IN CONVERSATION WITH VANESSA WARD CEO & CHIEF INSPECTOR, ISI

In most staff rooms in independent schools across the country, the word ‘inspection’ heralds a collective deep breath. Because, inarguably, an inspection holds the school accountable for meeting a set of standards, inspected through a specific framework. Independent schools are held to account through the Independent School Standards, which are set by the Department for Education and approved by Parliament, and are split into eight main parts covering all aspects of school life.

Much of what is covered in the standards has the well-being of children as its core value. Heads and leadership teams feel their accountability keenly. And to be held accountable for something is a serious responsibility, a weighty obligation.

However, as Vanessa reassuringly explains, accountability is only one of a number of potential purposes of school inspection. The new Framework 23 sets the tone for a manageable and collaborative process, where schools are recognised as complex and individual entities, and evaluations are both robust and nuanced.

Underpinning Framework 23 are four principles, which aim to set the tone of inspections going forward into the new six-year cycle.

As a teacher herself, then as a head, Vanessa is no stranger to what inspection looks like from the staff room. She wants to encourage schools to keep the process manageable, starting with preparation ahead of the event itself. Schools can access the ISI website, where “we publish a lot of information that sits around the inspection, like the framework, the handbook, FAQs. We want to promote openness and accessibility to the requirements that schools have to meet.”

Familiarity with these documents means that schools understand how inspection can work alongside their own quality assurance processes: “It’s about articulation, it’s about managing the relationship”. Vanessa is very clear that "we want to make sure that we aren’t creating extra workload, that we want to see the school as business as usual, that we only want to ask for documents that are already in existence, because it’s part of the school’s everyday life. We don’t want things to be prepared specifically for inspection. We’re really looking at our systems to make sure that we don’t inadvertently do that.”

Perhaps drawing on her years as a school improvement partner, Vanessa emphasises the importance of collaboration in a

Framework 23 inspection. She explains: “Wherever possible, and whenever school leaders would like us to, we want to inspect activities jointly with them. For example, looking at lessons, or looking at pupils’ work will be a shared activity, reflecting together. Obviously there will be an evaluation at some point, which will be held by the inspection team, but that evaluation will be about what has been seen jointly. Joint observations will be an offer to the school, they don’t have to do that, we appreciate that there may be constraints around doing so, but it is on offer.” Where collaborative observations have taken place, the ensuing conversation between school leaders and inspectors will intrinsically demonstrate quality assurance processes, adding further validity and reliability to the staff room view of inspections.

Maybe there is something of the solicitor in Vanessa’s explanation of the third principle of inspection, which has its roots in the careful consideration of evidence. It points to a very thorough process: “It’s about how we use the evidence we see on inspection. So first of all we triangulate, we look for a range of evidence to support an emerging evaluation that will become a judgement. As appropriate, inspectors will think, what else do I need to see, or is there something else I need to look at. Typicality is very much about emphasising that we want to reach a typicality of experience in that school for pupils over time. Obviously, we’re only in schools for a limited amount of time – two and a half days – but we want, if possible, to reach beyond those two and a half days.