AN INSPECTOR CALLS

"A DRACONIAN outdated mode of partnership" or an "objective and fair way of assuring the public that they have a quality product"? The proposed model of WSI or Whole School Inspection is already polarising the education world with teachers' unions adhering to the first view and the Department of Education promoting the opposing view.

At school level, teachers are worried, parents are largely supportive and pupils have probably never heard of WSI.

Essentially, the Department of Education is proposing that the present subject based system of inspection in second level schools and curriculum centred inspection in primary schools be replaced by WSI.

WSI will focus on three main areas: the quality of school management, the quality of school planning and the quality of teaching and learning.

Schools will be inspected regularly by a team of inspectors attached to Regional Education Boards. In addition, an inspector will be assigned to each school, in an advisory capacity. Chief inspector, Sean Mac Gleannain, explains that this inspector "will be seen as the critical friend. He or she will be there to help not to assess the school". This inspector will not be part of the team of inspectors who carry out WSI, but he or she will be consulted by the team.

A detailed set of proposals was presented to the partners in education earlier this year and a confidential document has been circulated and responses solicited.

Mac Gleannain says: "We are looking not just at the teachers but the whole school environment - the role of the principal, the board of management, post holders, individual teachers, parental involvement, out of school activities, the condition of the building. . . how the State's investment if being used. This would be done with a view not just to reporting but to helping the school's development."

As to the need for WSI, he sums it up: "We must have some mechanism which is objective and fair and which assures the public that we have a quality product."

However, John White, assistant general secretary of the ASTI, says that the union would hold to the view that the Department of Education's expenditure on WSI would be better spent on improving the facilities and supports for teachers.

"WSI by its nature will be extremely costly and there are major questions as to whether WSI actually evaluates school performance at all. What happens is that a school puts on a show for the period WSI takes place and this gives a distorted view of what's going on in the school."

PERFORMANCE indicators would be used to assess a school's functioning and a four point scale used to grade performance from very good to good to fair to weak.

"What we're trying to establish is not a league table but to look at the value that a school adds," says the chief inspector. "The information will be very helpful to the Minister in the allocation of resources, particularly additional resources."

As might be expected, teachers' unions are not enamoured by performance indicators.

The ASTI has said that it will oppose "crude mechanisms for the assessment of schools such as the use of performance indicators which would grade schools in a mechanical way".

Rose Malone, education officer with the TUI, says that their union does not want schools to be graded and compared. "What is a four point scale if it not for the purposes of comparison?" she asks. "We are opposed to publishing results that would set up comparisons.

"Crude measures such as a four point scale would not be seen as useful to schools. Very good, good, fair and poor are not particularly useful discriminators," she says.

The INTO is also vehemently opposed to the four point grading structure, describing it as a retrograde step. The four point scale is not included in the confidential document circulated by the Department, however it would still seem to be extant.

Mac Gleannain stresses that there is no question of publishing the reports of individual schools and that the British OFSTED model is not looming in the horizon. All inspectors will be qualified educationalists and there will be no league tables. He adds that the Department is trying to get away from appraisal of individual teachers. The school is the employer of the teacher not the Minister, he says.

HOWEVER, John Carr, assistant general secretary of the INTO, says that the idea of an outside group coming in, meeting with parents, managers and teachers before and after the visit and then making a report is very much the British model.

"This model of an outside group coming in to assess a school is a draconian, outdated mode of partnership." He contends that primary schools already have WSI in operation. "We don't have difficulty with WSI per se. The present model is effective."

He expressed major reservations about the idea of consulting with parties who are not directly involved in the day to day running of the school. "That changes the nature of school inspection which is a collaborative effort between the school and the inspectorate." Carr admits that there may be areas in the present system which could be reviewed and says that the INTO is willing to enter into negotiations.

"The philosophy behind the WSI document and behind the area of assessment and league tables in Britain is to create pressure at local level and force schools to achieve. From my interpretation of the consultative document we are going the British route... If it's not broken, why fix it? There's no bottom up cry for a change in the inspection system at primary level," adds Carr.

However, the National Parents Council - Primary says that the present model of inspection will not fulfill future needs. NPC Primary welcomes the intention to introduce WSI but their response to the Department's proposal notes that the inspectorate must be brought up to strength, particularly at post primary level. The organisation has "significant concerns about any proposed "shift away from individual teacher appraisal" within the framework of WSI.

NPC Primary states that the quality of teaching and learning are fundamental to the quality of education.

"Teachers do make a difference. It is not possible to reach worthwhile conclusions about the quality of educational provision in a school without focusing on the quality of teaching. .. We are quite at a loss to understand how the current proposals intend to integrate the intention to focus on the quality of teaching, while at the same time implementing a `shift away from individual teacher appraisal.'"

NPC Primary also urge great caution in the matter of taking into account of school context, particularly economic factors. "Expectations for children from poor families should not be depressed. We must avoid labelling children further through the inspection process.

NPC Post Primary is also supportive of WSI in principle but has not yet prepared a detailed response to the Department's proposals.

THE ASTI and TUI are initiating discussion at branch level and the INTO has completed its response. Once the Department receives responses from these and other partners in education, including management bodies, it will modify and refine its proposals. A pilot scheme, at both primary and second level, is proposed, in advance of the setting up of the Regional Education Boards.

So is this present turmoil just a step on the road to that happy idyll when "a teacher will be glad to see the inspector coming; that if he finds himself in a difficulty with any particular subject or syllabus he will write and ask the inspector to call, and feel jealous if he doesn't come often enough"? Thus the general secretary of the INTO wrote in the November issue of The Irish School Weekly in 1921.

He concluded "when this happy idyll has been realised it will indeed be a golden age for teachers and inspectors, and for the interests of Irish education".