Under this headline the head of Ofsted, the chief inspector of children’s service, one Christine Gilbert, says to the Guardian’s Polly Curtis, "I think that if the grades that we gave last December gave a false assurance we have to take some responsibility for that. I'm absolutely not washing my hands of it."
Really? Obviously taking ‘some’ responsibility doesn’t include resignation, as far as Ms Gilbert is concerned. This woman is married to New Labour’s employment minister, Tony McNulty, and she’s clearly not about to make herself unemployed.
It’s not the New Labour way for anyone who’s sitting where the buck stops to actually resign, even when, like Ms Gilbert, they’ve been happily running an organization whose very modus operandi encourages schools and local authorities to spend millions of pounds and waste thousands of officer hours creating paper smokescreens of ‘data’ to cover up the fact that they’re doing a shit job and letting down hundreds of thousands of children who deserve to have a good life and a positive experience of school.
Under Ms Gilbert’s regime Ofsted inspections of schools, for instance, have been reduced to a wretched 2 days by 2-3 inspectors, who clearly only have time to seek out supporting evidence for the hypothesis they’ve already constructed after scrutinizing the data and the statements the school’s put together on its Self Evaluation Form.
The whole wretched Ofsted way of doing things seems to be coming under public scrutiny, at long last, and praise be to the Guardian for following through with this aspect of the Baby P story, which includes a lead article on the front page of today’s paper under the headline, “We failed over Haringey - Ofsted head”.
In the course of her Guardian interview Ms Gilbert "sets out the tactics managers at Haringey employed to present a data-perfect image of their work. They claimed they had assessed children promptly when files revealed that those assessments were in fact incomplete. The same files showed that such assessments of children were routinely and wrongly done with their parent or guardian in the room. It wasn't until inspectors began pulling children's files from the office shelves in the town hall that they realised the extent of the deceit."
Well, duh!
Thanks to the Baby P case Ofsted’s complacency and stupidity and its methods of inspection have finally come to light. Personally I don’t really give a damn whether or not this particular bureaucrat gets her comeuppance, but I care very much whether or not the system that’s been so dire and counterproductive in terms of children’s welfare and wellbeing is finally nailed and put to rights.
The Guardian again:
“The head of Ofsted has acknowledged that local councils whose child protection agencies have been rated "good" by the agency could in fact be systematically failing children because the assessment method used by inspectors was open to manipulation.”
“In her first major interview since the verdict on Baby P's death was returned, Christine Gilbert admitted to failings in Ofsted's oversight of Haringey council, acknowledging that officials in the local authority where Baby P died were able to "hide behind" false data last year to earn themselves a good rating from inspectors just weeks after his death.”
And who’s responsible for the local authority being able to hide behind false data? Ms Gilbert by any chance?
“Gilbert promised that Ofsted would overhaul inspections of child protection services in recognition that mistakes were made in the monitoring of Haringey council.”
Is this by any chance what’s called shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted? After the baby died.
"I think that the processes that we're proposing will be better than the processes that we had," said Ms Gilbert.
Well that’s good. Too late, but good. And not hard to achieve, either, because the processes Ofsted had, AND STILL HAS, thanks to Ms Gilbert failing to notice, are shit.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/dec/06/ofsted-baby-p-inspector-chief
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/dec/06/ofsted-child-protection
This story has also been picked up by the Telegraph, which quotes from the Guardian interview under the headline,
Head of Ofsted Christine Gilbert admits failings over death of Baby P
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/baby-p/3569941/Head-of-Ofsted-Christine-Gilbert-admits-failings-over-death-of-Baby-P.html
And the BBC on its main homepage today:
Baby P authority 'misled Ofsted'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7769126.stm6.15pm latest news:
The lead story on the Radio 4 main evening news was - Ofsted.
Incredibly Christine Gilbert is reported as having written to all local authorities asking them to 'check' whether they've given Ofsted bogus information! Imagine - "Please tell us whether you've been telling us porkies". What an unbelievable shambles.
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Ms Gilbert has been described as ‘steely’, ‘candid’, ‘calm', ‘collected', with “not a hair of her sharp blond bob out of place”. Blond, eh? I defy anyone to look at her photo on page 41 of today’s paper and not agree that she’s the spitting image of a blond Nessa from Gavin & Stacey. Tidy.
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And talking of Gav and Stace, I have say I’ve become a real fan of the programme. I love the cleverness of its two writers, James Corden (Smithy) and Ruth Jones (Nessa), in creating a series in which the lead parts are not those whose names appear in the title, but the two ‘supporting’ roles, the best friends of Gav and Stace.
Gav is just a boring nice guy, and Stace is simply a dimwit, but the overweight Smithy and big Nessa are just wonderful. It reminds me of the clever Mr Stoppard who outrageously based a play on Hamlet but created lead roles for what were supposed to be supporting bit-parts - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (are Dead).
The point being that ‘minor’ characters can be as cracked, outrageous and funny as the writer wants them to be, whilst the ‘main’ characters pursue their serious, boring and tragic lives.
This week's episode contained one of the funniest scenes ever in a sitcom, where the rest of the family (plus Smithy and Ness) are all sitting down to breakfast whilst Gav and Stace proceed to have avery noisy shag in the bedroom above the kitchen. Nobody says a word about what they can all very clearly hear, of course, but Stacey's mum jumps up, turns on some loud music and starts a very energetic exercise routine to distract then all from what they're hearing.
There's also a fabulous scene where Smithy is taking part in a strenuous semi-naked workout in the bedroom that Uncle Bryn (the wonderful Rob Brydon) has converted into a gym. Attracted by the homoerotic grunts and yells coming from the room ("Oh yes! Smithy - harder! harder! That's it!") Gavin is baffled and appalled by the whole business, especially Smithy being topless.
11.00pm Stop Press: Gavin and Stacey wins its category in the 2008 British Comedy awards.
[Angus Deayton, hosting the awards in the absence of Russell Brand, was nasty, snide, bitchy, irritating, up his own arse and completely unfunny.]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_&_Stacey
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosencrantz_and_Guildenstern
Have a look at these sites for the essence of R & G Are Dead - Tom Stoppard at his witty best:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100519/quotes
NB White Cat - the references to life in a box.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rosencrantz_&_Guildenstern_Are_Dead
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Very good article by John Harris in the Guardian today, on Harriet Harman:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/dec/06/harriet-harman-labour-deputy-interview
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I've just discovered the Robert Peston 'blog' on the BBC website. The man's a phenomenon. Today's blog alone has generated 259 responses at the time of writing. (5.25pm)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2008/12/how_much_will_taxpayers_financ.html
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