Dr. Harold Hislop:

My colleagues and I are very grateful for the invitation to appear before the joint committee to discuss the chief inspector's report for the period 2010 to 2012. I am joined by Mr. Gary Ó Donnchadha, deputy chief inspector; Dr. Suzanne Dillon, assistant chief inspector and head of our evaluation and research unit; and Ms Emer Egan and Ms Doreen McMorris, assistant chief inspectors who each manage one of the inspectorate regions where most of our evaluation and inspection work is carried out.

I propose to focus on the main issues arising from the report. A particularly strong theme is the very significant changes that have taken place in the way we inspect schools. Rather than inspect all schools in exactly the same way, as we did in the past, we have, in the period covered by the report, developed different models of inspection. These range from short unannounced inspections that take less than a day to inspections where we focus on a particular subject or theme through to much more intense and lengthier models whereby we examine the whole workings of a school. Using this range of inspection types has allowed us to inspect a greater number of schools more frequently. An inspection of some sort took place in half of all primary schools in the 2010 to 2012 period covered by the report. In the same period we carried out some form of inspection in 93% of secondary schools. Having a range of inspection reports means that we can target a proportion of the more detailed inspections in schools where an earlier visit or inspection showed some cause for concern.

A second point to highlight is that we have changed the focus of the inspections. They are now much more concentrated on observing teaching and learning in classrooms and providing feedback for individual teachers and the principal. We do not seek to examine all aspects of the work of the school. Instead, we concentrate on asking questions and examining evidence on how well the school is run and the quality of the teaching and learning. We collect evidence about the general standards we see, which has enabled us to present that information in a systematic way via the report. We include information on standards in teaching, learning and the management of schools. Moreover, we have combined these data with national and international data from surveys in which Ireland has participated.

I am pleased to say the inspections we conducted between 2010 and 2012 generally show a positive picture for most schools. At a time when the education system was facing a considerable challenge, we found that the majority of schools were well run by their boards of management, which are staffed by volunteers. Many schools provided good leadership; most teachers were working effectively and students' learning was generally satisfactory. However, we also identified areas of weakness. For example, we saw unsatisfactory practice in a significant minority of individual lessons. Specifically, between 10% and 15% of the lessons we observed in unannounced inspections at primary and post-primary level were categorised as unsatisfactory. We raised particular concerns about the teaching of Irish at both primary and post-primary levels, the language competence of teachers in Irish in a small minority of cases and the teaching of mathematics at post-primary level. We have detailed these concerns in the report and the briefing notes circulated to members and will be happy to discuss them further.

An objective we had for the period 2010 to 2012 was to incorporate the views of parents and students into inspections in a much clearer and more robust way. A large sample of students and parents now complete confidential questionnaires during the time we conduct a whole-school inspection. These give us very detailed information on a range of aspects of the work of the school which we include in the report. We found a very positive view among parents of the quality of the schooling their children received. More than 97% of the 47,000 parents included in the surveys of primary schools were of the view that the teaching their child was receiving was good. Some 87% of the 20,000 parents surveyed at post-primary level were likewise satisfied with the teaching their child received. However, the data also raised questions for schools regarding their communication with parents, its effectiveness and otherwise, especially on how anti-bullying measures were communicated to parents and students.

All of the statistical data from the confidential questionnaires are fed back to schools and we encourage them to examine the information in detail and reflect on the message it contains for the school and its teachers. That is what good self-evaluation is all about. Effective organisations, be they schools, hospitals, voluntary organisations or businesses, must always be asking questions about how well they are conducting their core business and searching for ways to improve. Traditionally, schools have not been doing this to the extent we would like. That is why we are encouraging self-evaluation to complement inspection. Inspection provides a necessary external perspective on the work of a school, but it must be balanced by good thinking within the school if improvements are to be achieved. We have published self-evaluation guidelines to help schools to do this. Between November 2012 and January 2014 we made advisory workshop visits to more than 4,000 primary and post-primary schools to encourage that process.

My final point relates to our own role and functions.

We are no different from schools or other organisations. We know we have to change and continue to improve if we are to remain effective. We introduced follow-up inspections to ensure the recommendations we make are actually implemented by schools. The details of these are included in the report.

We have developed a number of further initiatives to improve how we inspect schools and provide better reports for parents and schools. We are examining how to involve students more fully in the inspection process. We have begun to conduct pilot post-evaluation surveys among teachers and principals - to begin with - in which they are asked about how well we conduct inspections and advisory work within their schools. We will extend these surveys to boards of management and parents' councils. We hope the feedback we will receive will help us in improving the way we inspect and evaluate schools. We are learning many lessons from our participation in North-South projects conducted in conjunction with the inspectorate in Northern Ireland and also from work in which we have been involved at OECD level on inspection and quality systems across schools.

I hope my comments will be of assistance to the committee in its discussions. We will be happy to discuss the issues to which I have referred or any other matter to which members may wish to refer.