Looking at Our School 2022: a quality framework

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A constant in Irish education seems to be top-down development of policy, often with only lip-service given to consultation with schools and the teachers who work in them. A recent example of this was the un-evidenced Paper 1 proposal in English and Irish. So it is always welcome when there is a (quite rare) close analysis of official documents from a new perspective.

Recently Craig Skerritt of the Manchester Institute of Education, University of Management, published a paper examining what is sometimes called the ‘Bible’ of school operations to support School Self-Evaluation. LAOS, Looking at our School 2022: a quality framework for post-primary schools is an update to the initial version in 2016.

To some extent the document might be regarded as just another of those tomes sent into schools which we dutifully pretend matter to us, but which are largely ignored by teachers overwhelmingly busy with more significant daily work. They tend to build up in the Principal’s filing cabinet after an initial flurry, mouldering away with little effect on the school’s daily operations, and are then quickly dusted off when inspectors appear. This one seems quite harmless and is full of bland statements of the obvious (schools should be ‘dynamic learning organisations, where teachers are enabled to work and learn individually and collectively to build their professional capacity in order to support continuous improvement in learning and teaching’, p.9).

But it does matter to the extent that it informs some inspections, and it is expected to be known by candidates for Assistant Principal roles in their interviews.

You should read the 14-page paper fully, but here are some scattered observations on the paper by Craig Skerritt (quotations in italics):

  • LAOS 22 gives the impression of policy introduced in haste.

  • The update seems to have had ‘little work’ done on it since the 2016 document.

  • Most importantly, Skerritt laments the absence of critical scholarship in policy.

  • A wise comment, and all too common an experience for those who work in schools (for instance, see my comments on the implementation of the Junior Cycle). To speak of ‘implementation’ is to speak of policy in ways that are too linear and rational, as if a policy can simply be applied, optimally, by all involved, as well as consistently, in a straightforward manner. There is little room for manoeuvre, or agency, in this sense. Such a conceptualisation of policy reduces people to reductive technicians. (page 3).

  • The matter of the student voice has not been developed since 2016.

  • Skerritt sees a confusion and fundamental  misunderstanding in mixing the ideas of responsibility and accountability. Even for internal evaluation such as SSE, professional responsibility will be undermined when mixed with accountability. (4)

  • He cites Richard Niesche and Christina Gowlett about the idea that leadership is for everybody, and has become replete with fads, fashions, ‘feel-good’ platitudes. Indeed it has.

  • Under ‘Policy Overload’ he looks at the cognitive overload of the quality framework with its fuzzy obscureness, its dimensions, domains, standards, and statements of practice, a (my words now) snowfall of inexpressive jargon. Further overloading of schools comes through the typical pretence of autonomy. As one member of a school’s staff says to him, There’d be a policy in this school on everything (7). That teacher expresses a widespread feeling among teachers - that they are being increasingly sidetracked from their core purpose of teaching their subjects.

  • He mentions the fuzzy obscureness in how effective practice is described in LAOS.

  • On the whole, critical scholarship is generally considered meaningless by policy makers (10). This is of course Skerritt’s main focus, but from a teacher’s viewpoint, the concern is that the everyday experience of classroom practitioners is generally considered meaningless by policy makers (back to Paper 1 again). In a scathing section further down page 10, he remarks that the lived realities of school-based actors are not being reflected in the scholarship that is being taken, and comments that Dissenters are needed in policy making. We need not only people advising policy makers but, professionally of course, challenging their thinking and questioning their decisions. Many teachers would feel this about not just the Department of Education but also the Inspectorate, whose principles and presumed truths seem to be handed down from the educational mountain without the possibility of dissent or challenge.