Accountability

Accountability is an expectation that the consequences of someone's actions will be examined and accepted by an authorised person or authority.

Quality assurance is defined as “the maintenance of a desired level of quality in a service or product, especially by means of attention to every stage of the process of delivery or production.”

In schools, accountability is used to ensure consistency, high standards and clarity in teaching and learning.

Issues with QA

Joe Kirby calls for QA in schools to be dismantled as it "warps time, trust, thinking, leadership and learning". Kirby describes QA in comparative terms wth trepanation ("a medical-mystical treatment from 7,000 years ago"). Kirby's concerns are that QA:

• over-centralises compliance
• affects teamwork and causes mistrust
• reduces everything to "the measureable, the collectable, the quantifiable"
• reduces subjects to "single, oversimplified common frameworks that amputate and elide subject differences"
• causes leaders to lose sight of importance in supporting teachers to teach really well

Instead, Kirby argues that CPD is better than QA and suggests:

• "upstream" feedback loops
• build knowledge about what the best schools do
• walk the school, talk with teachers, ask and see
• review from a position of "appreciative enquiry"
• provide genuine follow-up support (starting with nudges)
• take time to tal

Intelligent Accountability

David Didau proposes what he calls "intelligent accountability". Didau believes that accountability "helps to promote ethical and responsible behaviour", "promotes fairness and justice" and "elps to build trust and credibility":

• We are most likely to improve when we feel trusted
• We need to know we are accountable in order to be our best
• Intelligent accountability depends on mutual trust
• Equality is unfair
• Autonomy needs to be earned

Didau also argues:

We should acknowledge that some teachers are much more experienced and knowledgeable than others and that it’s a mistake to ignore this and treat all teachers as the same. Equally, we should be explicit that autonomy must be earned and until it is, less experienced, less effective teachers may be subject to more constraints than their colleagues.