Norwood (1943)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages Membership, Contents, Introduction

Part I Secondary education
Chapter 1 Nature of secondary education
Chapter 2 Secondary education as it is
Chapter 3 Secondary education as it might be

Part II Examinations
Chapter 4 Existing examinations
Chapter 5 The reorganisation of examinations (i)
Chapter 6 The reorganisation of examinations (ii)
Chapter 7 The Inspectorate

Part III Curriculum
Chapter 8 The curriculum in general
Chapter 9 Physical education
Chapter 10 Religious education
Chapter 11 English
Chapter 12 History
Chapter 13 Geography
Chapter 14 Mathematics
Chapter 15 Natural science
Chapter 16 Modern languages
Chapter 17 Classics
Chapter 18 Art, music, handicrafts
Chapter 19 Domestic subjects
Chapter 20 Education for commerce
Chapter 21 Wales and the teaching of Welsh

Conclusions and recommendations
Appendix A Note on the Central Welsh Board
Appendix B List of witnesses
Index

Report of the Committee of the Secondary School Examinations Council appointed by the President of the Board of Education in 1941

London: HM Stationery Office 1943

Chapter 7 The Inspectorate
[pages 50 - 54. In the printed version this is Part II Chapter IV]

The maintenance of the present spirit and professional competence of His Majesty's Inspectors, and a generous development of their numbers, are so essential a foundation for the success of the proposals which we make that it is right to devote a separate chapter of our Report to this topic. The Inspectorate has made a remarkable history for itself. At their beginning in the nineteenth century inspectors were inquisitors; they assessed payment by results, their visits were feared by teachers and by taught, they were thought of as officials without sympathy whose whole business was to operate a machine. There are countries, and among them are some of the Dominions, in which this tradition has led on to its natural result, that the teaching profession and the Inspectorate, if not hostile, are always on guard, each against the other, and educational progress does not come easily in an atmosphere of suspicion. But in this country our experience has been far happier, and the inspectors of Secondary Schools, entering upon their task at a time when the system of payment by results has been discarded, from the first established a far more sympathetic tradition. They have had to concern themselves with the keeping of regulations, and their attitude has of necessity had a critical side. But the criticism has been always intended to be constructive, and the inspectors have shown themselves to be collaborators rather than auditors; they have looked at problems from the schools' point of view, and sought to help in finding a solution of difficulties. Those whose memories go as far back as to 1902 will remember how widespread among the heads and governors of schools was the suspicion of the Board of Education and of all its instruments and processes. Now forty years later there must be few of the fully independent schools of the country which have not sought inspection of their own free will, and there are none which would refuse it. Since 1902 again there has come about the great growth of education provided and directed by the local education authorities, often with the assistance of their own inspectors; the problems which must necessarily and continuously arise as the result of our combination of local freedom and initiative with a measure of central control have been on the whole happily dealt with, and a proportion of the credit for this is again due to the Inspectorate. The whole story is a striking testimony to their wisdom and sympathy, and it records a strength in our educational system which is of natural and unplanned growth and upon which reliance can confidently be placed. For this reason we do not hesitate to build on it.

In the interval between the wars, owing to the rapid growth in the number of Secondary Schools, and, since the outbreak of the present war, owing to evacuation and the depletion of the Inspectorate itself, the burden of work has become too great for the numbers available. Inspectors have had too much to do; full inspections of schools have become rarer than they should be, individual visits to schools have tended to become less frequent and more hurried. A growing burden of purely administrative work has been placed upon their shoulders, largely arising from the imperative needs of the situation created by the war, but needing to be lightened as soon as possible. The system is not working as well as it did, but the cure for this is simple. What is required is a generous recruitment in numbers, if possible, without loss of quality. This patent need will become all the clearer if we set down the functions which we regard as belonging to the Inspectorate in our future educational system.

On one side of their work it must remain true that the inspectors shall be the eyes and ears of the Board of Education, reporting regularly what is being thought, said and done in the schools. On another side of their work they provide a guarantee to the public that the schools are doing their work honestly, maintaining their standards and responding to new needs as they arise. On yet a third side they have to keep the friendship and the willing cooperation of the teaching profession. These three functions can be satisfactorily fulfilled only if the Inspectorate as a public service has a certain independent status, and this has been happily marked by the fact that from their inception they have been known as His Majesty's Inspectors. They must be a guarantee to the nation in any real democratic system that the business of the schools is education, and that it is being carried out in freedom according to the ideals and methods which are proper to it. They must therefore themselves be recognised as men and women who in important problems are expected to exercise an independent judgement, and to be free to say what they think. Just in order to emphasise this claim and this responsibility we feel that the Inspectorate should continue to be known as His Majesty's Service.

We believe that the Inspectorate should be numerous enough to conduct at least once in every five years a full inspection of each school and to maintain a real contact during the intervening years. There is general agreement that these inspections act as a great tonic to the schools, not so much to the pupils as to their teachers; they are invaluable to governors and to local education authorities. They stop drift by stating problems clearly, and seeking solutions; they ask questions, and do not leave them unanswered; they impose upon all teachers the necessity of being in a position to give reasons for what they are doing; they may themselves be part of an educational routine, but they are the enemy of unthinking routine in the schools themselves. For all teachers alike they are an instrument of cross-fertilisation; they bring to the knowledge of men and women, who still - though not so much as in the past - are apt to be cut off from information and contact, helpful suggestions and descriptions of the manner in which similar problems of organisation and method are being solved elsewhere. They can show where help can be got and light found for dark places.

They must also be numerous enough to maintain continuous contact by providing for regular informal visits term by term, and whenever special occasion arises. This function is as important as the full quinquennial inspection. It enables the inspector and the staffs to get to know each other, and promotes a readiness on the one side to state problems as they arise and to seek aid, and on the other a willingness to give such aid, or to show where it may be found - a task always more readily accomplished when there is personal knowledge and confidence on both sides. In each district there must be an inspector who knows the schools and the people who teach in them.

We emphasise these duties in considerable detail because their successful performance lies at the foundation of the whole system of secondary education which we hope will be developed in this country. This we regard as a national service, of which the integrity and efficiency will be guaranteed by public control exercised by the local education authorities, and directly or indirectly by the Board of Education. Inspectors commissioned from either side of this partnership will make this control real; they are the right men for the work, just because they know the schools in a human way by regular contacts and can estimate the manner of work that is being done in them. They can correct misdirection of effort and promote the raising of standards that are too low by means at once more subtle and more direct than are possible by any system of purely external regulation. Indeed it is not too much to say that without the constant supervision and stimulus that will come from the enlarged Inspectorate that we have in mind, and without the guarantees of standard that the collaboration of the Inspectorate confers on the schools, the system of internal examination at what is now known as the School Certificate stage, with all the advantage of freedom and of experiment which we hope that it will bring to the teachers, cannot be made to work, because it will not carry with it the necessary public confidence.

It has not been easy of late years to recruit the Inspectorate from men and women of the high qualifications that are required. There are needed for the task not only wide professional knowledge and some experience, but patience, tact and sympathy, together with the ability to understand the point of view of those who differ as well as to be clear and persuasive in setting forth a better way. The salaries paid will need to be revised, but it seems to us even more important that fluidity should be established between the various branches of the teaching service to a greater extent that is at present the case. The tendency of that service, to which the secondary branch of it offers no exception, is to harden off into separate castes or compartments with very little interchange between them. It is natural, but it is unfortunate. It seems to us that there ought to be greater fluidity of movement within the scale of salaries and pensions. We see no reason why men and women of experience, who have risen, for instance, to the control of their department in a Secondary School, should not become valuable recruits to the Inspectorate without loss of initial salary or pension rights.

Similarly we see no reason why inspectors should not from time to time become heads of schools, permanently or for a term of years, and we can see considerable advantages if they did so. Indeed this should be a two-way street, for some of the heads of schools would make good inspectors. Like considerations apply to the qualifications of officers of local authorities, where the possession of teaching experience is commonly regarded already as a qualification. Conditions of employment ought not to render interchange more difficult than need be: what we are concerned to emphasise is that the whole educational service of the nation is one. Its members ought to work in close cooperation with the sympathy that comes from mutual knowledge and understanding, and to this a greater freedom for individuals to move from one function to another would contribute in a helpful manner.

Some of us think that the time has come to change the name by which the Inspectorate is known, since that name carries with it from far-off days associations which the teaching profession does not welcome. It is a name which too readily suggests something official and external, but it is the human cooperative side of the work which we should wish| to emphasise in the name by which we know its representatives. They are partners from inside and not inspectors from outside in the work of national education. We would accordingly suggest that they be renamed His Majesty's Educational Advisory Service. Such a title would then more closely correspond to their true function and the change of name only represents the change which has taken place in practice in the last two generations.

There are at present in existence several branches of the Inspectorate and in particular a division into elementary, technical and secondary. They should constitute a single Educational Advisory Service, and all branches of it should carry equal esteem, as they do now. Whether this carries with it parity of salaries, it is not for us to say without a much fuller study of the problem of recruitment than we have been able to give. It is necessary to get the right men and women, and the hard facts of the market may make varying scales necessary. We do not know. But what we do feel strongly is that the entrants to this service do not by the fact of entry become educational Jacks-of-all-trades, competent to inspect and advise in any type of school and at every stage. Experience will determine function. The man or woman who has had a training in advanced linguistic or scientific studies may be out of place in dealing with the problems of teaching his subjects in the primary school, and similarly the man or woman who can help the primary teacher from a rich experience might be helpless in the sixth form studies of the secondary grammar school. What is essential everywhere and all the time is that the Inspectorate or the Educational Advisory Service, by whichever name we call them, should carry the confidence of the teachers; the teachers must feel that they are receiving advice and guidance from those who are as expert as themselves, or still more expert. Parity of esteem is an obscure phrase, but it does not mean that any man can do any job, nor does democratic equality mean that the layman can replace the expert. Indeed a planned and educated democracy can only come into being with expert guidance in many fields, and a readiness on the part of the general population to follow the expert because he is the man who knows. In the teaching service there must be specialisation as between broad types of school education, and the Inspectorate which is part of that service must follow the same rule.

We hold therefore that the status which we have described should be permanently assigned to the Inspectorate as a semi-independent service bearing His Majesty's commission and charged with the duties of advising the President of the Board of Education and educational administration generally in matters that concern them, of helping the schools with counsel and advice, and of guaranteeing to the nation at large that the schools are doing their duty by the children. In this way we shall not intensify what is called bureaucratic control in education, but shall be taking a long step towards rendering it impossible for such external and impersonal control ever to develop into a serious danger.