dr Hughes will pick up on the formal intervention and school support service.

When a school is satisfactory, inadequate or unsatisfactory, it goes into a follow-up inspection process. If it is inadequate or unsatisfactory, it is a 12- to 18-month process. Those schools would currently go into the formal intervention process. Inspectors will follow up on areas for improvement with those schools through interim follow-up visits and the follow-up inspection, so they do get an element of support from the inspectorate if they are in that position. The same applies to satisfactory schools. They are also in the follow-up process, but obviously not currently in the formal intervention process. So, a good level of support is provided from the inspectorate in those circumstances. For the inadequate and unsatisfactory schools, further support is provided by the Curriculum Advisory and Support Service (CASS), so they have additional support provided to them.

As Dr Hughes said, school improvement rests with the school. They may have other sources of support, but they source those themselves depending on what the area of improvement is. Of course, lots of good practice is available for schools to access through ESaGS.TV and the conferences and dissemination events that the inspectorate undertakes. So, a good level of support is already available.

It is really important to say about the formal intervention process that since 2009, when the Every School a Good School policy was implemented, 45 schools went into the formal intervention process. Only 10 remain in that process. As a result, nearly 7,000 pupils now get a better education. I think we need to see formal intervention as a supportive process. That is absolutely what it is intended to be. I will hand over to my colleague, who will supplement my answer.

Dr Hughes: I will begin by reiterating the point that the school itself will be at the heart of school improvement. I say that, reflecting on the role of the leadership of the school, the principal, staff and board of governors, which is the first place where self-evaluation and self-improvement begins. That is where it starts. That is the motor. In the circumstances where additional support may well be needed, there are external forms of support. I am sure that the Committee is aware of the role of the boards and other authorities in that, the role that the inspectorate can play in supporting a school and the work that the district inspectors will do on an ongoing basis. Therefore, we would point to the resourcing of school improvement service as actually being the support to the school in the first place. It is the school that has the lead role in school improvement.

There are, then, the external supports that come with the boards, in particular.

You mentioned changes to the formal intervention process. A certain number of changes have been proposed and brought to the Committee. I understand that the Committee — I should make sure that I use the correct expression — was reserving its position at the time that it was briefed on those changes. We were conscious that we were bringing that to the Committee at the same time as the inquiry into school improvement was happening. Therefore, the implementation of those proposed changes has been deferred until the changes can be lined up with any of the consideration of the Committee's inquiry and its recommendations. However, the intention is to take them forward.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): There is an intention to take them forward, but do we have the timescale for that?

Dr Hughes: We have not set a timescale. We hope to have these in place very promptly, but we also wanted to make sure that we were not out of step with any changes that arise here.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): At what stage will you have a definitive timescale?

Dr Hughes: I think that we will need to discuss internally whether any issues arising from the response of the Department and the inspectorate to the inquiry recommendations would alter the terms of the changes to the formal intervention process. I am thinking at a relatively cosmetic level — the categories. The formal intervention process is triggered when a school is inspected and falls at or below a certain level. If there is to be any change to the language in which those are —

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Will you clarify "cosmetic level"?

Dr Hughes: At the moment, when a school is found to be "satisfactory" sequentially, the proposal has been that it would benefit from the support that comes from the formal intervention process. However, if the word "satisfactory" is not going to be used, we would not necessarily put out a message saying that it is about being satisfactory. It is just about the language used, if you see what I mean. Rather than taking one of these two things forward soon after the other, it would be better if they happened at the same time.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): I imagine that the Committee will come back to you to seek a much clearer timeline.

Mr Kinahan: I apologise, Noelle, for not attending your launch last week. I was not particularly well that day.

I echo what the Chair has said: we put a lot of work in here; we came up with some very good recommendations; and we really would like a lot of them taken on board. The response that we get is that you are doing it but do not really want to, if I can put it that way. We need to see more going on.

I want two ask two specific questions. You said that work is under way to look at the gaps in school improvement support. What work is that? Is it with every school? Is it general? Have you a timeline that will show us where the gaps are and whether they correspond with what we have been finding? We have marked out quite a few gaps.

Dr Hughes: That work will look at a system level rather than school by school. It is looking at what supports for teacher professional development, in particular, are actually available. There is a fairly persistent murmuring that there is no teacher professional development going on; in fact, there is, and it is very useful. It is very important that we, at the centre, are clear about what is being delivered, what is being provided and from which sources. I am afraid that there is a limit to how much I am able to say about that because it is not in my area of responsibility.

Mr Kinahan: OK.

Mrs Buick: It is worth mentioning, Mr Kinahan, that quite a lot of support has been put into schools within the last year through the Delivering Social Change project: for example, 291 schools have an additional teacher of literacy and numeracy because of the newly qualified teachers.

Mr Kinahan: I agree with that.

Mrs Buick: We have a capacity-building project for primary schools to enable the earlier identification of any developmental needs and additional support that those pupils might need. Specific training has been put in place for those teachers. Also, £500,000 was given to the area learning communities so that they can establish some best practice in literacy and numeracy.

English and maths, or literacy and numeracy, is one of the big areas that we need to focus on, and there has been a lot of activity in that area. We are about to evaluate the Delivering Social Change project — the literacy and numeracy teachers. That evaluation will come out in the next year. Those are important aspects of professional support that are being provided for teachers.

Mr Kinahan: They are all excellent ideas, and I look forward to hearing how successful they are. However, there does not seem to be a comprehensive study so that you know what are the true gaps in schools and which areas are not getting help from those various initiatives. Last year's vice principals' report said that they were struggling with the amount being thrown at them and the time that they had to do it. They were unable to take up all their professional training. That same point came through from the unions and everyone else. There are some great ideas, but will there be a comprehensive check so that you can see where the gaps are? That is what concerns me. There seem to be huge gaps. Some nice things are happening, but there is nothing thorough.

Mrs Buick: Dr Hughes will probably come in on this in a moment. As I said, one of the big areas that we need to focus on is literacy and numeracy. That was clearly identified as a gap, and action has been taken to address that. It is fair to say that there has been an analysis of where the areas for improvement are and that action has been put in place. We can always have more professional development. I am aware that teachers are professionals and that they relish and enjoy professional development because they want to do the job to the absolute best of their ability. However, there are definitely very relevant and important professional development opportunities in place that impact on learners. The most important thing is that learners are at the centre of everything here.

Mr Kinahan: You talked about training for schools, boards and governors. Again, I wonder whether there is a comprehensive system to make sure that every governor is involved. My concern is that everything is patchwork, partly because the resources are not there. We are not getting a clear picture. Is all the training going to every school and getting to every board? Does everyone realise what is available?

Mrs Buick: We would probably dispute the use of the word "patchwork" because we think that it is targeted where it is most needed. My colleague Paul may want to come in on this in a moment. The Education and Training Inspectorate, for example, has devised a tool to enable boards of governors to self-evaluate their skills and expertise. Using that tool, they identify their particular training needs. There has just been a series of presentations for boards of governors, and the Department and the Education and Training Inspectorate also attended. Paul was part of that.

Mr Paul McAlister (Education and Training Inspectorate): I agree that building the capacity of teachers and governors is extremely important. We realise that they are volunteers, and we have to be mindful of that. However, every encouragement should be given to governors to take up the training opportunities that will be provided. I, along with colleagues in the Department of Education, was part of what was termed a governors road show, which gave governors an insight into how they could use the self-evaluation pro forma on the ETI website, for example, to self-evaluate their role as governors. The aim was to emphasise the important balance between challenge and support that can ensure that governors have a good knowledge of the life and work of a school, and a good input into and good influence on its improvement journey. The Department has also developed a governor support service.

Structural change was to take place as a result of the Education Bill and ESA. That did not happen, so development has not come into force as quickly as it could have . Certainly, I share your enthusiasm for governors having as much support as possible and being encouraged to avail themselves of the support made available to them, because they have a very important role to play in schools.

Mr McCausland: You mentioned that 45 schools had been in formal intervention. Is that correct?

Mrs Buick: Yes.

Mr McCausland: Over what period?

Mrs Buick: That was from 2009, when the Every School a Good School policy was implemented. Five schools, I think, have closed, and the remaining 29 came out of formal intervention. As of 30 June, 11 schools remained. In fact, this week, another one has come out, so only 10 schools now remain in formal intervention. That is a real success story: 10,000 pupils were attending schools that were not good enough, and, as a result of formal intervention, over 7,000 of them now get a better-quality education. That matters.

Mr McCausland: How many schools are there in Northern Ireland? What percentage is that?

Mrs Buick: There are about 825 primary schools, 210 post-primary schools and 40 special schools, so it is quite a small percentage.

Mr McCausland: Of the schools that you inspected, what percentage was it?

Mrs Buick: I am not sure that I can give you that figure. Off the top of my head, my inclination is that it is about 5%, but I would have to check that figure and come back to you.

Mr McCausland: It would be helpful to have that figure. It would also be helpful if you could tell us which schools have been in formal intervention so that we get a sense of whether there is an equal spread across all sectors or a geographical concentration in certain areas.

Mrs Buick: Schools in formal intervention are, I think, listed on the Department's website. That information has been publicly available. The 10 schools that remain in formal intervention are also listed on the website. These schools are, of course, ones that have been inspected since 2009, because it is an inadequate or unsatisfactory outcome that triggers a formal intervention process.

Mr McCausland: Do they tend to be in particular areas or sectors? Is it disproportionate?

Mrs Buick: We could give you the breakdown. As I say, it is on the DE website, but we can certainly provide that to the Committee, yes.

Mr McCausland: I have to confess that I am not the most regular reader of all of the details on the website, so perhaps you would forward that.

I will just ask that question again: bearing in mind the schools that you have inspected, do you see that a disproportionate number in a particular sector or geographical area are in formal intervention, or is there an equal spread?

Mrs Buick: When putting together our inspection schedule, we do not choose schools from one particular sector or another. That is not how we decide —

Mr McCausland: Yes, but you know the schools that you have inspected, and you will know the 45 schools in formal intervention.

Mrs Buick: We have had an issue with some schools in the non-grammar post-primary sector, for example, not performing well enough or providing as high a quality of education as they could provide to their young people. In the most recent period of the chief inspector's report, however, we have seen a sea change in the non-grammar schools that we inspected. Twelve of the 37 were good or better. So, we are seeing improvements there. That area needed focused intervention.

Mr McCausland: You mentioned the importance of governors. During a formal intervention process, what is the interaction between you and governors? Is it mainly with the principal and, possibly, the chair?

Mrs Buick: First, I should clarify that ETI has no role in deciding whether a school goes into a formal intervention process. That activity is undertaken by the Department. Our role is in the interim follow-up inspection and follow-up inspection. We look at the areas for improvement that were identified, which may well include the challenge that governors provide, and we would interact with them at that point.

Mr McCausland: What support is given to schools? Do the support mechanisms contact governors as well as principals?

Mrs Buick: I will let Dr Hughes pick up on the support provided.

Dr Hughes: The first point at which support is provided is when a school is going into formal intervention. I meet the chair of the board of governors, and that meeting is attended by a representative of the education and library board.

Mr McCausland: You meet only the chair of the board of governors.

Dr Hughes: Yes. That is in order to get assurance from the chair on how they are approaching the improvement process that they have entered and to hear how it is being taken forward. I think that, in many ways, it is also an important flag of the significance that we give to the process.

Mr McCausland: Leadership in a school is hugely important. So, too, is communication. Can you get that message across more widely, not only to the chair but to all governors? Would it not be better to meet all of them?

Dr Hughes: To be honest, there have been occasions when there has been more than one governor: the chair was invited and brought others. I think that, in practical terms, the chair is the chair of the governors, and a relatively modestly sized meeting is a useful one. The role of a board of governors is in the leadership — the principal and senior management — of the school. That is their ambit, as it were.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): I remind members that we are going through this recommendation by recommendation, and there are 16 of them. Mr Newton will ask a question very quickly.

Mr Newton: My question is on recommendation 2.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): OK. Thank you very much.

We will move on to recommendation 2, which is greater alignment between ETI and the school improvement services. Again, will you be clear on whether you accept the recommendation?

Mrs Buick: As our submission states, that would require legislative change. The Executive would need to make a decision on whether that alignment should take place. The point that I would like to make is that the current structures do not prevent ETI having a role in school improvement. I have outlined some of that already: the role of the district inspector, the support that we provide and the follow-up inspection process. In the past year, we have undertaken the promoting improvement in English and mathematics project, whereby inspectors directly support 19 schools in improving English and maths. So, I think that it is less about the structure and more about the activity and impact. The current structures do allow us to be involved in school improvement in a significant way.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Why do you believe that it requires legislation?

Mrs Buick: Our role is to monitor and report on the schools that we inspect. We have a school improvement role, but there is nothing specific or overt that says that that would be the case. My understanding is that it would require legislative change for us to be aligned with the school improvement service, so it would be an Executive decision.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): You would not be hostile to that, would you?

Mrs Buick: We are open to all suggestions, but it is worth saying that we are members of the Standing International Conference of Inspectorates (SICI) across Europe. It carried out a study that found that, across Europe, inspectorates and school improvement services have all sorts of different structures and that their effectiveness is not dependent on their structure; it depends on the work that they carry out and the impact of that work. So, I come back to the point that the structure, to me, is less important than the impact that we have on school improvement. I think that the fact that 80% of the organisations that we inspect have improved at the follow-up inspection demonstrates that inspection, in its current form, does work.

Mr Newton: You are touching on the area that I was going to pursue. I do not understand the legislative change. Maybe you want to come back to that at a later stage and offer a fuller explanation.

How do you intend to follow up on the Scottish model's success or otherwise?

Mrs Buick: The Scottish model was implemented only in 2011. There has not yet been a proper evaluation of its effectiveness because it is so new. Certainly, we would be interested in any evaluation of that alignment of school improvement and inspection to see what its impact has been. However, it is early days yet, and that has not happened.

Mr Newton: Is it just a matter of keeping an eye on it, or is there a reaction to what is happening in Scotland?

Mrs Buick: I meet the chief inspector of Scotland regularly. In fact, I meet all the chief inspectors of our near-neighbour inspectorates. We discuss how we carry out our role in school improvement. I cannot see much difference between the operational aspects of how we carry out our school improvement process and how the Scottish model undertakes its process. We have been able to do exactly as the Scottish inspectorate has been doing. Through the promoting improvement in English and mathematics project, we have been able to go into schools directly; carry out a baseline inspection; identify areas for improvement; and then our inspectors come in and provide targeted intervention and support. That is exactly what happens in Scotland, and we are able to do that under our current structure. We are not resourced to do that on any larger scale at the moment, and I do not believe that there are any intentions to resource us any further, given the current budget constraints. However, the structure, as it sits, does not stop us doing it.

Mr Newton: I will leave it there, but I would like to have an understanding of the legislative changes that would be necessary for the implementation of recommendation 2.

Mr P McAlister: Perhaps I can help there. I am not a lawyer, but I think that the relevant legislation is the 1986 Order, which gives power to the Department of Education to conduct inspections of schools, and the model of inspection is governed by that. The Education Reform Order 1989 gave particular duties and responsibilities to the Curriculum Advisory and Support Service in relation to providing support for schools. I do not know the intricacies of the law, but I think that, before there is any change, legal advice would need to be taken on how the proposed change would sit against the 1986 Order and the 1989 Order, which govern the situation at the moment.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Certainly, if legislative change is required, that is what we do.

Mr Paul McAlister: Yes, exactly.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): We might wish to explore that further.

Mr Kinahan: We were talking about independence. Just for interest, have you found any policy on which you have had to challenge the Minister or the Department, or are you always subject to following, and having to work within the constraints of, policy?

Mrs Buick: No. I reiterate the point: we inspect without fear or favour. If there is a policy or an outcome — for example, when we come to talk about the chief inspector's report, there is an issue with outcomes at GCSE — we will, without fear or favour, give our view. The Department does not constrain us in any way in having an independent role or view on any aspect of policy.

Mr Craig: Noelle, how on earth can the inspectorate divorce itself from the improvement system and expect a school to improve?

Mrs Buick: Our mission is:

so we do not divorce ourselves from improvement. We do not have a formal role in legislation, as Paul outlined, but in our daily activities, inspection, by itself, is an improvement process because we identify what a school is doing well and the areas in which it needs to improve. Then, through the follow-up process, we challenge and support a school through that role. We have discussed it before, and you will be aware of that role.

Mr Craig: Noelle, I am glad that you said that, because that is my experience: the inspectorate and the improvement service work hand in hand on much of this. So I wonder whether there is any opposition to recommendation 2 given that, realistically, if you want to improve the school, the two services have to work hand in hand.

Mrs Buick: There is no opposition to the recommendation. I would say that it is already happening. You said that you have experience of that working and working well. I am not sure that we need legislative change for it to work effectively, because we have demonstrated that it does. However, that is a decision to be made elsewhere.

Dr Hughes: The recommendation is, in fact, that a new and single organisation be created. If you are going to bring together two functions currently in separate organisations, you would have to make a new statutory organisation to encompass those two functions. I am not sure that the case has necessarily been made that you need a new statutory organisation for the new functions to operate side by side, in close harmony, or however you want to describe it. Those functions can operate very well together. In fact, they have to operate very well together. There is no point in having an inspection without support, and there is no point in having support without inspection.

The recommendation is to create a new organisation. The model being put in place in Scotland is a new organisation. The first thing that we would want to know is how they have made those two functions operate together so that we can learn from that, regardless of the structures, the management and governance organisation and all those framework aspects. I think that we are clear enough in our response to the recommendation. We have no plans to create a new organisation. However, I think that the Committee, in its inquiry, has clearly identified the importance of the inspection and support functions working as closely together as possible.

Mr Craig: In fact, Noelle, it is a three-way process. You, as the inspectors, do your job, and the improvement service does its job. However, the real secret to it is the school working with both. That is where the real improvements come from. When any school goes into intervention, you and the improvement service each have a key role. The logic, as we have seen in Scotland, is to bring the two organisations together. That is because, if the two do not work together 100% — I could cite incidents of where they do not — things do not go well. I can see where the idea of bringing them together comes from. Is there any sense, from your end, that it would be a logical step?

Mrs Buick: As I said, we have no opposition to that recommendation, but I reiterate my point that, without any structural change, the two work well together at the moment. You are right: we identify an inadequate or unsatisfactory school that needs to improve, and CASS comes in to provide support for the school, alongside the support that we provide through the follow-up inspection process. As you say, the school is absolutely key. The school has to accept that there are areas for improvement in the first place and work with both services to improve, and we have seen many good examples of that. We then have the follow-up inspection process, and we do not walk away from that position either. We follow up with the school further through our process, depending on what the outcome is. Paul's favourite line is that inspection is a process, not an event. That is absolutely true, and that is exactly how inspection and improvement work.

Mr P McAlister: I should add that, as we have said often in the past, that inspectors cannot inspect improvement into a school. I take your point, Mr Craig, that it is the people in the school who bring about the change. We can highlight the need for change, and we can celebrate where things are going really well in a school and suggest that they could be more widely distributed across the school. However, it is the people in the school, with whatever support they can get, who bring about the meaningful change.

Mr Craig: Noelle, I will be honest with you: your inspectors are, quite rightly, the people who are most experienced in where things have gone wrong or are going wrong in a school. In my experience, they are the ones who give schools the most help of all. I can see the logic of inspectors having their part to play through a dual role of not only inspecting but bringing about improvement.

Mrs Buick: Thank you for that commendation of the expertise of inspectors; I appreciate that and believe it to be true.

We have seen that through the promoting improvement in English and maths projects, where we have our inspectors of English and maths directly supporting those schools. That is making a difference, and it is now being received very positively. However, our resource is as it is. Inspectors are the experts because they inspect alongside their district inspector role and the other roles that they have. There would need to be a very careful balance of the activity of the inspectorate if it were to proceed down that route.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Recommendation 3 is around communication of inspection methodology and transparency. Can I just ask you about the paired observations?

Mrs Buick: We have been undertaking joint-lesson observations on district inspector visits and in some schools. This is where the inspector observes a lesson alongside the principal or a senior manager of the school so that there is a common understanding of what inspectors are looking at when they are observing teaching and learning and a common understanding of what "good" looks like. It is done with the agreement of the teacher in the school. Obviously, two people going in to observe a lesson may put an additional burden on a teacher, so it is done only with the agreement of the teacher. I think that it is a very positive way forward in us being transparent about how we evaluate good teaching and learning and in capacity building for the senior leaders in the school.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Is that common practice, or is it something that you are trialling?

Mrs Buick: We are trialling it and building it up. We would like more schools to accept our invitation to undertake the paired-lesson observations. It is not meant to be about checking on the principal or the senior leader. It is truly about capacity building.

Mr Sheehan: Following on from that, there is an implication that, at some stage in the future, the principal should be monitoring the teaching staff.

Mrs Buick: We would expect all principals to be the leaders of learning in their school. While the principals have a role in performance review and staff development (PRSD) — that is totally separate, and we are not involved in that role at all — they, as leaders of learning, also have a responsibility to make sure that learning and teaching in the school is as good as it can be. This is an extra tool for them to capacity build their understanding of what good learning and teaching looks like.

Mr Sheehan: Is there some resistance to that, first, from principals to carrying out the role and, secondly, from teachers who do not want principals monitoring them in the classroom?

Mrs Buick: It is new, so we need to embed the concept of paired observations. That is what we are doing. We have 190 associate assessors, and we are working with them to undertake joint-lesson observations with us as part of their training. They can then take that aspect back into their own school. So, it will be growing it from the bottom up, if you like, but it is at an early stage.

Mr Kinahan: What sort of percentage uptake is there? You indicated that there are a few schools that are not —

Mrs Buick: It is new, so we are at a very early stage. It is still in the developmental process.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Have you received any resistance from the unions in relation to it?

Mrs Buick: We have ongoing dialogue with the unions. I think that we are now in a good position with regard to that dialogue, so it is something that we will discuss with them continuously. However, it is important to say that we have no role in PRSD. We are capacity building so that there is a common understanding of good. That is what we want to do.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Recommendation 4 is around the complaints procedure and revision of findings. I just want to seek assurance from you that you will look to revise your complaints procedures in line with the Committee's recommendations. What is your intention?

Mrs Buick: We have accepted the recommendation that we review our complaints procedures. We do that on a regular basis. Our next review will be for implementation in September 2015. We are going to discuss that with the teaching unions at our next meeting; it is on the agenda.

There are a couple of points to make around the complaints procedure. We drew up our current complaints procedure in line with the Assembly Ombudsman's best practice principles. He has looked at our complaints procedure and is satisfied with it. There is also a misunderstanding that the complaints procedure does not enable a school to challenge the inspection findings. It does. In fact, while we have had very few complaints in the last couple of years, those that we have had have been challenging our inspection findings. So, the complaints procedure does not prevent that happening. It is also important to say that the only person who can overturn a professional judgement by an inspector is the chief inspector. So, regardless of who is involved in the complaints process, it is my responsibility to make sure that the professional judgements are correct in the first place, which they are in the main. If they are not, only I can overturn a professional judgement.

Mr Craig: Noelle, how widely known is the system of complaints? Is it made clear to the schools?

Mrs Buick: Before every inspection, as part of the pre-inspection activity, the complaints procedure is drawn to the attention of the school. That is part of the reporting inspector's role, and that definitely happens.

Mr Craig: Yes. The only real recourse is to put the complaint to you.

Mrs Buick: Yes, to the Education and Training Inspectorate. However, our ideal position is that all issues are dealt with informally before they manifest themselves into a formal complaint, and, in most cases, that happens, and that is why we get so few complaints. That is the ideal position that we all want to be in.

Mr Craig: I am smiling to myself because, Noelle, I suggest to you that it is not the fact that the complaint is dealt with informally. It is the fact that there is a huge fear out there that, if you make a formal complaint to the inspectorate, life will become intolerable for you. It is the complainant who is being inspected.

Mrs Buick: I do not know what that is based on, because —

Mr Craig: It is based on fear, not on fact. I am just saying that that is the perception.

Mrs Buick: It is not fact.

Mr Craig: Can you understand where that logic comes from? I have had it put to me first-hand. There was an issue that I wanted to take up with you on the inspectorate end, but I was advised, very strongly, by everyone else not to bother.

Mrs Buick: I would say that, if you have an issue that has not been resolved informally, that is why the complaints process is there. I do not know where that fear concept has come from. If people keep on saying it, people will keep on believing it. The complaints procedure is there; if you have a genuine complaint that you feel has not been resolved during the inspection, by all means use the complaints procedure. I am not encouraging complaints. I want them to be dealt with informally, but really, if somebody feels that something is not right, then —

Mr Craig: But, Noelle, can you see where this perception comes from? Ultimately, if I want to appeal, I have to appeal to the service that is inspecting me. This goes back to the arguments that we have had over 30 or 40 years. For instance, who should inspect the police? If it is the police, do you expect to be taken seriously, or is there a fear that, if you do that, things will become worse for you? That is why we ended up with the ombudsman's office. You can understand why I am saying this: the only place that I can go to complain is to you; there is no independent complaints procedure.

Mrs Buick: We make a professional judgement, and we are responsible for that; therefore, we should be responsible for responding to the complaint. However, you are quite right. There is an independent element in the complaints process, in the ombudsman. That is stage 3. People have gone to the Assembly Ombudsman, and he takes an independent view. Because we make the judgements, if you have an issue with the judgement, then you have to come to us with your issues. I can tell you that the person investigating the complaint will not have been involved in the inspection in any way. If I keep on reiterating it, maybe the message will change to say that we take complaints seriously and investigate them thoroughly, and if there is something that is not right about our process or outcome, we will take action to rectify it. I would like members to take that message out there. That is absolutely how it is.

Mr Craig: I am listening very carefully to what you are saying. The first stages involve going directly to the inspectorate; whereas, if I look at the complaints procedures for the police, I see that a person's first line is to go to the ombudsman and not to the police themselves. So there is a significant difference in the way that this process operates. Has that been looked that?

Mrs Buick: I know that Paul wants to come in now. I will come back in a moment.

Mr P McAlister: For a number of years, I was responsible for handling the small number of complaints that came to our organisation. It was standard for me, at the outset, particularly if I was meeting people about a concern that they had, to thank them for raising the issue with us. If they thought that there was some way in which we could improve, it was important that we should hear it. We spend our time promoting improvement in other organisations; it is very important that we should be open to promoting improvement in our own. I would have said that to people.

There is a sort of a catch-22 in the fact that they would be complaining to us. We have evaluation of inspection, which is done through the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. Often, we say to NISRA that we would like to hear from it whether there are specific concerns that we can talk through with the school and get to the bottom of, so that we can improve as a result. NISRA quite rightly responds that it has to observe protocols about anonymity. People give feedback on the terms that it will be kept anonymous, so we cannot hear where any negativity that comes through to NISRA has come from. So, on the one hand, we have that anonymous route for schools to express their evaluation of inspection, which is not as useful to us as we would like; but, when we get communication directly from schools, we are open to the view, that you rightly express, that there may be fear on the part of schools making such complaints. So it is a bit of a catch-22 situation for us.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Have any inspection findings been changed as a result of a complaint?

Mrs Buick: In my time as chief inspector, we have had some complaints that have been partially upheld, but we have not overturned any professional judgements through a challenge to the findings. You may say something different, but I would say that that is a testament to the professionalism of the inspectors. Everything that we do is evidence-based, and we are able to produce the evidence that justifies the decision that we have made. Let me add that, in the interests of transparency, we now — on a pilot basis, this autumn term — have a representative from the school attend all our team and moderation meetings at which the performance levels are awarded. That representative will be able to see, at first hand, the evidence on which our decisions are based. That will help transparency.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): There are two ways of looking at that. Your processes are robust and you can stand over your decisions, but, at the same time, the fact that there has not been any change may also be one of the reasons why there are so few challenges. Schools may feel that there really is not a lot of point in complaining.

Mrs Buick: Again, through the vehicle of this Committee, I reiterate the point that, if a school feels that its views have not been listened to and that its issue has not been resolved informally, that is what the complaints process is there for. We have had feedback that we need to be more transparent in how we work, and I am hoping that having a representative of the school attend those meetings will do exactly that.

Mr Newton: I have two very short questions, and very short answers will suffice. Did you say that only the chief inspector can change a decision?

Mrs Buick: That is right. The professional judgement, yes.

Mr Newton: That is fine. How does that benchmark against Ofsted in the ability to influence and get a change? Would you describe your ethos as welcoming complaints in order that you can improve the process?

Mrs Buick: To answer your first question: all inspectorates are exactly the same. The professional judgements of inspectors can only be overturned by the chief inspector. That is the case for all inspectorates.

Mr Newton: And is that the same with Ofsted?

Mrs Buick: Ofsted is the same. It has an independent adjudicator who will adjudicate on other aspects of complaints, but not on professional judgements. That is the role of the chief inspector. I worked for Ofsted, and I know that to be absolutely true.

You asked about welcoming complaints. No one welcomes complaints, but certainly, as Paul demonstrated, we see complaints as an opportunity for us to look in depth at our processes, systems and procedures, and, if a change is needed, we will make it.

We do a review of complaints at the end of each business year. We take learning from that and roll out that learning to all inspectors. Complaints make all of us look more closely at the work that we do. From that perspective, there is learning attached to them.

Mr Newton: Coming from a different perspective, there is an opportunity to welcome complaints because they give you the opportunity to make improvements.

Mrs Buick: I think that we would not welcome or encourage them, but certainly, going back, if we feel that someone is not satisfied —

Mr Newton: Sorry. I could see that the reverse of that is that you actually discourage complaints.

Mrs Buick: We do not discourage them. I will be emphatic in that response.

Mr Newton: You do not welcome them.

Mrs Buick: "Welcome" is not quite the word.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Thank you. We will move on to recommendation 5 and post-inspection questionnaires and customer service assessments.

Mr Kinahan: The ETI officials have previously indicated that inspectors were always present at all interviews with principals as the customer service excellence standard assessor. Will the Department not provide an assurance that customer service excellence standard assessments will be undertaken more independently?

Mrs Buick: ETI is not present at the interviews that are undertaken as part of the customer service excellence assessment. We have made that clear. It keeps coming back that we are. Can I be emphatic? We are not there.
It is a very rigorous process. It is a Cabinet Office award, so it is highly respected in the public sector. We do a self-assessment. There is a pre-assessment meeting with the assessor. The assessor comes and meets representatives in the Education and Training Inspectorate and goes out and meets some of our customers. So, it is a rigorous process that is built on year-on-year.

Mr Kinahan: OK. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): GTCNI did a survey that perhaps asked more searching questions than the information that you were able to glean. Have you had any communication with GTCNI?

Mrs Buick: We have said that we note this recommendation. We talked about this at some length during the inquiry. GTCNI carried out a survey that was open to absolutely anyone. There were no restrictions on who could reply or how many times you could do so. Analysis was undertaken by NISRA, who are the statistical experts. They felt that the questions were leading and that there were really serious flaws with that survey. NISRA undertakes our post-inspection survey. We know that, as they are the statistical experts, it is a robust survey. We place a lot of our views on the NISRA survey. That is not to say that we would ignore everything that came out of the GTCNI survey. There were trends in it that were in line with some of the trends that came out through our own NISRA survey. Fundamentally, there were serious issues with that survey. It was not just us saying that: it was NISRA as the statistical experts.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): OK. Do you meet GTCNI regularly? Have you had conversations around this recommendation?

Mrs Buick: We have keeping-in-touch meetings. We have not had one since the recommendation was made. I have no doubt that we will have a keeping-in-touch meeting rolling forward, as we always do. It would not just be the case that we would consult with GTCNI. A lot of stakeholders are involved in education. We want to consult with all stakeholders, not just one.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): You talk about keeping in touch. How often does that take place?

Mrs Buick: It probably takes place around once a year formally, and obviously informally as well.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): And do you feel that that is sufficient?

Mrs Buick: We engage with a lot of stakeholders, so once a year, at this moment in time, is sufficient.

Mr Kinahan: I have not got that detail. I just remember it being intriguing. I know that you say it was flawed, but there were a lot of good points in it. If we were to come to you afterwards, highlighting what we thought were the key points in it, would you be happy to reply? There were a whole lot of points that we needed to follow up on.

Mrs Buick: We made our point very clear, as did NISRA, that there were issues with that survey's credibility. Our position remains the same. There were some trends, as I said, that were similar to the outcomes of the post-inspection survey that was undertaken by NISRA. Certainly, where issues are identified — again, as part of our continuous learning and improvement as an organisation — we will take those points forward.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Recommendation 6 is on the use of anonymous questionnaires and school surveys. Are you rejecting or accepting this recommendation?

Mrs Buick: I reiterate the point that we do not use anonymous surveys. We have parental surveys that are signed by parents. A teacher reference number is necessary for teacher submissions. Support staff also need to sign the questionnaires. That information comes into our inspection services branch, but what it provides to the reporting inspector has no names attached to it. It is a high-level analysis of the responses and written comments without any names attached to it. We do not use anonymous questionnaires for the initial submission. This point keeps coming up. We do not use them.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Would you perhaps get more helpful information if the surveys were anonymous?

Mrs Buick: One of the comments that we get quite often from the teaching unions is that, if there is no opportunity for some form of identification, someone could submit multiple responses. If they have a grievance, perhaps that might be the case. So, by making sure that the teacher reference number is on them, we know that there is one response coming from each individual. It gives a level of credibility to the questionnaires. It is important in establishing that credibility. When the responses come to the reporting inspector, no names are attached to them. When they feed back to the school, it is done without names attached.

Mrs Overend: I thought that this was an interesting point. Do you find that there is a high rate of parental responses to the surveys? What sort of rate do you normally have?

Mrs Buick: Well, we changed the process in the last year, or maybe more than a year. We had always given out paper questionnaires to parents. We gave them out to a sample of parents. We had a reasonable response. I suppose that is how you would describe it. With modern technology, we have moved on to online questionnaires. They are now available to all parents. In the inspection reports, it looks like the response rate is lower, but that is because it is from a higher number. The response rate now is from all parents, rather than just a sample of parents. There is no doubt that we would like to encourage more parents to respond through the parental questionnaires. It is important that parents have a view on the school as part of the inspection process. We value it. We are working very hard to try to improve response rates.

Mrs Overend: Can you give me figures? What sort of response rate is there?

Mrs Buick: I do not know whether you can give any figures, Paul. I would say that it is on the low side. It is in each inspection report. The range can be anything from 20% to 50%. Occasionally, it could be 70%. The range depends on the school that we inspect. We try to encourage schools to inform parents of the importance of completing the questionnaire. In best practice situations, we would expect schools to be sending parents their own questionnaires, collecting their own evidence of parents' views about the school and acting upon it — not just waiting for inspection to happen. Best practice schools do that.

Mrs Overend: Do you take that into consideration?

Mrs Buick: We take all evidence into account. We would take it into account, but the benefit of our questionnaire, I suppose, is that it is standard for all schools, so we are able to benchmark parental views across the range of schools that we inspect. We would definitely take into account a school's own questionnaire outcomes, but we do value our own because of the opportunity to benchmark across schools.

Mrs Overend: I was not here when the Committee did the review. I just imagine that if responses were anonymous, people might be more inclined to actually give their honest opinions or to let their voices be heard, more so than if they would be labelled with a complaint, so to speak.

Mrs Buick: The view of the teaching unions was that they did not want anonymous questionnaires because that could lead to multiple submissions or a parent could put in multiple submissions if they had a grievance against the school. I think that we have got a reasonably good balance.

Mr P McAlister: There are a couple of points on that. One is that there was a dip when we changed to the technology, because we were then asking people to go online and access the link and go in. That was different from getting something through the post that they could respond to and send in, which was more immediately accessible to them. Also, schools are unique communities in their own right, and there is quite a difference in how they handle certain situations. Sometimes, it reflects the confidence of the leadership in the school if they encourage parents to have their say on the school and to access the questionnaires. As Noelle said, sometimes when we report back on an inspection, the school will say, "That is in line with what we heard". In fact, some of them use our questionnaires to survey their parents etc. We encourage that because it is important to have that dialogue with parents and to encourage parents to be involved.

The other point is that people often associate questionnaires with parents making complaints, but many schools get a high degree of affirmation from the parents in their questionnaires, where they are very specific about concerns that they had when their child started school or whatever and how well that was handled by the school. It is very important that we, in our role, can report and share with the school that the parent took the trouble to put that on record for us to report back. It is not all about complaints. I want to make sure that you understand that a lot of affirmation comes through the questionnaires.

Mrs Overend: I totally understand that. In the two schools that I have been involved with, the response rate is really high, and they have been positive responses. So, I am playing devil's advocate and teasing out your thought process on the response to that recommendation.

Mr Craig: Noelle, this is one where I genuinely question the value of what you do, because something strikes me about doing a parental survey of any type. How many parents out there would seriously send their children to a school that they are not happy with? I think that there are very few. My experience of that is that you did the survey of parents and got back the results that most parents were entirely satisfied with the way the school was dealing with their children. That does not surprise me. In fact, it would have shocked me deeply if it had been anything other than that, because I would have asked, "Why would you send your child to a school that you, as a parent, are not happy with?" There is the fundamental problem that you have with that one. The other problem I see is the fact that you keep back the names and the results of what individuals say. I, like any other member of a board of governors, could very easily highlight to you a number of individuals who I could guarantee will complain about certain aspects because they did not get what they wanted. The biggest problem of all is the way that you do the reports of teachers. You give feedback on that, and I listened to the feedback that came from it. Even though you did not put any names to who said what, I could have given you the names and the reasons why they said what they said.

Mrs Buick: I will reiterate the point about why we do not use anonymous questionnaires. We have the teacher reference number or the parent's name to establish the authenticity of the comments. You have described a school that knows its parents well, because we will never feed back individual teachers' names or parents' names. We will feed back the key themes that have come through the comments in the parental or teacher questionnaires that have been submitted as part of the inspection process, and I am heartened by you saying that you recognised what the issues were.

Mr Craig: There is an aspect of the questionnaires, especially around staff, that is really a griper's charter, if you understand what I am saying. When they know that their name will not be brought forward to the likes of myself, as chairman of the board of governors, people make up all sorts of allegations.

Mrs Buick: We will be aware of how questionnaires may or may not be used. We never base our evaluations just on what is said in a questionnaire. They will give us lines of enquiry to follow and evidence that we may need to see from the school.

We will never base our evaluations just on what is said in questionnaires of any nature but will follow up on themes or questions that have arisen through the questionnaires.

Mr Craig: But do you understand what I am saying? There is an element of this that gives someone who is disgruntled because they did not get a certain position in the school an opportunity to skew the reality of what is going on in a school.

Mrs Buick: I guess I am aware that that could happen, but giving the authenticity to the submission of the questionnaires means that those individuals can only submit one response and, therefore, you have a balanced picture of the school. As I say, we follow up themes but do not base our judgement on what is in the parental or teacher questionnaires.

Mr Craig: So you inspect the results as such; you do not just take them for granted.

Mrs Buick: No. We look at the themes that come up through the questionnaires and it gives us some questions that we ask, themes that we follow and evidence that we might ask for, but we do not base our judgements just on what is said in the questionnaires. We have a very rounded and balanced approach to inspection and the judgements that we make.

Mr P McAlister: The questionnaires give a very good basis for a discussion and perhaps not much more than that. It is discussion or, as Noelle said, lines of enquiry, but all our inspectors will be very aware that, as I say, schools are unique communities. There are interrelationship issues, some more positive than others, and we are very wary about taking everything that is said about any aspect of a school at face value. If a parent said that bullying is rife in the school, we will ask, "What have you done to ensure that bullying does not take place in the school?" That is just an example.

You talked about the parent being able to move on to the next school. With respect, it would not be very healthy for us to carry out our work on the basis that, if parents do not like a school, they can move on to the next one. We have to focus on the school in question. Not every parent has the privilege of being able to choose a school that suits their childminding facilities, if they are a single parent and need to work, for example. We rely on every school being a good school and on ourselves ensuring that, as far as possible, we highlight if every school is not a good school, because, for parents who are relying on that school, we cannot have it anywhere in the back of our mind that, if they do not like it, they can move on to the next one. It has to be good enough for their child and good enough for every child.

Mr Kinahan: I want to follow up. I am very encouraged by what you say, but we have got ourselves in a muddle over whether it is anonymous or not. The fact is that people can respond and their name will never come out. That is not the problem. I came to see you about a case a long time ago to make sure that questionnaires were not used for a campaign, because, if you know every time an inspection is coming, you know that questionnaires will be used and therefore know that there is a format that you could use to give an inaccurate picture. So, I am encouraged by the fact that you listen to them, but I think that we are looking at this the wrong way round. As I understood it, the question came up because of a few schools that came to us concerned that you can put a campaign together and set up something that really damages either a school or a person. We need to make sure that you have an independent person who will step back and ask, "Is that really the case?"

Mrs Buick: Yes, I have explained that we establish the authenticity of the questionnaire responses that are sent and that, in the analysis and feedback to the school, we do not use names. We feed back by percentages and key themes and follow up on those themes, but we do not make our decisions based on what is said in the questionnaires alone.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): We will group recommendations 7, 8 and 9. Could you assert whether or not you are accepting or rejecting each of those?

Mrs Buick: In terms of recommendation 7, we keep our inspection reports under review all the time and spend a lot of time trying to decide on the format of our reports. We have a lot of input on what the reports look like. We have said that it will remain under consideration. At the moment, we have one inspection report, which you will be familiar with, and we are working on devising a running record. We are using that. We used it last year in post-primary schools and are using it this year in primary schools. It is a fuller record of the areas for improvement and the evidence that is used to make those decisions. The intention is that, when we get to the point where we are happy with them and we have had a discussion with the teaching unions about how they might be used, that will be left with the school. So, the representative will be involved in the team meetings and the moderation meetings; they will get the running records. Schools will get a fuller report of the inspection evidence and the rationale for the decisions that are made. We are working towards that, but, as I say, we will keep that recommendation under review.

Recommendation 8 is around the evaluation performance level descriptors that we use. Yes, work is under way to look at the descriptors that we use, and we have had some initial discussions with the teaching unions and some of our stakeholders and associate assessors around our plans in relation to the descriptors. It is a work in progress.

Recommendation 9 —

Mr Craig: Before we move on to recommendation 9, Noelle, do we have any timeline around recommendation 8? I think that there is universal acceptance across most schools that are in intervention that recommendation 8 is key to some of the problems that it creates for those schools. Are there any timelines around that one?

Mrs Buick: It is like what David said about formal intervention. It is work in progress and it depends on what feedback we get through the consultation process, but I would like to think that it will be in place for the beginning of the next academic year.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): That was a follow-up question of mine, so you have saved me the bother. Thank you.

Mrs Buick: Recommendation 9 is about the role of district inspectors in the inspection of schools in their district. There might be occasion when, for business reasons, that is not possible because of scheduling and so on, but they have a role, as I said in the introduction, either as a deputy reporting inspector or as a member of the team on the inspections in their district. They will not be the reporting inspector.

Mr McCausland: I have two brief points. In recommendation 7, what is the timeline for trialing the paired observation and the school representative on the moderation process?

Mrs Buick: Sorry, I did not catch the end.

Mr McCausland: What is the timeline for the trialing mentioned in recommendation 7?

Mrs Buick: Are we talking about school inspection reports?

Mr McCausland: Yes, the paired observation and the school representative in the moderation process.

Mrs Buick: The paired observations are happening at the moment. That is being piloted, and it is the same for the role of the representative. We started that in September and it is being piloted in the autumn term.

Mr McCausland: How long will the pilot last?

Mrs Buick: It depends on what the pilot tells us, but my expectation is that we will roll it out to a substantial number of schools from January onwards. It has certainly been well received by the teaching unions and the schools.

Mr McCausland: Will it be finished by June next year by the end of the academic year?

Mrs Buick: I would expect so.

Mr McCausland: I am not clear about the response to recommendation 9 and the role of district inspectors. That is a hugely important issue that would improve relationships, and it would improve the process if that recommendation was accepted. Is it being accepted or not? What exactly is the position?

Mrs Buick: It is being accepted because district inspectors, in the main, have a role in the inspection of schools in their district. As I said, there might be the odd occasion when that does not happen for business or scheduling reasons, but, in the main, yes, we have accepted that recommendation. It has always been the case that district inspectors were to have a role in the inspection of schools in their district; they just will not be the reporting inspection.

Dr Hughes: It is worth making the point that what a recommendation is recommending beyond what already happens — it is probably worth getting clarity from the Committee on this — is that the district inspector will always have a role in the inspection of schools in their patch. The point that we are making is that it is the current practice that they will have that role where possible but it is not an absolute commitment to that 100% of the time, because that may simply not be practicable. I am not sure that there is more in that recommendation than what is already taking place.

Mr McCausland: Why would it not always be possible?

Mrs Buick: Our direction of travel is that district inspectors will be involved in the inspection of schools in their district. However, there will be occasions when, for scheduling or business reasons, it will not happen. That is our absolute direction of travel, and that has always been the case. It will not be just the reporting inspector.

Mr McCausland: It would be particularly important in school inspections in some of our more difficult and challenging areas, would it not?

Mrs Buick: I think that it is important for all schools.

Mr McCausland: But it would be particularly important in those ones, would it not?

Mrs Buick: It is important, for all our schools, that the inspectorate is aware of the context of the school. The district inspector brings that context.

Mr McCausland: But it would be particularly important for schools in more challenging areas, would it not?

Mrs Buick: I think that it is important in all schools.

Mr McCausland: I accept the fact that it is important in all schools, but there are degrees of importance. I am simply asking you this: do you agree that it is particularly important in those schools?

Mrs Buick: Including those schools, yes. It is definitely important that the context of the school is known to the inspection team and that the district inspector brings that district knowledge with them.

Mr McCausland: I will take that as a yes.

Mr Kinahan: Recommendations 7 and 9 are two of the most important recommendations from the Committee. In recommendation 7, the whole point of having a separate report is so that the first one does not go out to the press and you do not get all the hoo-ha in the press that rips the school apart. Yet, all that we have got as a reply is that it remains under consideration. It was almost a plea. It was something that we felt must happen and must happen soon.

Mrs Buick: I think that we have described how we take the recommendations of the Committee seriously. We keep our inspection reports under review; that is without a doubt. Because our inspection report served so many different stakeholders, I do not think that we will ever satisfy all of the people all of the time. However, at the moment, we have the inspection report that you will be familiar with and that it is in the public domain. We also have the piloting of this running record, which is a more detailed inspection report. We trialled it in post-primary schools last year and are trialling it in primary schools this year. We have not yet left it with any schools. However, it is our intention, once we are satisfied with the quality of it and have negotiated with the teaching unions on how it will be used, that that will be the more detailed record that goes to the school. We can then look at our inspection reports in light of that; what they will look like to the public and what goes out in the public domain. We will also have looked at our performance level descriptors by that time. By the next academic year, we should have reviewed all of that.

Mr Kinahan: It was almost one of the key findings.

Mrs Buick: It is important that our messages are received in the way that they are intended.

Mr Kinahan: This running report will not really get around the problem. I get the feeling that you are still going to have a report that goes out to the press and to all and sundry. That opens up the whole story to be ripped apart or commented on in the press when it needs to be kept private.

Mr P McAlister: We are committed to publishing what we find on inspection. We have a commitment with the Department, because of the importance of education to children in society and to society in general, that we make public what we find. What we do not have any control over is the responsibility of the media in how they handle the information that we put into the public domain.

Mr Kinahan: But you could by not putting all the information into the public domain. What we are really saying here is this: do not put it all into the public domain; think about what it does first; come up with a second report; and then, when you have had a chance to go through it all with the teachers, parents and everybody else, put out the detail. You are avoiding the recommendation.

Mrs Buick: We are not. Paul has articulated that that is not the case. We are not avoiding the issue. What we are saying is that, at the moment, we have an inspection report that is in the public domain. As Paul rightly says, we cannot be responsible for what happens to that report. We have to report without fear or favour. However, it is intended that the running record will be developed in the next academic year. The school will be getting a more detailed report; therefore the school will be getting something different from what is in the public domain. That gives us an opportunity to look at what we put in the public domain. However, we cannot do that until we formalise what the running record that we leave at schools looks like. That is still in a pilot process. At the same time, we are looking at our performance level descriptors. All those things will come together in the current academic year for implementation in the next academic year.

Mr Kinahan: You said just then that you have to put it into the public domain.

Mrs Buick: Yes. We have a statutory responsibility to report.

Mr Kinahan: So, we need to change that if we are to get this recommendation in place.

Mrs Buick: No. Parents and other stakeholders have a right to know about the outcomes of the inspection of their school; therefore it is absolutely right and proper that we put a report in the public domain. What that report looks like is within our gift and the gift of the stakeholders.

Mr Kinahan: That is exactly what I am trying to get at. We are asking you to look at what you say in that report so that it is different and separate. Anyway, there is no point in pursuing that.

Mrs Buick: I feel that I have explained that, Mr Kinahan.

Mr Kinahan: The point of recommendation 9 is to make more use of pastoral support and make sure that every school is working in a softer and nicer way. You seem to be ducking that one as well in that you say that you will try to do it but you are not saying that it is always going to be the case. That means that we need more district inspectors.

Mrs Buick: We have a finite amount of district inspector time; that is a given. In our current budget constraints, that is the case. However, inspectors do not ostensibly have a pastoral role as part of their district inspector role. There may be an event that takes place in the school, such as a tragic or traumatic event, whereby the district inspector will visit that school in a pastoral capacity. However, the district inspector role — this is very clear, and it is in the public domain — is an opportunity for the school to engage professionally outside the context of the formal inspection. "Pastoral" is really not the right word for that activity. It is a professional discussion that takes place outside the formal inspection process. That that conversation takes place outside the formal inspection process does not mean that inspection principles are not relevant. They absolutely are. We are still inspectors whether we are a district inspector or are carrying out formal inspection. However, there is an opportunity to engage professionally outside the formal inspection.

Mr Kinahan: What we are trying to get across is that we want it to be done in a more pastoral way.

Mrs Buick: As you heard, the district inspector role is highly valued by everybody. I think that professional engagement does take place in a manner that is conducive to promoting improvement. However, "pastoral" is definitely not the right word to use as pastoral —

Mr Kinahan: But it is the word that we wanted to use and have put in. Anyway, thank you.

Mr McAlister: I share the view that the district inspector role is very important. I know that it is highly valued by schools. It is not unusual for school principals to phone our inspection services branch to ask if the district inspector would call. Perhaps they have just reviewed the school development plan and would like to have a professional discussion with the district inspector about it.

I honestly believe that, if we could have a district inspector on every inspection, we definitely should. However, the difficulty is that, at the moment, the main driver of what school goes on an inspection schedule is how long it has been since its last inspection. That is not neatly distributed across all districts. In any given year, there could be more work in one district than another. The outcomes of schools from inspection also vary considerably across districts in some cases. One district inspector could have a much larger number of interim follow-up visits or inspections. We have a duty of care to our inspectors. We have to be mindful that, if you happen to be the district inspector in a district with a very heavy workload, you cannot be expected to be on every inspection. That is the main reason why the schedulers cannot put a district inspector on every inspection. It is to manage the workload of individuals and to recognise the fact that the challenges and, indeed, the inspections are not equally spread across Northern Ireland.

Mr Newton: I have just a short question again, Chair. In response to a number of questions in this session, you have indicated to members that you can put timelines in place. Why are the timelines missing from your response?

Mrs Buick: We piloted the running record in post-primary last year, and we are piloting it in primary this year. The intention is that we will implement the new process from the next academic year. However, as with all pilots, it depends on how it goes and what it tells us. We have a timeline in mind and we have an intention of when we will implement.

Mr Newton: Forgive me: you have a timeline in mind. That is sufficient. I presume that, professionally, you have considered that. Why, in the response to the Committee, are the timelines not put in place?

Mrs Buick: We did not put timelines in. However, I am telling you now that that is our timeline for the running record and the review of reports.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): To answer Mr Newton's question, would it be possible for you to send the Committee any timelines that you have in mind so that we may take that into consideration for our next steps?

Mrs Buick: We can certainly do that, but bear in mind that these are pilots. There will be consultations and it depends on the outcomes of those, but we can certainly give you indicative timings. That is not an issue at all.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Recommendation 10 relates to inspections in Irish in Irish-medium education (IME) schools. It would appear that you accept this recommendation. Do members have any questions?

Mr Sheehan: Noelle, in your opening comments, you said that you were exploring ways of strengthening capacity. What ways are you exploring that and what ideas do you have?

Mrs Buick: I will hand over to Paul, but we are working with our colleagues in the South who also inspect Irish-medium schools to share some of that capacity.

Mr P McAlister: Thanks for the question. First, we arranged for four of our inspectors to attend training in Connemara for the inspectors who work in the Gaeltacht regions in the South so that they would get an enrichment course that was delivered through the medium of the Irish language. While they were there, they stayed with Irish-speaking families, so it was a total immersion course. It was geared towards inspectors who would be inspecting through the medium of Irish, and the idea of the enrichment course was to assist those inspectors who work in Irish-medium schools to use Irish as much as possible in their work and to conduct inspections in keeping with the ethos of the school.

Apart from that, while there we explored the opportunities or the willingness of inspectors who inspect through Irish to offer support if such support was asked for. There was certainly a willingness to have special arrangements made if such support was called into Northern Ireland to do that sort of work. It is one of the avenues that we explored. Moreover, we recently recruited a new modern languages inspector, one of whose langauges is Irish.

Given the current situation, we cannot change things radically, but we are trying to maximise the resource that we have; we are trying to maximise it in the schedule as well so that, in the scheduling of teams for Irish-medium schools, we are trying to ensure that we have as many people as possible with proficiency in Irish. There are roles for non-Irish speakers in Irish-medium inspections, because there are consultations with members of staff in relation to, say, pastoral care or coordinators. There is observation of English, which is taught through the medium of English in Irish-medium schools, so it is not that we want to make it that only people who have proficiency in Irish work in Irish-medium schools. We have seen how we can maximise the resource that we have, which, we realise, is constrained by the resource situation.

Mr Sheehan: Thanks for that. I want to ask about the visit to the Gaeltacht in Connemara. Four inspectors were involved in that for two weeks?

Mr McAlister: It was not for two weeks. Within one week, it was only four days.

Mr Sheehan: I have no complaint about that, but a one-week course in the Gaeltacht is not going to provide much upskilling if someone does not have the basics of the language in the first place.

Mr McAlister: Yes. I think that the four inspectors benefited considerably from it. I think that they had enough Irish to conduct their business during the course through the medium of Irish and —

Mr Sheehan: I am not saying that they would not benefit from it; what I am saying is that it would not bring them up to a sufficient standard to carry out an inspection in an Irish-medium school if they were going, for example, to observe lessons being taught through the medium of Irish, unless their language skills were at a particular level in the first place.

Mr McAlister: I agree. You would not start from a baseline of zero and go on a one- or two-week course. However, I think that the four inspectors had language skills that were at a level at which they could benefit from the course. I use that as just one indication of something that has happened since we were last before the Committee. As we do with all our inspectors and their specialisms, we look for professional development opportunities to ensure that they are as well equipped as possible to carry out their work, regardless of the phase or the specialism.

Mr Sheehan: I am not criticising that. I am just suggesting that that, on its own, is not enough. I move on to the issue of support from inspectors from the Twenty-six Counties. What are the obstacles to bringing in support from the South?

Mr McAlister: It is a different inspectorate and, obviously, a different Department from the Department of Education. So it is not within our gift to make those arrangements without exploring what the opportunities are and making sure that there are no barriers at the interdepartmental level, etc. From our point of view, all we were doing was looking to see whether there were possibilities. It would be for others to work out the specific arrangements if inspectors from the Department of Education and Skills in the South were to work in Northern Ireland.

Mr Sheehan: Do any arrangements exist, for example, for secondment of inspectors from the South to the North?

Mr McAlister: I am not aware of any.

Mr McCausland: Let me just get a sense of it. About 1% of children attend Irish-medium education. How many inspections would you therefore do in Irish-medium schools in a year?

Mrs Buick: Paul might want to come in in a moment, but in the last chief inspector's reporting period, which we will talk about in a moment, we inspected 11 Irish-medium schools over that two-year period.

Mr McCausland: So it is 11 inspections over two years; about five or six per year.

Mrs Buick: Yes. That is between 1 July 2012 and 30 June 2014.

Mr McCausland: How many school inspections would an inspector do in a year?

Mrs Buick: We work on inspector days, so it does not work in terms of numbers of inspections, and there are other activities.

Mr McCausland: Could you give us a ballpark figure as to how many inspections an inspector might be able to do?

Mrs Buick: Because of the other activities that an inspector does — survey work and district inspector activities — we do not actually work on the number of inspections. It would be erroneous of me to give you a figure for inspections that inspectors carry out. They have a number of inspector days when they carry out inspection activity.

Mr McCausland: I do not want to press the point, but it should be possible to get an answer to a simple question. How many would you expect? On average, how many inspections would an inspector do in a year: three, five or 25?

Mrs Buick: Honestly, I am not being evasive, but it depends. The short inspections of primary schools are a two-day inspection if you are on a team and three days if you are a reporting inspector.

Mr McCausland: It should be possible to do more than six in a year.

Mrs Buick: More than six?

Mr McCausland: Yes.

Mrs Buick: Of course, yes. Absolutely.

Mr McCausland: We have only six inspections of Irish-medium education in a year with one inspector.

Mrs Buick: No, I think that Paul wants —

Mr P McAlister: I would like to come in, Mr McCausland. Those who inspect Irish-medium education also inspect across the range of English-medium schools and —

Mr McCausland: Yes, I appreciate that they do other things as well.

Mr P McAlister: If you are a primary inspector who speaks Irish, you will inspect Irish-medium education in primary and preschool as well as English-medium education. It is not as though they are confined to that work.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): We will move on to recommendations 11, 12 and 13.

Dr Hughes: The end of the passage on recommendation 11 states that work is undertaken on the development of an indicator of school effectiveness. Very clearly, a piece of work has begun on the development of a dashboard of measures for school evaluation purposes. Whilst that work progresses, conclusions about precisely what those metrics should be and how they should be sourced and presented — it will be all those things — have to be opened up for discussion across the range of stakeholders who will be engaged in the process. That is very clearly about school evaluation. For example, one of the options that we take very seriously is how schools can demonstrate the progress of pupils from when they entered the school to their attainment by the time that they left or at milestones in between. The recommendation also refers to a system-level evaluation of progress and whether the system as a whole ensures the progress from a certain level up to an expected level beyond or falling short of that. In those circumstances, we would make the case that the full implementation of the levels of progression and assessment arrangements, which are now in their third year, provide that information at a system level. So, we would distinguish the two.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): At what stage do you plan to engage with stakeholders on the dashboard of measures that you are looking at?

Dr Hughes: Initial conversations have already begun. It has also been part of the conversation with teacher representatives on assessment, and we have agreed that a panel should be established. That panel has not yet met, and its make-up has not been determined. That work has begun, but it has not reached full steam — I think that that is probably the best way of putting it.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): A point was raised before the inquiry started — obviously it became an issue during the inquiry — about context and the fact that schools sometimes felt that their added value is not taken into account. Clearly, a piece of work needs to be done with the inspectorate to explain exactly your position on that.

Mrs Buick: In the NISRA survey for 2013-14, 80% of those who responded felt that they had an opportunity to explain the context of the school. We give the school an opportunity to explain its context at the beginning of the inspection. As I said, the district inspector is on most of the inspections that we undertake. Also, we take a school's contextual factors into account, like the number of pupils on free school meals, the number of pupils with special educational needs and the levels at which a pupil enters the school. I think that that NISRA response and the fact that we have opportunities for a school to outline its context indicate that we take its situation into account. No doubt, we are looking positively at the development of the dashboard measures as an additional method of being able to take the school's context into account.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): I suppose this is where there is a difference between what NISRA said and what GTCNI said. Our information was that around only 30% of principals felt that the inspection took account of value added.

Mrs Buick: I will come back to the statistical experts carrying out the NISRA survey, which was proved to be valid and robust. In that, 81% said that they had an opportunity to take the school's context into account. As I keep saying, we are a continuously improving organisation. If there is more that we can do to take that context into account, we are happy to do it. Governors, for example, now get benchmarking data sent to them about their school's performance. That gives them a good view of where their school sits on the continuum of similar schools. Things are improving all the time with schools, as well as with the inspectorate being aware of their context. Obviously, the Department's new measures will be a really positive step.

Dr Hughes: With a dashboard, we envisage a one-sider, as it were, that will give a sufficiently sophisticated amount of information that will show at an instant more than just a bald figure or a couple of bald figures. I think that context needs to be shown in that information. In a way, you have a set of data that can be read very quickly that describes where a school is on a number of different measurements. That is very definitely a quantitative account of that school that then complements a qualitative account of an inspection report. The same information may well all be part of the consideration, but there is a considerable difference in the way in which it has been produced and in its nuance and sophistication. If you have both those things — a quick one-pager and the results of an inspection — the public and the parents are well served, as is the school, which is able to give an account of itself.

Mr Kinahan: I like the idea, but will you expand on what is in the dashboard?

Dr Hughes: We do not want to tell everybody what is in the dashboard, because we want to engage with stakeholders about what should be in it. Do you see what I mean? We are not going to sit in our huddle and decide —

Mr Kinahan: Give us a clue.

Dr Hughes: I will give you some clues. There should be some measurement of attainment; that is, of how the pupils do in their school career. There should be some measurement of progress. You cannot say how they have attained if you do not know how they have come in. That is a lot about evaluating what the school has done for the kids who have arrived and how the kids have done in that context. There needs to be some context. There needs to be some measurement not of educational outcomes but of very important metrics that will tell you a lot about the school. We know things like pupil and staff attendance. There are other measurements that are perhaps less easy to grasp about the school experience that a pupil will have in a place, such as the opportunities that are available. I am beginning to —

Mr Kinahan: That is great. Hidden in there is a baseline as well. There are a whole lot of great things. I was just intrigued, because it has taught me something.

On a different angle, have you found any trends in the self-evaluation culture? We went to certain schools to see how they self-evaluated. If the school was big and quite wealthy, it was using outside companies. There must be relationships between the size and wealth of a school and who can do it well and who cannot. Can the Department look at something that broadly goes out to every school so that they will at least start with a basis of self-evaluation?

Dr Hughes: Noelle mentioned the introductory element of it. The Department sends out benchmarking data and the data pack for the data that the Department has for a school. It is clear that that data pack is what the Department has for the school on the understanding that there will be a lot of other data in the school. There is guidance about how that can be interrogated. It is particularly useful for governors, and I think that that is the starting point. Part of the introductory work being done with new governors is always going to be about their role in knowing the school, how it is performing and how to ask the right questions. That is part of the governors' development.

I will just make the point that the skills of self-evaluation and interrogation of data have developed enormously in the school system here because there is this policy of self-evaluation and self-improvement. It is supported throughout, and those skills are very well developed. I think that if one looks at some other education systems, one finds that that degree of self-evaluation is not always found and is certainly not as comprehensively as it is here.

Mr P McAlister: Let me just add that the inspectorate's work promotes a culture of self-evaluation. When we initially drew up the Together Towards Improvement framework for inspection in 2003, it was originally set up as a framework for self-evaluation in schools that could be shared with them. Although we drew it up in a PDF format, we deliberately made a Word copy of it available so that schools could tailor it to suit their own self-evaluation. When it was revised in 2010, we consulted with stakeholders on how it would be most useful for them so that it could be aligned with the inspection process. Really, if schools were conducting rigorous and regular self-evaluation, there should be no surprises at the time of an inspection because they should have covered the areas themselves.

Mr Craig: What you say is quite interesting, Paul. I have experienced that, and it is absolutely true. You must introduce the mentality of thinking how you can continually assess what you are doing. Obviously, your game is all about assessment, but you do it almost as a photographic shot. This goes back to what we said about the inspectorate's role in the improvement of schools and helping schools to improve. That is part of that process.

Noelle, let me ask about value added. It fascinates me, because I have always asked myself a question about it. There is always the argument about the 25% or 26% of schools that, technically, fail to reach the level of five GCSEs. I say "technically", because many of those children will have a future not in academic education but in a vocational exercise or avenue somewhere. How do you measure the value-added aspect of that? I have a fair idea, because I have seen it done. I have also heard of a school that went out of intervention because it could prove the value-added attainment in the children, even though the school did not meet the academic standards that we are allegedly trying to reach.

Mrs Buick: You raised a very important point about progress. We expect a school to be able to demonstrate their pupils' progress from where they were to where they are now. That is a key driver of the inspection outcomes. There is a difference between low achievement and underachievement. If you have a child who can achieve better but who has not achieved to their potential, that is an issue with the school. However, if you have a child who can achieve only to a certain level because of their ability but they are achieving to that level, that is a positive outcome for that child, because they are achieving to their ability. Schools should be able to demonstrate where children are from their starting point to where they are now. Good schools are able to demonstrate to us the value that they add to a pupil's learning, just as you described, so there will be schools that maybe do not meet the benchmark — I will use that word — for that particular type of school but have been able to demonstrate to us that they have added value and that their children are progressing to the best of their potential.

Mr Craig: That leads me on to something else, and you are almost back to another argument. The role of self-evaluation and the inspectorate's role in pointing schools in the right direction towards self-evaluation are sort of built into recommendations 12 and 13.

Again, it goes back to the inspectorate's role in improving the school. Do you see it as a key part of your inspectors' job to actually educate schools on how they can self-evaluate and measure the value-added aspects? I hate saying this, but you really are the experts in this field, because you do it all the time.

Mrs Buick: Again, thank you for those comments. The school development plan is at the centre of the inspection process. We will look at the effectiveness of the school development plan. Part of getting to a good school development plan is that you need to carry out effective self-evaluation. We have heard some discussions about what effective self-evaluation looks like. It is a school looking openly and honestly at itself using all the information that it has and involving everyone in the school. If that happens in self-evaluation activity, you will get a self-development plan that clearly identifies the priorities for that school and the things that it needs to focus on. It will be different for different schools. As part of their district inspector activities, district inspectors will have that professional dialogue on self-evaluation in the school development plan, but the school development plan itself is a really fundamental part of inspection. Certainly, as we roll forward with the sustaining improvement pilot inspections that we are doing of very good and outstanding schools, we intend every three years to do one-day visits to those schools to see whether they are sustaining their very good and outstanding statuses. The school development plan is absolutely at the centre of those inspections too. David, did you want to come in there, or was the point passed?

Dr Hughes: I was only going to comment that the element in support of the self-evaluation and self-improvement culture, which I forgot to mention and which is actually a very important part, is the guidance on school-development planning. It is a very straightforward but very clear and helpful introduction to that approach.

Mr P McAlister: I will add to what David mentioned about the governors' role and how the school's self-evaluation informs the governors. As part of the support for governors, ESaGS.TV, which is the media unit based in the North Eastern Board, has developed a series of short clips on how governors can best fulfil their role. Those are available on the ESaGS.TV website, and there is a link to them from the ETI website. They are short clips to inform governors on how they can best perform the role of supporting and challenging the school in promoting improvement. There are also some recently filmed clips by ESaGS.TV with ETI's assistance that focus on improvement journeys in schools that had deficiencies in their provision and how they addressed them. Those will be relevant to schools that want to promote the culture of self-evaluation or, indeed, improvement.

Mr Craig: My final wee question — it is a wee one — is on recommendation 13. I see in your response that you talk about the longer-term implementation of that. What do you mean by "longer term"? Timescales for these things always worry me. I see a lot of this as just common sense, and some of it is work that I think good inspectors do anyway. What is meant by a longer-term approach?

Dr Hughes: The term "longer term" is actually the one that the Committee used in its recommendation. The Committee recommends that:

Mr Craig: Do you have any views on the time that it would take to involve yourselves more deeply in this process?

Mrs Buick: I think that it is a continuing involvement. We talked about the district inspector resource, and it is what it is. It is something that we have to fit around inspection, survey work and other activities that we undertake. We are committed to self-evaluation and to being at the centre of school improvement, so we will give any resource that we can to promoting self-evaluation. I do not think that I can be any more definitive than that.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): The last group is recommendations 14, 15 and 16. Recommendation 14 seems to be a general assurance, but there does not seem to be a timeline. You appear to reject recommendations 15 and 16. Is that an adequate description?

Dr Hughes: What is suggested in recommendation 14 is very admirable and would be very good to have. However, the Department is not in a position to say categorically that it is something that it can put in place within a certain timescale, because it would be quite a considerable exercise. It would also need to be done with the operational work of the Education Authority and would therefore need to be done in partnership with the Department and the Education Authority. Therefore, the determination of exactly how it can be taken forward will be some way down the line.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Do you accept that there is inadequate work with parents?

Dr Hughes: That is recognised at the system level, and I would be careful about that because schools can very often have very good connections to parents. However, at system level, it has been observed to us, and we are aware of this, that there is not a single point of contact that can give us absolute confidence that parents' views are being represented. That is very striking when one operates with partners in other countries that have a parents' representative body, and you think, "Goodness, that must make life considerably easier in some ways". So, we recognise that that would be a very attractive thing to have as part of the overall landscape.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Certainly, that was reflected to us last week during our meeting with Parenting NI when we discussed shared and integrated education moving forward and how difficult it is to have a forum as such. Obviously, guidance on that would need to come from the Department, but it should be pursued.

Dr Hughes: We certainly recognise the attractiveness of that as something that we would want.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Recommendations 15 and 16 refer to the change of name, and clearly there was divided opinion in the Committee on the statutory independence.

Mrs Buick: In our response, we said that the Department would continue to bear in mind the Committee's view, but there are no plans at the moment to change the name. You will know that the Education and Training Inspectorate carries out inspection activities not just for the Department of Education but for DEL, DCAL and DARD, and we work with the Criminal Justice Inspection (CJI). Therefore, we carry out inspections not just of educational establishments but of training establishments. I will come back to a point that I made earlier, which is this: it is less about what we are called as an inspectorate and more about our effectiveness. As I outlined at the beginning of the meeting, we have a role in promoting improvements. The fact that we are called the Education and Training Inspectorate does not prevent us from carrying out our improvement role through the inspection activity, the district inspector role, the follow-up inspection activity and the promoting improvement in English and maths direct improvement project that we are involved in. At this moment in time, there are no plans to change the inspectorate's name.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): What about the statutory independence?

Mrs Buick: Again, that would require legislative change, but the Department has no plans to change the nature of our statutory role. This is the fourth inspectorate that I have worked in. One inspectorate was an NDPB, one was a non-ministerial government Department, and here we have ETI, which is part of the Department of Education. It does not matter what the inspectorate's structure is, because again, it comes back to how effective and independent it is operationally and whether it is able to make its judgements without fear or favour. We are able to do that in the structure that we find ourselves. Again, I will come back to what the Standing International Conference of Inspectorates (SICI) said, which was that there were lots of different types of structures of inspectorates across Europe and that it did not matter what the structure was; rather, it depends on the work that you do and the impact that you have. The Department has no plans to change ETI's statutory nature.

Mr Newton: I got more out of what you said in the last minute or two on the name change, which is recommendation 15, than from your reply to the Committee. Will you comment on Professor John Gardner's comments to the Committee? He indicated that he is a big fan of inspection. Part of what drove or influenced the Committee on the issue of renaming ETI was his comment that ETI:

What would you say to that?

Mrs Buick: I think that we could publicise ETI's brand more effectively than we do at the moment. We have met with our press office, and we intend to take more of a forward foot in how we articulate the work that ETI does for the wider public. We also intend to demonstrate its effectiveness in improving the quality of provision for children and young people in Northern Ireland.

He is right in that there is always more that you could do, and we are often so busy doing the day job that we have not publicised our role and nature as effectively as we could. I think that we could do that better.

Mr Newton: May I suggest that it is easier to promote a new brand than it is to refresh an established one?

Mrs Buick: We have just had the launch of the chief inspector's report of the Education and Training Inspectorate, and that has had quite a lot of media coverage. I think that our brand is getting better known, but there is always more that we can do. We have a key role in promoting improvement in the education system in Northern Ireland, and I would like everyone to know that.

Mr Newton: What was the result of what I would presume was an internal consultation on recommendation 15?

Mrs Buick: The inspectorate and the Department liaised on all the recommendations and our response to them. There were internal discussions between the rest of the Department and the Education and Training Inspectorate.

Mr Newton: Could I describe that as a wide-ranging discussion?

Mrs Buick: I suppose you could.

Mr Newton: Would you describe it as that?

Dr Hughes: I think that it is worth saying that so many of the inquiry report's recommendations touch on policy areas in the Department. There was considerable interest throughout the Department. Colleagues in quite distinct business areas were interested in parts of the report, but, because it was of a piece, there was consideration across the Department.

Mr Newton: So, even though your response was quite succinct, there was a wide-ranging discussion.

Mrs Buick: There is not a universal view in the Department or ETI that we need to change our name to be more effective. No; I think that we are effective as we are.

Mr Newton: I assume that you took it seriously and that there was a wide-ranging discussion internally and consultation with those with a vested interest.

Mrs Buick: Absolutely. We took the inquiry's recommendations seriously. Who knows what will happen in the future, but there are no plans to change the name at this time.

Mr Newton: You might have expanded your answer a bit more. Am I right about that issue, on reflection?

Mrs Buick: No. We said that there are no plans to change the name at present, and that remains our position.

Mr Newton: OK. I want to ask you about recommendation 16. I will read something from the report to you, and you can respond to it. The Committee's finding was that, as the OECD recommended, ETI:

Does the Department accept that?

Mrs Buick: We have increased our data capacity. We have always had access to statisticians in the Department of Education, but we now have our own embedded statistical support in the Education and Training Inspectorate. That recommendation has been acted on.

I am not against undertaking longitudinal inspection activity.

The work we do is largely commissioned by the Department. If the Department wanted us to carry out a longitudinal study of a particular aspect of education, we would be happy to do it.

Mr Newton: You are not against it. Does that mean that you are for it?

Mrs Buick: Well, I think where —

Mr Newton: Would you recommend it internally?

Mrs Buick: If there are benefits in carrying out a longitudinal study, then it would be worth doing. It would depend on what the nature of the activity was.

Mr Newton: Are you considering doing that? Would I be right in describing it in that way?

Mrs Buick: Obviously, because it is a recommendation in the report, we have thought about it. However, we have not taken any particular action.

Dr Hughes: It is worth saying that the recommendation is that there should be a new model for the inspectorate, and that it should allow for the undertaking of longitudinal data analysis. It is not clear that actually the organisational change that is part of the recommendation is a necessary step to allow the inspectorate to undertake longitudinal data analysis.

As Noelle has said, the inspectorate's capacity for data analysis has been increased by having an embedded statistician. I think that there are other ways of following up the suggestion about longitudinal data analysis. That is a secondary issue to the issue of creating a new statutory organisation.

Mr P McAlister: To add to what David said, we have done longitudinal work in the past. When ICT was established in Northern Ireland, we had baseline surveys and then follow-up surveys about three years later to see how it was being embedded and the extent to which it was supporting and enhancing learning. One thing about that type of survey work is that it tends to be quite resource-intensive.

Since 2009, with the introduction of the school improvement policy, Every School a Good School, we have seen it as a very important part of our role to ensure that, as far as possible, every school is a good school, so we have tended to focus more on the institutional inspections rather than the wider longitudinal survey-type inspections.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): You will be relieved to know that no other member has indicated that they wish to ask a question. It has been a long session, and I appreciate the fact that you have taken the time and have answered questions fully.

We will obviously need to come back to this again. If members are content, Peter will review Hansard and we will follow up with some further questions if necessary. I want to reflect the importance of the inquiry and how seriously the Committee has taken it, and we will want to bring it to a natural conclusion after all our queries have been answered. Thank you very much for your time this morning.