After OFSTED
Mervyn Benford

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Twelve years ago a Swedish friend who saw that I had become an Ofsted RGI asked me to visit the ten schools whose Chief Education Officer he was and tell him if they were doing a good enough job. So began the development of a model I have evolved for rapid and effective school accountability based on the one OFSTED activity that for me had any meaning, namely observing lessons and giving informed feedback.

In Sweden the same standards debate has gripped the country, and rightly. Even in 1994 they had a phrase for “trendy methods.” Swedish education, once tightly prescriptive, has in recent decades been heavily devolved to the lottery of professional determination.

There are no leaving examinations, just assessment. They have a skeletal national curriculum so teachers have but an outline sense of progression. More interpretative documents exist but I have not seen much evidence of their use. What children in primary schools learn of history, geography and science, art and music is rather the lottery it was here before the era of rigour. By year 5 in art children “should know some methods”.  For teachers confident in art it embraces painting, sketching, printing, modelling and so on. For less confident teachers it is felt-tip drawing.

Teaching methods in Sweden are as variable as any we ever had. Students have publicly complained at what they are not taught. In-service training days are obligatory but teachers study what they choose.

The Swedish government saw problems with mathematics and commissioned a major survey taking three years with experts, conferences, reports and costing millions. The resulting 256-page report that few in school seem to have read tells them what Cockcroft told us: too much textbook work, too little problem-solving, too much computation, inadequately prepared teachers. It could have been written in 256 words and after observing a dozen lessons. Inspection has now been introduced.

I cite the background of complaint only to argue that in addition to helping individual teachers and schools, observation reveals wider issues that need local and national attention. Feedback often has meaning for more than the individual teacher. A national picture in Sweden emerged for me after observing 2600 lessons in more than 300 schools and 30 local authorities across the 1-19 age range, in both town and country neighbourhoods.  

Working in Sweden, I have trained several hundred teachers, headteachers and officers in lesson observation and feedback. Almost all have welcomed it and though clearly many were nervous, being observed almost for the first time in years in many cases, almost all have said they found it useful and would like to do some observing themselves.

One teacher, who had protested that after 25 years teaching why did she need some Englishman to come and tell her she was doing it wrong, was distinctly surprised that her qualities were recognised. The assumption always is that one expects something “new.” The observer looks for what is effective and in the right hands some of the oldest methods in the book work very well. I ask observers always to look for the good things. Most teachers always do good things and rarely does anyone tell them so. They are so flushed as a result they welcome the “but if you...” which is the heart of the exercise, identifying the best next step for that teacher by way of improvement.

One teacher who had presented the weakest lesson in his department that week nevertheless wrote down almost verbatim what the observation team had noticed and advised, and then asked me if I was coming back to the school and, if so, would I see another one of his lessons? That was never my experience as an Ofsted RGI. Yet it was very clear, even in the anxiety of inspection, that UK teachers are just as hungry for information about their performance.

To observe lessons and give feedback requires some idea of what quality looks like. Several groups of teachers in Sweden produced sets of criteria, too many to use in a practical 40-minute lesson. We distilled them into the dozen I found most useful when with Ofsted and generally acceptable to most experienced practitioners and researchers as helping teaching and learning to be effective: challenge; interaction; the chance for pupils to use their own ideas and questions; the use of small groups; and how effectively time and space are used.

Observation and feedback challenge those essential reflection processes against which we all assess our performance. One needs a scale against which to measure effectiveness, but the levels involved remain personal to the observer and should not be part of feedback. Determining just how effective a lesson is, or is not, enables assessment of the best next step for the particular teacher.

I realised the model I was developing was becoming ever more convincing, not least because, despite the problems in Sweden, I have seen many good teachers, good schools and really effective lessons and these should be far better known. I have documented more than 150 of the best, describing why they were so good, and continue to seek a way to help all Swedish teachers join a debate about what I have observed.

I proposed a 10% increase in staffing for every school just to manage internal evaluation and the on-going professional development it would bring. Considerable flexibility would be needed in managing observation timetables and collecting for whole-school discussion the broader lessons eventually emerging. The extra hands would also support teachers when necessary, release teachers, perhaps subject specialists, to observe, cover heads and deputies so they could observe. Sadly, I have not yet been able to persuade a kommun to invest the resources the model requires, not least with inspection now installed.

Without a tradition of either inspection or lesson observation, Swedish inspection reports are heavily descriptive, reporting mainly what the school already knows – shades of the old Section 10. Much is conducted through documents and the outcomes of individual interviews which remain very subjective. One of the original ten headteachers I first trained in 1994 now claims that even her local evaluation reports give her little information about pupils’ standards and progress.

This headteacher wants more, and the model I offer provides sharp, critical comment against clear criteria, based where the action is, namely in the classroom, and on why the children are there, namely to learn things and understand them well enough to use and apply them practically. A model based on bottom-up analysis, active, purposeful, organised with mutual staff goodwill and adequately resourced, highlights practical and proper professional focus.

I went to Sweden originally to help a friend trying to draw on my Ofsted experience. He invited me to visit his classrooms. The sheer power of the process thereby unfolded has revealed a model of active accountability with far more substance than inspection and testing. It starts with teachers and their school leaders. Most have openly welcomed a taste of the experience even if the structures and resources remain to be found to pursue it. Several ask me to train all their staff as they wish to try to implement the model even within their existing resources.  

My experience over 12 years working in Swedish classrooms tells me we need to replace Ofsted with a model based on observation and feedback, rooted in all that is known about what makes teaching and learning effective. Given the cost of the additional resources the model entails, I still calculate it would be cheaper than the combined costs presently expended on testing, QCA, Ofsted and the paraphernalia of quality assurance strategies we have produced to address the same concerns.

Observation enriches observers. It broadens horizons and raises expectations. You see great teaching and know that it is possible.

Mervyn Benford is one of NET’s Leading Thinkers. Respond to this article via office@nationaleducationtrust.net 

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