Nervous Headteachers

Sir Michael Wilshaw, Lead Inspector of Schools has been at it again, this time threstening around 5000 headteachers nationwide for being weak or lacking leadership. The man has grand plans for Ofsted, making reports "jargon-free" and with "blunt" comments on page one so that people don't have to wade through a load of irrelevent stuff before finding out what they want to know: is the school any good or not? And no-one can really grumble with the removal of "Ofsted speak".

Wilshaw, in a fairly typical statement of intent, claims that around a quarter of headteachers in the UK "require improvement" (new terminology for "satisfactory") or worse. He blames lack of leadership on the statistic that 40% of new teachers leave the profession within two years. He has a bit of a point on this, but it's not the be all and end all of the issue. Leadership does set standards of behaviour throughout the school, but ultimately other government policy is to blame as well.

Parents (and their offspring) still hold too many cards, if not the entire pack, despite what government ministers claim. If a parent complains about anything, they are listened to, whereas if a teacher complains about a child they tend to be ignored and told to put up and shut up in various, probably more polite, ways. I have a feeling that this could be part of the reason that new staff leave the profession. It takes a few years for a teacher to establish themselves at a school, no matter how good their classroom practise is. It clearly helps when they are good teachers or better, but few start off at that level as experience often informs planning. The pressure placed upon all staff by Ofsted and therefore leadership who attempt to prepare their staff for an inspection is sometimes unbearable, and the mixed messages given out by the inspectorate don't help.

What tends to happen when a teacher is observed is that they suffer from criticism borne out of what leadership "think" that Ofsted want to see. It is almost impossible to guess at what Ofsted's flavour of the week is, leaving a teacher planning for an observation confused as to how they can impress. The other thing is that unless a lesson is awful or absolutely superb, the judgement of the lesson can vary hugely depending upon who is doing the judging. Character issues or clashes come to the fore in some cases and this is nothing short of demoralising.

Wilshaw's plans to improve teaching are fine in principal as there are poor headteachers and teachers out there, but his blunderbuss approach will win him few friends and won't aid the recruitment and retention issues that teaching currently suffers from. The silver lining in the Wilshaw cloud is that his budget appears to have been cut from around £200 million per year to around £140 million which will mean that implementing some of his ideas could be difficult due to affordability.

The problem is that Michael Gove, the puppeteer in charge of Wilshaw, has promised to "see what he can do" about the budget, so dire times could yet be around the corner for those who have chosen a career in school.