Sir Martyn Oliver's speech to Parentkind
Sir Martyn Oliver, Ofsted’s Chief Inspector, spoke to Parentkind on the role of parents in education.
Thank you, thank you to Jason [Elsom, CEO, Parentkind] to everyone whether you’re in the room or online. It’s wonderful to be here, I want to thank Parentkind for the opportunity, and for all of the work they do. It’s always fantastic to speak directly to parents and carers. It’s so important that you are involved in the dialogue around education. That your voices, and the voices of your children are heard.
I know from all my time as a teacher, a head, a multi-academy trust leader and now as His Majesty’s Chief Inspector at Ofsted, that education works best when children, families and schools all work together.
Education is a team sport, and you need every member of the team to be pulling in the same direction.
The power of education
I saw this in my time as an art teacher, if you can believe it. I loved my job. I loved being able to see the impact that education can have on an individual child. You do all that you can to pass on knowledge and skills, but you also want to light a fire in children so they enjoy and keep learning throughout their lives. Teachers do this remarkable work every single day. But it’s in these roles that you also see the limitations of what can be achieved if something in the child’s home life isn’t working.
My biggest fear as a headteacher wasn’t Ofsted nor was it the responsibility of the actual job itself, it was the fear that there may be or there will be a child in one of my schools whose needs were not being met and that they wouldn’t go on to have the remarkable impact on society that they could have had: a child not able to attend PE enrichment and misses out on a sport they may have excelled at and gone to represent the country in, or a child not taking the right exam option and not going to make a break-through discovery in that field. These are the real-world and long-lasting consequences to what happens in education.
I saw it again when I became a head of sixth form. It was a wonderful role, helping to prepare young people for the world. But again, it only worked if the child and their family are also active participants in education and that progression.
In my first school, I stayed and taught art for 7 years and I was really fortunate enough to be given a few classes who I could see through from Year 7 all the way through to taking the their GCSEs and the first A-level class in that school when they got to Year 12. Seeing one generation through the school from start to finish and working with both the children and their parents as they flourished at GCSE and then A-level art before going on to university and having really successful careers is incredibly powerful, and satisfying as a career. The open and honest relationship with parents was critical each and every step of the way.
And I saw it as a headteacher. In that role, you’re working not just for the community within the school gates, but also the community outside those gates. You need to make sure that the children in the school are getting all the education and the opportunities that they can.
But you also need to be heavily invested in what happens before they arrive and when they leave school at the end of the day. In some cases, you need to understand why they are not coming in the first place. You need to support the aspirations of children and also the aspirations of their parents and carers. And you need to make sure everyone gets to work together to support the development of every child.
Beyond the individual
Of course, we want all parents to be involved in their children’s learning. To read to them, and to read with them. To support them with homework. To challenge and encourage them. I’m sure all of you involved in Parentkind exemplify this.
But what’s even more encouraging is when parents get involved in the life of the school itself. When they begin to help not only their child’s learning, but the learning of all children at that school, including those who may not have strong parental advocacy.
We know that schools with strong parent engagement thrive and succeed. As Parentkind regularly point out, it has been linked to improvements in attendance, behaviour, and academic achievement.
And PTAs are a fantastic way to do that, and I know many of you, here and online, are involved in that way. The same can be said for parent governors, again I know many of you have taken that route.
I was lucky enough to work with some fantastic PTAs and governors – in my first year of teaching I joined my school’s PTA and by the second year, incredibly, I chaired the group! You can imagine the impact it had on me as a young teacher chairing a group which consisted of the headteacher and chair of governors. Yet again though, I saw the power of parents and the school working together – this time not for the benefit of any one child, but of all children in that community.
But whether or not you join the PTA or the governing board, parents should understand what schools are doing and why they take the decisions they take. This requires active engagement from the parent, and active communication from the school. In loco parentis only works if the parents and teachers trust each other. It’s a two-way street.
When it’s done right, when parents and carers really buy in to the school and its ethos, then they become part of a united community, working together.
When the relationship breaks
But of course, we have also heard a lot recently about what can happen when this relationship and community is not there. When there is breakdown of trust between parents and schools. Sometimes this results in friction, or even outright hostility between parents and school leaders.
A survey of teachers called Teacher Tapp reported recently that over 40% of teachers and school leaders reported seeing negative online comments from parents about staff or their school since September.
In another Teacher Tapp survey at the end of the last school year, 9% of teachers said they had been the subject of an allegation from a parent. Obviously, some of these are legitimate grievances, and parents should be able to raise concerns. But nearly 1 in 10 of teachers feels high to me.
Other teacher representatives talk about abuse of teachers becoming more of a problem.
This sort of relationship breakdown can be hard to recover from. Trust is not built overnight, and once it’s lost it can take months or even years to rebuild. But the only way to tackle that is more openness and transparency.
We want to encourage parental engagement. Engagement in the right way, the way so many of you will be doing it.
We know how social media has come to influence the dynamics of school communities – positively and negatively. It’s such a powerful tool, and it can be an amazing way to bring people together. But it can also hand a microphone to the pub bore, a megaphone to the bully and help the rabble rouser find his or her rabble without leaving their armchair.
The world seems to be getting more antagonistic and adversarial. So, you can understand why a school leader might be wary of engaging with parents. But I always found that the way to defuse tensions, tackle rumours and build common purpose with parents is more communication, not less. More openness, not less. And more information sharing, not less. So, I say: join the PTA, don’t join the pile on!
Because I know from my experience, it will be welcomed. And Parentkind’s survey backs this up too. You found that 85% of teachers agree that parental engagement in school life has benefits and 75% agree that it improves outcomes for young people.
So I want Ofsted to play its part in better communication.
Our new report cards
I hope that our proposals for new report cards, to be introduced from November, will prove a game-changer.
They are based on what we heard from parents in the Big Listen. You told us that you wanted a broad evaluative approach with clear reporting on what your child’s school or nursery or college is doing well and what it needs to work on.
That’s exactly what we think we have designed. A report card that provides more detailed and nuanced information for you.
Now I know some of you were happy with the old system. After all, the one-word overall judgement was praised for its simplicity. But that simplicity also frustrated many parents who wanted more detailed information – more tailored to the needs of their children.
One-word judgements could also have unintended consequences. Where parents had a choice in schools – in cities and larger towns – the one-word judgement could lead to schools being over or under subscribed. This is frustrating for parents and potentially damaging for schools who could find their local reputation ‘locked’ for years, with a knock-on effect on everything from recruitment and retention of teachers, to local house prices.
The changes we’re proposing will do things differently. We will report on a much wider range of areas. Things that matter, I hope, to you. Things like behaviour, achievement, attendance, teaching and the curriculum, leadership and governance, and inclusion – really looking in detail at how schools make sure their pupils all have a sense of belonging, especially those who are disadvantaged, vulnerable, or have special educational needs. For each area, you will be able to see a clear grade, and a description of what we found when we inspected the school.
Report cards will help give a more balanced picture of schools. Because the best schools aren’t perfect and have areas where they could do better, and the schools which might be seen as ‘weaker’ will have aspects of their work that they do really well. In that way a school’s report card will be much closer to a child’s school report. Going back to my art teacher days, the one-word grade paints a monochrome picture of a school; and now we want to paint it in colour.
Wouldn’t it be great if more balanced reporting, acknowledging both strengths and weaknesses, put paid to the idea that a school is seen as a 100% ‘success’ or a 100% ‘failure’. And instead parents had the information they needed to choose schools based on the specific things they thought were most important to their children.
Somewhere with great standards of behaviour. Somewhere with exceptional support for children with special educational needs or disabilities. Somewhere which delivers great outcomes and achievements. Somewhere that really prioritises the wellbeing and personal development of its pupils. Parents and carers will be able to see how local schools perform on these. That might change the way schools are seen by their communities and change established patterns of school applications.
But I know for many of you – particularly if you live outside of cities – there really isn’t much choice between schools. I still think more detailed information will really help you. You’ll be able to see what’s working well and what needs attention at your local school. And I believe this level of information will help inform a better, more constructive conversation between school leaders and their communities – to address some of those tensions I spoke about a few minutes ago.
And we want to do more to encourage this constructive dialogue. As I said, we know that an engaged community leads to a better school. So, our proposals for inspecting the leadership and governance of a school talk explicitly about the need for leaders to ‘engage with and work effectively with parents and carers and the local community to support pupils’ achievement and well-being.’ - that’s a direct quote from our school inspection toolkit. I know that’s something that Parentkind has welcomed.
Driving higher standards
Above all, we hope this approach will drive ever higher standards for children. It will give schools an independent and expert assessment of what they’re doing well and where they could improve. It will validate, assure, and celebrate their hard work, and shine a light on how they can do even better.
And it will help you, as parents, meaningfully engage with the school on the issues that need attention. Sometimes, it may validate your concerns, other times it may reassure you that an individual experience is not the norm.
It will also help the government better target support where it is needed. By reporting specifically on topics like attendance or behaviour, we can help government decide when and where to provide expert assistance to those who need it most. And we also want to help schools – as well as nurseries and further education colleges – to see which of their peers are really blazing a trail, through our new exemplary grade. So, we will highlight some of the best national examples of where schools are doing something truly exceptional.
Initial support from parents
Of course, what I’ve set out today are our proposals, they are not set in stone. Our consultation on a new way of inspecting is open until 28th April and it’s on our website – ‘gov.uk/Ofsted’. Please, please read the proposals and give us every one of your views.
I’m sure there are things that could be better. Things we could refine. But we are encouraged that parents seem to support the broad approach that we have set out.
We recently commissioned independent research from YouGov. They polled parents on our proposed report cards and have just shared the results with us.
Almost 7 out of 10 of the parents surveyed said they prefer the new-look report cards to our current inspection reports. Just 15% said they preferred the old system.
And nearly 9 out of 10 parents said the report cards are easy to understand. 84% thought that the colour-coding we propose to use on the reports is helpful.
And it’s worth adding that two thirds of parents said they support Ofsted continuing to grade schools. That is important, as grading does come in for some criticism – but parents are consistent: they told us in the Big Listen they wanted it and they’ve told us again in this new survey.
It’s great to see this level of support. But obviously, we need a system that works for everyone. It needs to work for you as parents and, most importantly, it needs to work for children. But it also needs to work for those working in schools and nurseries and colleges.
Sometimes that’s a balancing act. But I do not see the two as in opposition. After all, you and your children want happy teachers. You don’t want to see high turnover any more than leaders do. And you want schools to be able to focus on what really matters and provide the best possible education.
So, we’ve tried to design a system that does just that. That drives higher standards for children, that improves reporting for you and enables engagement for you, and that reduces pressure on everyone working in education.
Conclusion
So, it’s really important that we capture parents’ opinions in the consultation. So, thank you for all of you who have already taken part – and thank you in advance if you plan to do so.
And I’d like to end by recognising the incredible work so many of you do as PTA members, or parent governors. Thank you for supporting schools, for contributing to your communities, and for improving the education prospects not just of your own children, but of all the children in your neighbourhoods. So thank you for the work you do, it’s so important. It’s been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you.