- guardian.co.uk, Saturday September 18 1999 17.51 BST
Nick Davies's article (The weird world of bogus facts, September 16) contains the odd silliness.
He states that Ofsted did not publish figures for primary inspections five years ago. He is wrong. My first annual report, in 1993-94, stated that 30% of lessons in Key Stage 2 were unsatisfactory. This figure was not "invented": it reflects the substantial number of primary inspections undertaken that year. He argues that on my own admission comparisons are impossible. The point, of course, is that changes to inspection methodology make precise comparisons year-on-year impossible. This in no way invalidates the broad comparisons between quality of teaching observed today and five years ago.
Our Class Size report analysed the quality of teaching and learning in schools in similar socio-economic circumstances. Ofsted's data shows that, in infant classes, smaller numbers of pupils in the class are associated with higher quality teaching and learning irrespective of the affluence or poverty of the community the school serves. For older children, aged 8-11 years, there is no such association and class size appears to be a neutral factor.
I am not sure where Nick Davies found his inspectors queuing up to complain about a shortage of hard data. We give inspectors a very substantial amount of hard data in the Pre-inspection Context and School Indicators. Perhaps these were the same inspectors who said that a percentage of unsatisfactory lessons does not equate to a percentage of incompetent teachers. We have never said they do. We had a firm basis for our earlier estimate and we now have strong, factual evidence to confirm the statistics we quoted.
I am accused of having no data to support the claim that whole-class teaching generates better results. On the contrary, our recent publication, Primary Education - A Review of Primary Schools in England 1994-98, based on a massive amount of inspection evidence, from Section 10 reports and HMI surveys, states that the factor that makes the most difference to the improvement of teaching methods is direct whole-class teaching.
Nick Davies might object to my "acidic essay", but he cannot stand up the charge that we "really don't know". There has never been so much performance information as is now available in education. And the improvement in teaching I have identified is fully consistent with the sharp rise in standards identified both through inspection and in Key Stage test results.
Chris Woodhead Chief Inspector of Schools
