Obviously, any mention of teacher accountability now cannot happen without acknowledging the tragic death of the Headteacher of Caversham Primary School in Reading, Ruth Perry. Her shocking loss is a stark reminder to us all of the very difficult job that people who work in schools do, and how accountability mechanisms – in that case, Ofsted inspection – can lead to terrible unintended consequences for individuals and schools. Ruth Perry’s passing not only makes clear the need to overhaul the school inspection system – we CAN do a lot better than the one we have – but it also reminds us all to be kind, and reasonable, and sensible in our dealings with each other. People who work in schools need to be well looked after, every day. RIP, dear Ruth Perry. You deserved better.
My first blog on teacher accountability can be summarised like this: as public servants, teachers should be held to account for the work we do; but we ought to be careful in schools about the specific processes we use to demonstrate that accountability; sitting above all school policies, systems and processes are the Teachers Standards, and where relevant we should always reference our local decisions to them; whilst the Teachers Standards provide the big-picture statutory guide around teacher accountability, they weren’t designed to provide the detail that’s needed for nuanced accountability mechanisms (i.e. sensible school quality assurance activity).
We all benefit from being held to account against clear and sensible standards; if we aren’t, with the best will in the world we can become complacent, and that can lead to lower standards, over time – especially in large organisations where robust systems are essential for ensuring consistent practice. Trust is important, too: a ‘surplus model’ of school leadership is one that starts with school leaders trusting that everyone who works in the school is very keen to do a good job – trusted people are far more likely to consistently give of their best; in the vast majority of schools, where in my experience people are apt to go above and beyond, so much hinges on goodwill; trust builds goodwill. So how do we reconcile the desirability of trust and teacher autonomy on the hand with the need for accountability through quality assurance processes? By trusting, and checking in sensible ways (see below).
What should we hold teachers to account for?
How about these things?
- Doing the basics reliably: attending work; being punctual; taking registers of students’ attendance; adhering to examination board regulations… carrying out the job description for the role we do etc…
- Implementing school/trust policies and processes reliably: teaching, performance management, homework, assessment, marking, attending meetings, doing duties etc…
- Contributing, where relevant, to the school achieving its development priorities: for example, there may be a school priority that relies on everyone playing their part
- Contributing to the pursuit of team priorities: for example, contributing to implementing the department improvement plan
- Progress against personal targets, such as those agreed through the appraisal process; for teachers on the upper pay spine, checking that they are meeting those standards
What accountability mechanisms should we use?
The mechanism will depend on the thing being quality-assured – the process for checking that registers are completed on time is a far more straightforward one than the process for checking whether/how well we are implementing the school’s behaviour policy, for example – but a good rule of thumb for any QA process is that it should be reliable, reasonable, open and flexible:
- Reliable – it provides the information we are seeking
- Reasonable – it is proportionate, not onerous, consuming as little teacher time as is practicable; and fair
- Open – the process itself, and why it is being used is clear
- Flexible – capable of being tweaked in response to feedback over time, so it can be improved
We should apply the Reliable?/Reasonable?/Open?/Flexible? tests to all our processes for holding people to account, and be ready to amend those processes if they need amendment.
Striking the balance between the enormous value of trusting teachers and giving them autonomy on the one hand, and having robust systems for ensuring accountability on the other hand, is a challenging one, but it is doable, it’s a challenge worth working on.
