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The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and Ofsted yesterday launched a consultation on a proposed standard set of school level indicators which will recognise and reward schools for their contribution to pupil’s well-being.

Schools contribute to the well-being of children in many ways, for example by providing a safe environment in which bullying is not tolerated; by teaching children about healthy eating and the risks of drug and alcohol abuse, and by helping to develop children’s self esteem and social skills. Today’s consultation should help achieve the ambition at the heart of the Children’s Plan for schools to play a key role in the wider development of young people, alongside their core mission of helping all children to realise their full educational potential.

The consultation will seek feedback on a group of school-level indicators to be used by schools themselves and by Ofsted in evaluating a school’s contribution to the wellbeing of its pupils. The indicators will be a combination of measures for which quantitative data are available, such as the school’s overall attendance rate and the take-up of school lunches, and measures of the perceptions of pupils and parents on the extent to which a school promotes well-being. Pupils and parents will be asked for example whether the school encourages physical activity, whether pupils feel safe at school; and whether the school deals effectively with bullying

All of the quantitative information is already collected by schools and many schools already carry out surveys of parents and pupils. The consultation paper recognises that data from the indicators will require interpretation, for example to take account of the contribution made by other services. The consultation paper is also clear that schools will not be held to account for outcomes over which they have little or no influence such as levels of obesity in schools or teenage pregnancy rates.

Subject to the consultation, the plan is for the indicators to be used by Ofsted in its school inspection arrangements from September 2009.

Children’s Minister, Baroness Delyth Morgan, said:

“In the Children’s Plan we outlined our vision that the 21st century school can play a key role in promoting the well-being of children and work with parents to give children the support they need to learn and succeed in life. We know that good schools are already doing this and that head teachers want more help to achieve the best outcomes for all their pupils.

“School-level indicators will help schools to assess how well they are promoting the well-being of their pupils. Most of this information is already being collected, so these indicators are not an extra burden but additional tools to help schools improve their wider role in their communities.

“They will build on data about pupils’ attainment and progress, so that wider aspects of children’s lives can be benchmarked nationally. Schools can use this information to self-assess and improve the care they provide children and young people.”

Christine Gilbert, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector for Ofsted said:

The indicators will be useful to schools in undertaking self-evaluation and in improving the quality of education and care they provide for children and young people.

The indicators will also provide useful evidence for Ofsted inspectors, to be used alongside other evidence when investigating the well being of children and young people and the school’s contribution to it.

Read the paper

Complete the online consultation

The consultation can be found online at http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/Consultations and will formally close on 16 January 2009

The 2006 Education and Inspections Act introduced a new duty on schools to promote the well-being of their pupils. That duty came into effect in September 2007. It applied to all maintained primary, secondary and special schools and PRUs. The duty applies to Academies set up from 2007 through their funding agreements.

Well-being is defined as the five Every Child Matters outcomes: be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve; make a positive contribution, achieve economic and social well-being

The Children’s Plan announced that the Department would issue guidance for schools on the duty to promote pupil well-being and would also be developing “strong school-level indicators that, taken together, measure a school’s contributions to pupil well-being.” And Ofsted would be asked to reflect these indicators in designing the cycle of inspections starting in 2009.

The Department for Children Schools and Families published draft guidance in 3 July 2008 on the role of schools in promoting pupil’s well-being and proposals for revisions to legislation for schools causing concern.

The guidance sets out what the well-being duty means for schools and the support they can expect from their local authority and other Children’s Trust partners. It reflects the vision set out in the Children’s Plan of schools working in close partnership with other schools and colleges, as well as with parents, employers and the Children’s Trust to support children’s well-being across all the Every Child Matters outcomes.

- Our proposals for school-level indicators are that schools and Ofsted should have access to a basket of information combining:

• a small number of quantitative school-level indicators for each ECM outcome in addition to existing attainment data;
• school-level measures of pupils’ and parents’ views (e.g. do you feel safe at school? does the school promote healthy eating?)
• data measuring the well-being of children and families in the local area, drawn from the Local Area Agreement. It is envisaged that this would be made available to schools and to Ofsted by the LA.

Schools are required, under the Education and Inspections Act 2006, to have regard to any views expressed by parents of registered pupils and Ofsted already look for evidence from schools of pupil and parent views on a range of issues. Many schools already use surveys, as part of their self-evaluation, to collect these views. The proposals build on that good practice. The proposals mean we can also generate benchmarked data that will be helpful to schools in considering their progress and planning.

In addition to the publication of some or all of the indicators in Ofsted’s ‘health check report’, Ofsted will consider publishing some of the indicators (specifically, those derived from surveys of pupils’ and parents’ views) in schools’ inspection reports, together with national benchmarks.

Schools will also be encouraged to publish the indicators and benchmarks in their school profiles since there will be considerable parental and public interest in the information and in the judgements that schools and Ofsted are making using this information.