Like all teachers who remember Chris Woodhead's tenure as Chief Inspector of OFSTED, I was astounded at the news that he is to become a peer of the realm.
When he was the top banana at OFSTED, Sir Chris made the claim that there were 15 000 "incompetent teachers" in the UK. The right-wing press eagerly seized upon this figure, without questioning it; it gave them another excuse for "teacher-bashing". The fact is, however, that Sir Chris never provided any evidence for this astonishing claim, nor did he describe the methodology which he used to arrive at his conclusion. Personally, I always thought that this reflected upon Woodhead's competence, not 15 000 unnamed teachers.
He has also made the claim recently that middle-class children are more intelligent than working class kids - SEE HERE. Once again, Sir Chris fails to provide conclusive evidence for his views, although the claim should provide good publicity for his latest book,"The Desolation of Learning". He also fails to account for social mobility - the fact that people can change classes, if not their genes.
Now, as might be expected, his views on education were very welcome to the Conservative Party -which explains why he became one of their educational advisers after leaving OFSTED. As Francis Beckett said of "Woody" back in 1999:
"The things he is certain about tended to be the sort of things the Tory government wanted to hear: phonics good, real books bad; whole-class teaching good, group work bad; didactic teaching good, child-centred teaching bad; and so on. He rightly complains about the way British education debate divides into two armed camps, one of them arbitrarily marked "right wing", the other "left wing". Yet he has firmly dug himself into the trenches on the side marked "right wing".
Times don't change. Damian Thomson wrote in his Daily Telegraph blog in 2009:
"He (Woodhead) went too soon, though it’s amazing that he stayed at all under a Labour government whose client state is heavily populated by crap teachers. Do you think grade inflation would be tolerated if there wasn’t an unspoken contract between Labour and the teachers who benefit most from it, ie the worst ones?"
Now - you couldn't get the wrong idea about Sir Chris's political bias from that, could you?
However, much as I oppose and condemn his views on education, I have to say that I do feel sorry for Sir Chris. He has Motor Neurone Disease, and it is severe. So severe, in fact, that he is considering suicide - SEE HERE. In his own words:
"I am clear in my own mind that it is better to end it than continue a life that is extremely frustrating for me and onerous to others who are involved with me," he (Woodhead) said. "I certainly feel that the quality of one's life is more important than its quantity."
I sympathise with Sir Chris in his plight, but, as he ponders his fate, perhaps he will feel some retrospective sympathy for the late Keith Waller, Janet Watson, Jed Holmes and all the other teachers who took their own lives because of pressure brought upon them by OFSTED.
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Firstly, Geoff, a knight is not a peer of the realm, so Chris has not been ennobled. But I get your point: it is a signal honour for such a controversial figure who has caused more grief, stress and disruption in the teaching profession than any other single factor in recent years.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, you'll read in Private Eye all the arms manufacturers and sellers, investment capitalists, bankers, multinational corporation chief execs and other lowlives who will be given high honours. The pill is sweetened by honouring showbiz and sporting celebrities, with a few low-ranking honours to ordinary people, to make it look as though this fiasco is somehow democratic.
In general, though, the establishment rewards incompetence, greed and malevolence. On that basis, his knighthood is well-deserved.