As a former Headteacher of an outstanding secondary school I am extremely dismayed by the way Ofsted is being used to drive through Government Dogma.
The Government make the decisions on how schools will be judged. The result is a contracting of the curriculum, loss of creative subjects, originality and a tick-box culture. It seems that the only criteria to be judged are the academic results. It has become teaching by numbers to a limited agenda. Each lesson has to follow a moribund format. There is the move to greater pass and failure. Who needs failure? What do we do with all our psychologically damaged failures? Surely we want all students to achieve – to reach their potential.
Good grief – education is so much more that that limited agenda. We are not just producing fodder for the economy. We were in the business of turning on brains, opening minds, creating awe and wonder, unleashing imagination, unleashing lateral thinking, teamwork and creativity. It is not about statistics.
Amanda Speilman has just been appointed. She is good with statistics. She has never taught in a school. She ran academies. She is a very clever businesswoman.
I can already sense the agenda. Does the woman have a compassionate heart? Does she care about qualities and skills? Creativity? Lateral thinking? Or is she in the business of pushing a narrow statistical analysis?
Looks to me like their putting a wolf in charge of the lambs.
Stand for candidacy at your soonest opportunity. If you don’t like it that much get out there and tell `em. You are free to do so. If the garbage that’s running around Hollyrood can get there, why the hell can’t you. At least concerning all things education, you know what you are talking about.
That’s what parliament needs – people who’ve been there, seen it. done it, bought the t-shirt. It’s the only way forward to the right result. Stop whinging and step up!
Andrew – I seriously considered doing so. I could have gone into Ofsted or politics. I was head-hunted by a number of academies. I could have made a difference there. I could have stayed on at school for another few years and made a difference there as well. I did thirty six years and made my school one of the best in the whole country. I have a vision. I know what I’m talking about and I know it works. But I am 67. I do not have that long left at my functioning level and I choose to use it reading, writing, blogging and travelling and being with my family. I neither have the energy or time.
I’ll whinge from the sidelines. That’s what old bastards like me do.
Why are you treating yourself as all over the hill at 67?
Can you still walk, talk, think without dribbling or pissing yourself? So get on with it.
Couldn’t you get one of these positions of one whom sits on a board of a school or even several schools?
They only work part-time don’t they?
Lecturing a couple of times a week?
My friend, an architect does that at Glasgow Art School for one day a week just because he likes doing it.
Might have something to do with all these young women and it would be scurrilous of me to even suggest so….
Now if that doesn’t give you an appetite for self destruction, nothing will.
I do not have the time to get involved. My life is free. I am not tied to anything. This year I have hardly been at home. It’s typical. Friends, relatives, grandchildren, travelling.
I’m free to come and go, to write and read and do my photography, and to do my blog and vent my spleen.
This is my time. I do a bit of radio and that’s it. I don’t have time or inclination to insinuate myself and spend the time necessary to work myself into a position where I could make a difference.
I’ll do my writing and comment from the side. I’m not past it. I decided that I wanted some freedom while I had the energy and faculties to appreciate it.