Thinking about curriculum impact

When considering impact, the question that needs to be asked is whether our pupils have learnt what they have been taught and how do we know? It is important to remember that the impact judgement feeds into a single quality of education judgement, drawing together intent and implementation along with impact.

The school inspection handbook[1] says ‘when inspectors evaluate the impact of the education provided by the school, their focus will primarily be on what pupils have learned.’ It goes on to say that ‘inspectors can use work scrutiny to contribute to an evaluation of whether the work that pupils do over time reflects the intended curriculum. Work scrutiny will help inspectors to form a view of whether pupils know more and can do more, and whether the knowledge and skills they have learned are well sequenced and have developed incrementally.’ It is important to emphasise that inspectors ‘will not evaluate individual workbooks or teachers. Inspectors will not use work scrutiny to evaluate teachers’ marking. Inspectors will connect work scrutiny to lesson visits and, where at all possible, conversations with pupils and staff.’

Again, we see that the criteria are drawn from inspection experience and research that shows that ‘the most important factors to consider are that:
a well-constructed, well-taught curriculum will lead to good results because those results will reflect what pupils have learned. There need be no conflict between teaching a broad, rich curriculum and achieving success in examinations and tests.’ In fact, it could be argued that a broad and balanced curriculum is essential for success in external exams and tests. For example, some pupils do not perform well in the SATS reading test at the end of key stage 2 and this is quite often due to a lack of vocabulary. Some schools identify this and provide spelling tests in order to bridge this gap. While spelling is important, it falls short of deep vocabulary development which is an ongoing process of encountering and using words in different contexts. It turns out that the most powerful way of achieving this is through a broad and balanced curriculum.

The sources of evidence relating to the impact of the quality of education comes from a number of sources: ‘the progress that pupils are making in terms of knowing more, remembering more and being able to do more’ and the first source of evidence is external: ‘the nationally generated performance information about pupils’ progress and attainment. This information is available in the IDSR, which is available to schools and inspectors, and will be analysed for its statistical significance in advance by Ofsted’s data and insight team.’ It goes on to say that ‘national assessments and examinations are useful indicators of pupils’ outcomes, but they only represent a sample of what pupils have learned. Inspectors will balance outcomes with their first-hand assessment of pupils’ work.’

As a starting point, inspectors will use the official IDSR, then gains further information through seeing firsthand the quality of education as experienced by pupils and understand how well leaders know what it is like to be a pupil at the school. In relation to any assessment data collected by the school they ask, ‘what they are drawing from their data and how that informs their curriculum and teaching’. There are implications here for schools where data input is required from teachers, but which is never used to identify gaps in pupils’ learning, nor to adjust the curriculum and teaching in light of that information. If this link cannot be made, then it begs the question of why it is being collected in the first place?

The question needs to be asked about the reason for inspection teams not using schools’ internal assessment data as evidence. ‘Inspectors will not look at non-statutory internal progress and attainment data on section 5 and section 8 inspections of schools’ (although interestingly, they will consider the school’s use of assessment). It goes on to say ‘that does not mean that schools cannot use data if they consider it appropriate. Inspectors will, however, put more focus on the curriculum and less on schools’ generation, analysis and interpretation of data.’ We have to ask why this is? One answer is that internally generated school data does not have the level of validity nor reliability that external has.

Teachers’ workload is also a factor in this: ‘teachers have told us they believe this will help us play our part in reducing unnecessary workload. Inspectors will be interested in the conclusions drawn and actions taken from any internal assessment information, but they will not examine or verify that information firsthand.

And to reinforce this message, Matthew Purves, Deputy Director, Schools explained that Ofsted’s goal is to view performance measures more in the context of the quality of education provided:[2] ‘Data should not be king. Too often, vast amounts of teachers’ and leaders’ time is absorbed into recording, collecting and analysing excessive progress and attainment data within schools. And that diverts their time away from what they entered the profession to do, which is to be educators. And, in fact, with much of that progress and attainment data, they and we can’t be confident that it’s valid and reliable information. … inspectors will not look at school’s internal progress and attainment data.’

The bulk of the information comes from ‘first-hand evidence of how pupils are doing, drawing together evidence from the interviews, lesson visits, work scrutinies and documentary review; nationally published information about the destinations to which its pupils progress when they leave the school; in primary schools, listening to a range of pupils read; discussions with pupils about what they have remembered about the content they have studied’ and finally, ‘how well pupils with SEND are prepared for the next stage of education and their adult lives.’ 

So, it turns out that much of the evidence collected during inspection relies on looking at pupils’ work (not just written work their books), talking to them about what they have learnt and talking to their teachers about how they are getting on. None of which sits neatly on a spreadsheet.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-inspection-handbook-eif

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcrp5N6c334&feature=emb_logo