Local authorities to inspect schools

SCHOOL inspectors are to be stripped of their powers, paving the way for local authorities to conduct their own "DIY" surveys of classrooms.

Cathy Jamieson, the education minister, is planning to call on council officials to check their own house is in order rather than submit schools to a review by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education (HMI).

The move, first investigated by Ms Jamieson’s predecessor, Jack McConnell, is part of a drive to ensure that more power, and responsibility, is devolved to local levels, away from the Scottish executive. A second objective is that schools receive thorough checks more frequently so problems in classrooms are picked up quickly.

Last night, Brian Monteith, the Conservative education spokesman, described the plan as "an outrage".

He said: "I can’t believe that parents will stand for schools being inspected by the very people who run them.

"What we should be doing is strengthening HMI to perform quality checks more frequently . I completely reject this betrayal of the search for standards by an executive lying prostrate before COSLA [the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities] and local authorities."

The Scottish executive believes the reviews, which councils began to carry out in the 1990s, are as thorough as HMI reports. It also argues that the reviews have more credibility as assessments of how good a school is since grassroots school staff have had significant input into their design.

It is the executive’s belief that as council reviews command more respect in the profession, they will encourage more teachers to engage fully in monitoring education standards. Since the late 1980s, HMI has itself tried to encourage school staff to be their own "policemen", challenging their own record in helping pupils reach full potential.

Opponents of the advanced plan for inspection reform - which is part of a series of major public service reforms to be revealed at intervals between now and the Scottish parliament election in 2003 - say it is a myth that HMI reports are bureaucratic and fail to give a true account of schools. They also fear education authorities producing their own reports will be tempted to present their schools in the best light.

The executive is planning quality control checks in the form of random inspections of a minority of schools, possibly carried out by other local education authorities which have experience of schools with similar characteristics, such as an urban or rural catchment.

A further check on how accurately authorities inspect their own schools will come from inspection of the authorities. A major advantage of the plan to remove responsibility for school inspection from HMI is that it frees inspectors to concentrate on the bigger picture of authority inspection.

A source close to the executive said: "HMI needs to spend more time on local authorities to make sure the inspections are valid and to make sure that we don’t see develop the kind of shambles we did in the Borders.

"The image that Cathy Jamieson has of being some kind of control freak state centralist is wrong. She is a pragmatist in favour of public service reform ."

An official spokesman for the executive described the report as speculation. "We have no plans to change the inspection process in this way," he said.

Gordon Jeyes, general secretary of the Association of Directors of Education, said it makes sense for local education authorities to monitor their own schools. "No modern creative industry waits for an inspector to come along, take a snapshot and tell them their product is duff.

"Council reviews can be at least as rigorous as HMI inspections ."

Mr Jeyes stressed that he believes there should be some kind of external check on council reviews , but he added that HMI does not need to be the watchdog. A representative from an outside organisation such as the CBI could chair the review.