Woodhead savages Labour's policies

Woodhead: Never one to pull his punches

Chris Woodhead, the former chief inspector of England's schools, has attacked the government's education policies, saying they have betrayed a generation of children.

Mr Woodhead, who stepped down from his post three months ago, describes the Education Secretary, David Blunkett, as having a depressing, narrow and misguided attitude to education.

He has just not delivered - a generation of schoolchildren has been betrayed

Chris Woodhead

He has also accused the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, of having failed to push through the reforms he wanted for the education system.

"The real problem, I believe, is that he has failed to focus with sufficient rigour on what he repeatedly declared to be his number one priority," Mr Woodhead writes in The Daily Telegraph.

He later defended his comments, telling the BBC: "The language is strong but I feel strongly".

"I am passionate about the education that our children receive and I think very real opportunities have been missed."

Mr Woodhead insisted the attack was "apolitical" and that he was not personally bitter.

Despite believing at first that the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, Mr Blunkett, other ministers and officials had been "on my wavelength", nothing changed, said Mr Woodhead, and he became increasingly sceptical.

"I felt there was more hot air than there was reality.

"It suited their purposes to keep me on. Whilst I was there, then the government was a government that was hard on standards.

"In the end ... I couldn't stomach what I saw as a proliferation of untried initiatives, waste of taxpayers' money and a commitment to a vision of education that was essentially utilitarian."

In his first column for the newspaper, Mr Woodhead said that Mr Blair, despite having sent his own children to the "deeply traditional" London Oratory School, had been unwilling to drive through the reforms needed to improve the rest of the sector.

'Rhetoric and reality'

He said there was a gap between "rhetoric and reality" in government policy, especially on issues such as performance-related pay and the privatisation of local education authorities.

Mr Woodhead was particularly scathing about the education secretary.

"David Blunkett has presided over a set of initiatives that has wasted taxpayers' money, distracted teachers from their real responsibilities and encapsulated the worst of the discredited ideology that has done so much damage since the 1960s," he wrote.

"He has just not delivered. A generation of schoolchildren has been betrayed."

Blunkett has "failed to deliver" says Woodhead

Mr Woodhead, who was originally appointed by the Conservatives but retained by Labour, accused Mr Blunkett of frequently failing to act on policy decisions.

"Weeks would go by after one of our meetings - and nothing would happen. When a change of policy did occur, it was because external pressures made a climbdown inevitable," he wrote.

Mr Woodhead accused Mr Blunkett of a "utilitarian" approach to education in which he viewed the system as being little more than a preparation for adult life and the jobs market.

"Mr Blunkett's conception of what schools are for is depressing, narrow and utterly misguided," he said.

"A secretary of state who does not understand what education is cannot create a world-class education system - however hard he tries and however much taxpayers' money he spends."

Government's defence

Mr Blunkett has rejected the ex-school chief's comments and he said the government had delivered real improvements to the education system.

"My drive to improve schools has come from the deepest personal conviction born from my own experience of what it is like to be let down by school and seeing pupils in my constituency not getting a decent education," he said in a statement.

He said that passion had also been shared by the prime minister, and that it was "simply untrue" to suggest the government's education policies had not made a difference.