Benchmarking: an alternative to OFSTED – lessons for higher education

Pages36-38
Date01 March 1995
Published date01 March 1995
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/09684889510082417
AuthorJohn Brennan
Subject MatterEducation
Almost 100 of Bedfordshire’s primary school
headteachers have formed themselves into the
Bedfordshire Primary Alliance, and the chair-
man, Mike Jarvis, quoted in The Times Educa-
tional Supplement (27 May 1994) suggested
that the alliance, from the outset, had three
aims “equal in importance and interlinked:
there’s enhancing the primary voice, there’s
setting up quality assurance networks which
will support the curriculum, and, of course,
investigating and negotiating with suppliers”.
This organization is pioneering non-aggres-
sive co-operation and support, alongside the
local education authority (LEA), and their
efforts are recognized, supported and spon-
sored by industry. Their aims and structures
are designed to maintain some sort of shared
professionalism as a significant counter to the
generally divisive, market-driven, legislation
of recent years. Perhaps the promised post-
Dearing calm will encourage us to establish
partnerships which enable colleagues from
different schools to benchmark in a support-
ive way. For many reasons, staff in primary
schools, and secondary schools and colleges,
are tending to spend longer in the same insti-
tution, and they need opportunities to com-
pare and contrast methods which would all
claim to be striving for quality. In this article I
want to draw on the practical and theoretical
understandings of benchmarking as a power-
ful tool in the development of quality.
There are frequent references in recent
managerial literature to the practice of bench-
marking, which is in turn producing its own
substantial literature. So far, I can find no
mention of benchmarking in the field of
school or college management, although it
was a phrase used widely in initial discussions
and proposals for pupil testing. Benchmark-
ing is essentially a response to the extremely
competitive markets in which commercial
organizations (now including hospitals and
other services) find themselves. The emphasis
on quality has also encouraged organizations
to examine the practices of those of their
competitors recognized, by results, as
brand/product leaders. As schools and col-
leges are now firmly in the marketplace, there
has to be something in this approach which is
of interest, and probably of benefit, to them.
According to the CBI/Cooper & Lybrand
(1993) Survey of Benchmarking in the UK:
Executive Summary 1993, published by the
Confederation of British Industry, bench-
marking originated when Rank Zerox
36
Benchmarking; an alternative to OFSTED
John Brennan
Quality Assurance in Education
Volume 3 · Number 1 · 1995 · 36–38
Quality Assurance in Education
Volume 3 · Number 1 · 1995 · pp. 36–38
© MCB University Press · ISSN 0968-4883
Benchmarking: an
alternative to OFSTED –
lessons for higher
education
John Brennan
The author
John Brennan is Senior Lecturer in Education at De
Montfort University, Bedford. He has been Head of primary
and secondary phase schools and part of Her Majesty’s
Inspectorate.
Abstract
Schools and colleges have been placed firmly in the
marketplace and are adopting appropriate strategies.
Companies facing severe competition have learned to look
at the quality, both of product and process, of their com-
petitors, giving rise to the growing practice of benchmark-
ing. Schools and colleges are currently being judged by a
mechanistic, outcomes-based inspection method which
could provide the only benchmark for most teachers.
Argues for collaborative benchmarking where schools and
colleges examine in particular the quality of their pro-
cesses in a search for how value is really added to the
students’ experience. Emphasizes the need for an alterna-
tive perception of schools to that represented by OFSTED
and suggests that benchmarking could be an important,
and subversive, alternative.
Author’s address
Author’s name here
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