Liberal Democrats have announced plans that would abolish Ofsted and create widespread reform in how school and pupil performance is judged.
Regional Schools Commissioners would be abolished and local authorities with responsibility for education, would be given the task of promoting high standards across the state sector.
Councils would also be able to open new community schools where there was a need.
Ofsted will be replaced with a new Inspector of Schools who will report on a broad array of qualities including pupil welfare, the promotion of equality of opportunity and teacher workload, sickness and retention, as well as attainment measures.
The new body would have jurisdiction over both state and independent schools, grading each school either ‘good’, ‘requires improvement’ or ‘requires support’ every three years.
Plans put forward by the Liberal Democrats at Spring Conference will also see the abolition of SATS at Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2, to reduce stress to teachers and pupils. A new system of examination would focus on moderated teacher assessment and lighter touch testing.
Liberal Democrat Local Government Education Spokesperson, Lucy Nethsingha, said:
“This motion restores a clear role to local government in promoting high standards across the state sector, as well as giving them back the power to open a new community school where needed”.
“For far too long we have put up with a school system that fails both children and the wider economy. Students are taught to think like second rate robots, when to compete in an AI world they need not just parrot content, but use that content creatively and in a way that can be adapted.
Liberal Democrat Education Spokesperson, Layla Moran MP, added:
“These reforms represent a culture change in the way we run our schools. The current over-emphasis on high-stakes testing has led to a system which overlooks many important elements of the development of a child. Ofsted only encourages this and is in our view too broken to be fixed.
“Parents want to know their children’s well-being is being looked after and that they are receiving a broad education, which equips them for adult life, including creativity and the arts, SRE, financial literacy and first aid skills.
“We need an inspectorate and measure of success which recognises these values, empowering each individual child to be the best they can and want to be.”
ENDS
The full motion as passed by conference reads
Conference believes that:
- Education is core to our Liberal Democrat Values.
- It opens the mind, fosters understanding and tolerance, and empowers our children and our communities to be the best they can be.
- Every child deserves a great start in life so they are equipped to shape their own future, and are determined to make sure that the education system finds and unleashes the best in everyone.
- Education helps break down the unfair divisions in our society, it ensure a productive, competitive economy and it overcomes intolerance.
- Despite the excellent work of schools, parents and children, persistent levels of educational inequality mean far too many children leave school without the skills and knowledge they need to succeed.
- Restrictive school uniform policies followed by many schools reinforce negative gender stereotypes, with girls often forced to wear restrictive and objectifying uniforms. This is detrimental for pupils of all genders and severely detrimental and exclusionary for non-binary and transgender pupils.
Conference regrets that:
- The Conservative government’s spending plans continue to underfund education.
- Excessive bureaucratic demands and constant changes in policy place an unnecessary workload on teachers.
- Pressure to pass exams restricts schools’ ability to focus on developing a wider education: on the arts, creativity and skills for work and life.
Conference endorses policy paper 128, Every Child Empowered: education for a changing world, as a statement of Liberal Democrat policy to meet these challenges. Conference particularly calls for:
1. An end to Conservative cuts to education including:
- Working towards parity of per-pupil funding between post-16 and 5-16 funding, and commit to at least protect per-pupil funding in real terms from 5-19.
- Protection of the pupil premium.
2. Support for early years education including
a) Increasing the early years pupil premium from £300 per year to £1000.
b) Ensuring all early years settings have a training programme for staff, with the majority of staff who are working with children to either have a relevant qualification or be working towards one; each setting should be Graduate-led.
3. Boosting the readiness of children to learn and supporting household budgets by extending free school meals to all primary-age children.
4. Action to improve the quality of teaching and boost the morale of teachers by:
- Supporting the Chartered College of Teaching.
- Requiring all teachers in state schools to be Qualified Teachers (or be working towards Qualified Teacher Status).
- Providing 50 hours per year of high quality Continuing Professional Development.
5. Delivering a more coherent and accountable structure for state schools in England by:
- Giving local authorities with responsibility for education the remit and resources to act as Strategic Education Authorities for their area, including responsibility for places planning, exclusions, admissions including in-year admissions, and SEND functions.
- Abolishing Regional Schools Commissioners and give local authorities with responsibility for education the task of promoting high standards across the state sector.
- Creating a level playing field by requiring MATs to undergo external inspection and allowing local authorities to open new Community Schools where needed.
- Introducing a new ‘duty of candour’ on all schools, including academies, free schools and Multi-Academy Trusts, similar to that which applies to suppliers of services in the NHS.
6. Modernising the curriculum by:
- Requiring all state schools including academy and free schools to teach a revised national curriculum.
- Including a ‘curriculum for life’ (eg. RSE, Citizenship, First Aid, Financial Literacy) and ensuring every child has access to high quality, independent careers advice.
- Scrapping mandatory SAT tests at KS2 and replacing them with a combination of a moderated teacher assessment at the end of each phase and a lighter touch standardised test to ensure consistency.
7. Maintaining high standards while reducing unnecessary distortions in the system arising from the current accountability framework by:
- Replacing the existing Ofsted with a reformed independent inspection system which should focus on judging whether school leaders are capable of leading improvement and an assessment of the long term success of the whole school, looking at pupil and teacher well-being as well as results.
- Replacing existing government performance tables (‘league tables’) of schools with a broader set of indicators including more qualitative data about pupil well-being.
- Scrapping existing broad a mandatory SATs tests at both KS1 and KS2, and replacing them with a moderated teacher assessment at the end of each phase and some lighter-touch testing.
- Have decisions to intervene in schools or change their governance arrangements normally be made by the Local Authority or MAT, ending the presumption that a temporary dip in results will trigger academisation or re-brokering of schools already functioning as academies.
8. Improving the way the system treats pupils with Special Education Needs and Disabilities by:
- Screening for children to identify trauma and neglect in early years, and proactively provide early and evidence-based interventions to stop the trauma becoming entrenched.
- Supporting measures to reduce the number of children with special educational needs who are excluded from school – these children are six times more likely to be excluded than children with no SEN.
- Emphasising SEND provision in inspections.
9. Giving greater support to the mental health of pupils by:
- Developing a mental health care pathway beginning in schools that links with local mental health services.
- Establishing a specific individual responsible for mental health in schools, who would provide a link to expertise and support for children experiencing problems and would also take a lead on developing whole school approaches to mental well-being.
Conference also calls for schools to be required to provide inclusive, non prescriptive, gender-neutral school uniform policies and for adequate training for school staff on how to review and improve their school uniform policies.