§ Baroness Blackstoneasked Her Majesty's Government:
What work they are carrying out on developing performance indicators in education.
§ Baroness Blatch:In 1988 the department engaged in a collaborative exercise with selected local education authorities and schools on the development of performance indicators, to determine a set of indicators of practical value to schools themselves. An aide-memoire on School Indicators for Internal Management was published in 1989. Since then, the department has sought to encourage the use of performance indicators mainly for internal use by schools. This has been by means of guidance on school development plans and the Local Management of Schools (LMS) requirement that performance indicators should be developed by schools and used by LEAs for their own monitoring.
In further education, the department collaborated with the local authority associations and set up a Joint Study of Efficiency in Further Education, the report of which was published in 1987. This study identified a set of performance indicators which were judged to be essential for efficient and effective college management The department has subsequently used the education support grant, to the level of £30 million, to enable colleges to introduce computerised management information systems necessary to produce a range of performance indicators.
Under the arrangements established by the Education Reform Act, it is for the statutory funding councils to consider issues of quality and performance in higher education. Both councils are working with other interested groups to develop performance indicators within their sectors.