Here
As the schools watchdog Ofsted launches a consultation on its own
inspections, The Guardian has been
canvassing views from across the education sector.
Jonathan Simons, head of education at Tory think tank Policy Exchange, reckons it is headteachers — and, by extension, their bosses, the governing body — who should determine the criteria on which their own school should be judged:
Ofsted should be a hygiene inspector, not a food critic. By that I mean it should be headteachers who are the dominant actors: they should be the ones saying this is what we’re doing, these are the outcomes, here’s the data to prove it.
Jonathan Simons, head of education at Tory think tank Policy Exchange, reckons it is headteachers — and, by extension, their bosses, the governing body — who should determine the criteria on which their own school should be judged:
Ofsted should be a hygiene inspector, not a food critic. By that I mean it should be headteachers who are the dominant actors: they should be the ones saying this is what we’re doing, these are the outcomes, here’s the data to prove it.
Could this be the Jonathan Simons
who founded the Greenwich
Free School, which, errr, received a ‘requires improvement’ rating — the second lowest of four — in an inspection report released in April this year?
And could this be the Jonathan
Simons who chairs a governing body that a subsequent monitoring
inspection visit found was “not
taking effective action to tackle the areas relating to teaching that were
identified at the [previous] inspection”?
The very same!
You did eight years as a governor of a thriving school. You did it from a very early age. You had to get in with serious people like the county council and the Catholic Church to get it. You had to keep in with them to keep it until you got sick. But these failed vanity project nobodies are treated as authorities.
ReplyDeleteAlso eight on another one, although mostly with crossover.
DeleteA cumulative 16 years, though, yes. And as you say, I didn't just put myself on either of them. But I had them both by the time that I was 22.
This Simons must have been well into his thirties before he made one up for himself. But even that has been an abject failure.
"This Simons", I love that. You and the loudmouthed Mockney posh boy who shouldn't have been at any university always did despise each other.
DeleteHe thought you shouldn't have been there because you were Northern and not public school, and a Labour member in those days. Becoming a Catholic won't have helped.
You thought he shouldn't have been there because he was as thick as pigsh*t.
We can all see who was right.
You are skirting around the issue. Like that local enemy of yours (Fleming?) who didn't believe "mulattoes" should be councillors or MPs, Jon Simons didn't believe mulattoes should be at Durham.
DeletePlus you were Theology so you will have had Durham as your first choice, he will have been rejected by PPE at Oxford and brought shame on "School".
I remember those Britpop mockney accents, a bit sad if he is still using his.
He was probably given a "requires improvement" rating by Ofsted for not inviting an imam in.
ReplyDeleteThat's what has happened to a Christian school now threatened with closure.
It didn't happen to either of the ones (one Catholic VA, one C of E Controlled) that had me as a governor for many years, beginning when he and I were both students.
DeleteBut then, that was under the previous Government.
You'll be back on these things, if you are medically up to it and you look to be compared with how you were, once the state school Catholic party is back in government and brings back proper lines of accountability.
DeleteThe Union had you back as a speaker a week before him. A fluke but still funny.
ReplyDeleteLoving your spat with him on Twitter. He is not used to be being stood up to, is he?
ReplyDeleteHe cannot cope with anyone whom Daddy can neither sack nor evict. She is even worse for that.
DeleteI am starting to ponder that idea for primary legislation surcharging people by name. I might have a few words in a few ears.