Clash of the Michaels
Clash of the Michaels
Clash of the Michaels
"Mischief, thou art afoot. Take thou what course thou wilt."
Julius Caesar
Noticed as part of the weekly
#ShakespeareSunday Twitter feed
I’ve written elsewhere about how the Day of Rest has become the Day of Jest. It’s a feeble pun designed to capture the nature of modern Sundays - where more often than not there’s some education story putting itself about across the day’s media outlets.
Today marked a new low-point in the process.
The morning started with an unexpected report in the Sunday Times, based on an interview with Ofsted’s Sir Michael Wilshaw:
Schools watchdog at war with Gove
In an exclusive interview, Sir Michael Wilshaw told The Sunday Times he was “displeased, shocked, angry and outraged” at attacks by rightwingers on the integrity of the inspectorate, whose job is to rate the quality of schools.
“I am spitting blood over this and I want it to stop,” he said.
Asked whether he wanted Gove to call off the attack dogs, he replied: “Absolutely”, adding “it does nothing for his drive or our drive to raise standards in schools. I was never intimidated as a headteacher and I do not intend to be intimidated as a chief inspector.”
The story has been dissected remorselessly throughout the day, so I shan’t spend much more time on it. And anyhow, it appears to have resulted in a public, if squirmworthy, declaration of reconciliation by the two Michaels.
According to the Telegraph, Michael G declared Sir Michael W a “superb professional and an outstanding chief inspector”.
In return, Sir Michael W, like the child who had been refusing to eat his broccoli but had been talked round with the promise of extra custard, said: “I know that [MG] is 100 per cent supportive of my leadership. I am looking forward to continuing to work closely with the Secretary of State to ensure school standards continue to rise”
But what’s striking to me in all this is just how thin-skinned Sir Michael Wilshaw seems.
He has brought a rather macho persona to the role of Chief Inspector, setting a tone that too often too many of us feel lacks nuance.
We saw it in that madcap idea last summer of creating hit squads of the nation’s finest teachers and parachuting them into the least effective schools.
We sensed it in his hectoring tone today:
"I was never intimidated as a head teacher and I do not intend to be intimidated as a chief inspector."
‘Intimidated’ is a strong word.
And surely you’d think that if you presided over a sprawling, expensive organisation which doesn’t always tangibly appear to be making our schools improve, then you wouldn’t be unduly surprised when some earnest young men in right-leaning think tanks grab a headline or two by asking whether Ofsted’s time is up.
Surely - like parental complaints to the headteacher over a ‘no trainers’ or ‘no piercings’ rule - this kind of carping goes with the territory. It’s what leaders expect.
I don’t get why Sir Michael’s prickliness had to be played out quite so publicly, why instead a fulminating breakfast phone-call to the Secretary of State might not have more effectively and less ostentatiously allowed the Chief Inspector to vent his spleen.
Public life around education doesn’t get well served, I would suggest, by a discourse like this that is so fraught, so intemperate, so public, so petulant.
Then again, I suppose it could have been worse.
At least David Cameron wasn’t around to say ‘Calm down, dear’.
Geoff Barton
Sunday 26 January 2014
Sunday, 26 January 2014