An ex-inspector calls 1/3/01

CHRIS WOODHEAD:
FORMER CHIEF INSPECTOR OF SCHOOLS
No, not sour grapes at all. I said in the article in today's Telegraph that I accepted David Blunkett, Secretary of State - he's in charge. Whilst I was Chief Inspector of Schools, I tried to exert what influence I could. When I decided that I wasn't having the impact I wanted to have, I realised it was time to go.

JEREMY VINE:
Tell us about this solitary conversation you appear to have had with the Prime Minister, where you met him on a staircase and told him of your concerns, and he said, "Talk to David Milliband."

WOODHEAD:
Yes. I happened to bump into the Prime Minister at a reception. We had a short conversation - I am not investing it with significance. I took the opportunity to tell him the things that I thought were not going as he wanted them to go. He wanted me to share my concerns with his officials, which I did, but nothing subsequently happened. That is part of the theme of what I'm saying today. I felt very often, talking to David Blunkett and to the Prime Minister, they were on the same wavelength. That's what I was led to believe, but nothing changed. That became, inevitably, increasingly frustrating.

VINE:
But when the Prime Minister referred to David Milliband, did you have a meeting with him?

WOODHEAD:
No. I think I met with David after that meeting.

VINE:
If you took it to its conclusion, you must presumably have some explanation why what you were saying was going nowhere?

WOODHEAD:
The line that was repeated most often was that chief inspectors of schools don't have to take into account political constituencies, that only so much can be achieved realistically in politics at any given moment. To an extent, I accept that. On the other hand, this is a government that put education as its priority, that prides itself on its radical, modernising drive, so I don't think it was unreasonable to expect the rhetoric of the policy initiatives to be carried through in their delivery.

VINE:
You said that there was an inverse correlation between what Tony wants and what Tony gets, and yet most people have the view of this Government that it is increasingly centralised. How do you put those two together?

WOODHEAD:
You can have a government that's increasingly centralised. The question is whether that centralisation is actually delivering on the ground.

VINE:
Do you think it was centralised, and that Mr Blair is powerless?

WOODHEAD:
The approach to education - and I can only speak with any authority about education - is centralised. Everybody accepts that. People have different judgements as to whether it's good or bad. My argument is that centralisation has not delivered the product that the Government intended.

VINE:
But doesn't the Government have to live more in the real world than you, Mr Woodhead? For example, on performance-related pay, where you castigated them, they said, "Well, Chris, if we had done what you said we should do, we would have a full-scale teachers' strike."

WOODHEAD:
I'm sorry, but what David Blunkett has said I wanted, I didn't want. I didn't argue for a reduction in teachers' pay at all. That is complete nonsense. What I said was that any genuine scheme of performance pay involves annual appraisal of performance against agreed targets, and a bonus is awarded if those targets are met. If the targets are not met, then the bonus isn't awarded. So one year, a teacher may get less pay than another year. The teacher's ordinary salary remains constant. That's different from what David Blunkett is pretending I said.

VINE:
Do you still think there are 15,000 incompetent teachers?

WOODHEAD:
No, the last inspection evidence shows the number of teachers judged to be teaching poorly is reducing. The last figure was about 13,200. The reforms are working, and we are seeing progress. The question is, the extent that the progress is because of, or in spite of, the policies introduced.

VINE:
Would you accept a peerage from the Conservatives if they offered it?

WOODHEAD:
The Conservative Party haven't offered me a peerage, and I'm not contemplating possibilities that may or may not occur.

VINE:
It sounds like you might be disposed to accept one if they offered you one.

WOODHEAD:
I have no idea how I would react and it is a fanciful question because the offer has not been made and there have been no conversations about that possibility whatsoever.

VINE:
Thanks very much.

In his article Chris Woodhead wrote there was a feeling within the education department that a day without a new initiative was a wasted day. I spoke earlier to the education secretary, David Blunkett and asked him whether he took that as an insult.

DAVID BLUNKETT:
It's just a throwaway criticism. It's not a constructive, "this is what I thought should be done, and we didn't do it,", but "Let's have an insult, let's have a knock about." I don't want that. I think that Chris, in many of the things that he did, achieved what he wanted, which was to reveal what had gone wrong in the past. My job, including through the literacy and numeracy programme, but through many other initiatives, was to put a jigsaw together so we had a pattern of investment which led to raising standards. In the end, you see the question is were standards rising? His annual reports and the recent report from the new Chief Inspector not only say they were rising, but in every category, in every age group, in every type of school across the country, teaching has improved and standards have risen. That's the judge and jury.

JEREMY VINE:
But if he is so good, to use your phrase, in revealing what's gone so wrong in the past, why is he so bad in revealing what's going wrong at the moment?

BLUNKETT:
Because it's a total contradiction of what he said over the last four years. Just before his resignation, he did an interview with the Guardian in which he said he had no problem with his working relationship with myself and the Prime Minister. He said exactly the opposite. He said standards were rising, now he is saying our policies didn't raise standards. He says he is in favour of the literacy and numeracy programme, but nothing else, the rest was a diversion. Actually, the beacon school initiative, 1000 schools with extra money his damned idea, so the man is even criticising his own ideas.

VINE:
Was he it in touch with the Prime Minister a lot?

BLUNKETT:
Of course he is in touch with Number Ten.

VINE:
And I assume that this story about him being in touch with David Milliband and then saying the prime minister said to him "keep up the good work" and then, "I talked to Mr Milliband and absolutely nothing happened."

BLUNKETT:
This is more about ego than about reality. I will debate publicly with anyone whether a particular policy is working, whether investing in inner city schools is a diversion and...

VINE:
He presided over a set of initiatives that "wasted taxpayers' money, distracted teachers and encapsulated the worst of the discredited ideology, and a gap has opened up between rhetoric and reality". What do you think on reading that?

BLUNKETT:
I hear the rhetoric. The reality is what people experience on the ground, and I stand entirely by the judgement of parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, who see what's happening to their child in the classroom. Do they want the technology in the classroom that he disparages? Do they want investment in schools? Do they want 650 schools on special measures turned round...

VINE:
And the red tape?

BLUNKETT:
Of course there has been red tape, there has been administration.

VINE:
So he is right about that?

BLUNKETT:
Some of it has been necessary. Some of it arose from the office of standards and inspection itself.

VINE:
When he mentions the "black hole" at the heart of your policies, and he says, "It's the failure to understand that education is important because it's intrinsically valuable and not just because it contributes to our social and economic good", you could say that's a recognition that you have made education more vocation-based?

BLUNKETT:
I could, except that I actually agree that education for its own sake, i.e. as Gandhi put it and we put it in the green paper quoting him, education with character, is crucial. So that we give youngsters the tools to learn to begin to love learning because they are confident...

VINE:
But you did say your department's role stems from the responsibility of ensuring the UK has a good labour market, which is very different?

BLUNKETT:
And offering people to gain the qualifications to get a job is crucial. So we all agree that education for its own sake is vital. It's very strange to have the term "utilitarian" used against us when I thought that everything I had heard over the last four years from the former Chief Inspector was that he wanted us to concentrate solely, as he does in disparaging the 60-odd initiatives, purely on the basic tools.

VINE:
Which is more important, the education for vocation, or the education being intrinsically valuable?

BLUNKETT:
The two are absolutely interlinked. If you can get youngsters interested in learning because they are going to have a job, because they have an interest in the vocational subjects they are picking up, they then in turn can be engaged with culture, with art, with learning for its own sake throughout life, which I have sought to achieve.

VINE:
I don't know if you were present at the school standards task force meeting, where there was a suggestion that teachers should be redescribed "learning professionals"? Would you agree with that?

BLUNKETT; I wasn't, but I wouldn't. People are allowed in a free society to say what they think without either the Secretary of State or the Chief Inspector of Schools slapping them down. We don't have a thought police in the education service.