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Polly Toynbee had another excellent column in the Guardian this week, with every sentence worthy of the highlighter pen:
Labour has one last chance to catch the public mood
Anger at fat cats and tax dodgers needs a political narrative to sustain it. Brown must look to Obama and take the lead.
Are we in the midst of a radical shift in political culture? Measuring its significance or durability in the febrile moment is not easy. Is this anti-banker, anti-bonus spasm only a transitory fit that will be gone as soon as house prices start to rise again? Forces pull in both directions: governments try to re-assert their power over markets, while the masters of the universe try to carry on as if nothing much will change.
Now even a Conservative press rages at company functionaries still rewarding themselves undeserved fortunes.
See how the Telegraph and Mail follow the public mood with anti fat-cat invective these days: a year ago such talk was "class war" and "the politics of envy".
Yet how profound and long-lasting will all this be? How long before the masters of the universe assert themselves again, ride out the spasm, find new loopholes and intimidate future governments with warnings against any interference that risks the fragile recovery? After all, no sign of culture change reaches the boardrooms. GlaxoSmithKline just gave its CEO a 17.6% pay rise, bringing his salary to £1m with five times that sum in shares.
The cartel of top earners sitting on each other's boards has been blamed, along with the tiny coterie of auditors and remuneration consultants who pumped up pay and signed it off as the "market rate" they had created. Is there a sign the government dares to blow in fresh air?
It now looks as if closing tax havens will be the G20's key success. Obama campaigned on the Stop Tax Havens Act now in Congress. Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel want Switzerland added to the blacklist, along with the 30 to 40 others. Brown has been latest on this issue, with an ignoble record of resisting EU attempts.
Transparency changes things. Labour has a year to lead the public mood; so far it has been dragged along behind it. With no political narrative, this chance to push back the forces of inequality will be lost. What bitter irony if loathing of Labour means the Tories take over despite the first authentic egalitarian public mood in years.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/10/brown-bankers-bonuses
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There were well over 200 comments posted on Comment Is Free after this article. Oxzen wrote:
It’s hard to say, sometimes, whose comments are the most annoying to have to plough through in order to get to the good stuff on CIF - ignorant conservatives or rabid leftists. Polly Toynbee has been consistently a thoughtful, intelligent, left-of-centre commentator who deserves the respect and high regard of all social democrats and left-liberals, who after all make up the majority amongst the thinking classes, and indeed the masses who voted for the Labour landslide in 1997.
She's consistently criticised New Labour from a progressive position, and advocated transformational policies that are in line with what most of us want in terms of greater social justice and equality, in terms of tackling poverty, improving schools and early years provision, social services, the health service, and so on.
This latest column was a brilliant summary of how things stand politically in this country, and why Parliament, not just New Labour, must seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to enact the reforms that we, the people, demand.
If Brown and New Labour can finally bring themselves to do something truly radical they could even find they have substantial support from swing voters, middle of the road conservatives and the pissed-off middle classes. And lets face it, it's only though radical action they stand any chance of winning back support from true socialists and progressives.
And if radical action doesn't improve their popularity? Too bad. After all, what's the Labour party for? It wasn’t created to provide a little trickle-down wealth, to maintain inequality or preserve dog-eat-dog unregulated capitalism.
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Someone signed in as jgm2 wrote this wonderful comment:
Re: “However the nazis are just the most familiar example and by no means the only. It always worry me when politicians try to capture the public mood because government should be about leading, not cheer leading.”
Fred Goodwin is just Gordon 'Big Brother' Brown's equivalent of Emmanuel Goldstein. It's a cliche but it's unfortunately true. This government doesn't consider '1984' a warning. It considers it a fucking blueprint.
Rewriting history. Infallible leadership. Perpetual unwinnable wars with constantly shifting alliances. Privileged Party members and insiders all well looked after. Until they step out of line at which point they are immediately ostracised. Control of the 'media narrative'. Constant surveillance. Constant monitoring of our movements/correspondence/phone calls/e-mails. Individuals being singled out by the state for mass hate-fests.
Sod Jules Verne getting lucky predicting the yanks would pioneer space travel. Sod Leonardo Da Vinci and his drawings of 'helicopters'. George Orwell truly was a fucking genius. Every single fucking nightmare scenario he envisaged. Bang on the fucking money.
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Children’s Services
I was listening to people talking on the radio this morning about the Sharon Shoesmith case, and the idea that local authority directors of children's services need to be offered training and support so that they can do their jobs properly. Bless. What a wonderful country we live in - we create these mega high powered jobs by insisting on merging education and social services - huge jobs that virtually no-one is able to do effectively, let alone be qualified though professional training or experience to do them - and after a couple of years we say, wouldn't it be a good idea if we give these poor incompetent underqualified sods some proper training and support? That should fix the problem. At least after that none of them will be able to claim that they didn't know what they were supposed to do and didn't really know how to do it, like they do now.
Incidentally, I’m not commenting here on the rights and wrongs of dismissing Shoesmith - I’ve already done that in previous blogs. Simon Jenkins wrote a good column about it this week:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/11/simon-jenkins-ed-balls-babyp-shoesmith
“Shoesmith's biggest mistake was not to be a bank boss.”
What I’m concerned about is the way this government has played about with bureaucratic structures with little or no consultation or preparation for the changes it drove through, and I’m livid about the way it which it maintains its command and control clunking fist policy with its targets and inspections culture that does nothing for children, and reveals little of value about the true effectiveness of local authorities.
Simon Jenkins rightly berates Mr Balls for the central part he’s played in developing and maintaining the targets culture, and for being a ludicrous lifelong professional politician with no knowledge of, or feeling for, the real world outside of Westminster.
"Balls runs one of Whitehall's worst departments: ask any teacher or social worker. When accidents happen - nobody in authority wanted Baby P to die - the charge of negligence cannot rest with local staff. In this top-heavy and hierarchical public sector, it should go to the top. Those who always claim the credit must take the blame."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/mar/12/childprotection-social-care
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I hear on the grapevine about the leadership in certain local authorities running around in frenzies, convening whole-day meetings of 50 or more senior children’s services managers, looking at ‘issues’, doing ‘workshops’ in which directors of education get down on the floor (literally) with flip chart pads and marker pens, trying to map out ‘how to move forward’ with the children’s ‘wellbeing agenda’, desperately trying to think what to do about their latest Whitehall-generated set of targets or the fact that they still have so many schools being hammered by Ofsted, blah, blah, blah . . .
I hear about ‘school improvement’ managers trying to reconcile their concern about children’s wellbeing with the fact that they’ve spent several years banging on about raising SATs scores and GCSE scores to the exclusion of all else. These poor dears must in some dim way realise that they’ve been the very agents of the destruction of real education, as far as children are concerned, since these are the people who have turned schools into soulless and joyless results factories, using and abusing children and teachers for their own wellbeing in terms of career progress.
Forcing children to do ‘Big Writing’ instead of anything meaningful, to use more ‘connectives’ in order to create longer and more middle-class-sounding sentences in their writing (extra marks in tests!!), to use more ‘Wow Words’ (flowery and usually inappropriate terminology - extra marks in tests!!), and forcing children to do less of the things they actually enjoy doing and more of the stuff they hate doing in order to jack up the schools’ test results - all of this amounts to the abuse of children, though no-one wants to admit it.
And of course they’ll all continue to deny what’s happened and insist that they did things they thought were right for children - as if getting a low Level 4 compared with a high Level 3 at the age of 11 really means a damn in terms of ‘access to the curriculum’ at secondary school. As if stressing children, boring them and denying them their human rights (for example to a broad, balanced and interesting curriculum) is better for them in the long run than helping children to see that learning can be enjoyable for its own sake, whatever your current level of literacy. Never mind a creative and active style of learning that’s bound to make children more enthusiastic about school than a dull life of drudgery in the education workhouse.
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This is a good column in today’s paper, by Seamoose Milne, especially for political anoraks:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/12/miners-strike
The miners' strike of 1984-5, which officially kicked off 25 years ago today, was . . . a social and political tipping point that has had no real parallel anywhere else in the world. And now that the free-market fundamentalism unleashed by Margaret Thatcher in the strike's aftermath is being so comprehensively discredited by the crisis of deregulated capitalism she championed, it should be a good time to reassess the most determined bid to resist it in the first place.
The full costs of the war against the miners - including the strike, closures, redundancies and economic and welfare costs - are well over £30bn at current prices and far exceed those of the more rational energy policy the Tories rejected to crush the core of organised labour.
A generation later, these debates about the strike can seem arcane. But its outcome could not matter more for the country we have inherited. It's not just the wreckage of mining communities, but the entire political and economic direction has been shaped by the fallout from that convulsive dispute. The enfeeblement of unions, the explosion of inequality, social atomisation, the collapse of confidence in a political alternative and Britain's harsh brand of neoliberalism all flow from its aftermath. Success for the miners would, by contrast, have at least seriously weakened Thatcher, reined in the government's worst excesses and halted Labour's headlong rush for the third way.
The strike was a fight for jobs, but it was also a challenge to the market-driven restructuring of economic and social life already under way. It raised the alternative of a different Britain from the greed and individualism of the Thatcher years, rooted in solidarity and collective action. As the neoliberal order that Thatcher helped to build crumbles before us, that is a message that speaks to our times.
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Showing posts with label Sharon Shoesmith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sharon Shoesmith. Show all posts
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Layer 94 Investigating the Inspectors
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From today’s Guardian:
MPs yesterday summoned the head of Ofsted to give evidence next week on why the children's services inspectorate failed to spot problems in the London borough where Baby P died after months of persistent injury and neglect.
MPs are perplexed about how Ofsted could give Haringey's children department a rating of "good" a year ago, but find it riddled with managerial defects when inspectors returned in an atmosphere of heightened public anxiety after disclosure of the circumstances of Baby P's death.
In October 2006, a joint review by Ofsted and other inspectorates said Shoesmith "provides strong and dynamic leadership and is supported by many examples of good leadership and management at all levels". In November 2007, Ofsted said: "The council's capacity to improve its services for children and young people is good and its management of these services is good."
Christine Gilbert, the Ofsted chief inspector, will appear before Sheerman's committee next week to explain the change of view.
He said: "The chief inspector says it was down to the data and Haringey not wanting to tell the truth. If inspections are a paper-based exercise ... then no wonder the results are misleading. So far those questions are not answered. We will ask some pretty searching questions of the chief inspector."
One senior employee of Haringey council who works with children said: "There's something wrong with Ofsted. Either one of the two Ofsted assessments was wrong, or they are both wrong."
Well the bloody inspections are indeed a ‘paper-based exercise’ and ‘no wonder the results are misleading’. It’s impossible to overemphasis how much the current Ofsted regime fucks up many schools that are good schools, or at least close to being good schools, and fails to identify places that are positively crap - but able to impress with their test and exam data.
Let us not forget, furthermore, that “attainment” rules - i.e. all the other aspects of schools are deemed to be of no consequence, no matter how good they are, once Ofsted have latched on to negative test data, often very spurious value-added data, and have decided to use it as the basis for a ‘hypothesis’ that a school is a failing school, even before the inspectors have ventured within a hundred miles of the school in question.
So the question now arises - will the children’s select committee determine that this fucked-up Ofsted regime is failing and positively harmful to the education system, given its condemnation of many satisfactory and good schools, and its failure to identify many crappy and failing schools - failing in all or many respects apart from test and exam results.
I’m not holding my breath. But what the hell - at least the commons committee has spotted the issue and acted quickly to investigate it. The point is - it’s obvious that Ofsted has been totally exposed by this case. They’re guilty as hell of labelling Haringey children’s services as ‘good’, whereas proper investigation has revealed they’re complete rubbish - at least the social services part of their operations. The reason for them being rubbish, apparently, ironically, is that they operate more on the basis of ticking boxes on forms than by properly investigating the well-being of children.
Did Shoesmith, an educationalist, bite off more than she could chew when she was promoted to Director of children’s services? Is Gilbert, an educationalist, qualified to preside over an organization that inspects social services and child protection in home settings? How could Ofsted have got things any MORE wrong than in this tragic case? Will Gilbert now admit that the entire modus operandi of Ofsted is misconceived and untenable? Will she hell.
Except that she already has - by admitting that local authorities should be hit by ‘lightning’ (i.e. unannounced) inspections. But will those inspections still focus on data, or will they do something different?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/dec/03/ofsted-haringey-children-department
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From today’s Guardian:
MPs yesterday summoned the head of Ofsted to give evidence next week on why the children's services inspectorate failed to spot problems in the London borough where Baby P died after months of persistent injury and neglect.
MPs are perplexed about how Ofsted could give Haringey's children department a rating of "good" a year ago, but find it riddled with managerial defects when inspectors returned in an atmosphere of heightened public anxiety after disclosure of the circumstances of Baby P's death.
In October 2006, a joint review by Ofsted and other inspectorates said Shoesmith "provides strong and dynamic leadership and is supported by many examples of good leadership and management at all levels". In November 2007, Ofsted said: "The council's capacity to improve its services for children and young people is good and its management of these services is good."
Christine Gilbert, the Ofsted chief inspector, will appear before Sheerman's committee next week to explain the change of view.
He said: "The chief inspector says it was down to the data and Haringey not wanting to tell the truth. If inspections are a paper-based exercise ... then no wonder the results are misleading. So far those questions are not answered. We will ask some pretty searching questions of the chief inspector."
One senior employee of Haringey council who works with children said: "There's something wrong with Ofsted. Either one of the two Ofsted assessments was wrong, or they are both wrong."
Well the bloody inspections are indeed a ‘paper-based exercise’ and ‘no wonder the results are misleading’. It’s impossible to overemphasis how much the current Ofsted regime fucks up many schools that are good schools, or at least close to being good schools, and fails to identify places that are positively crap - but able to impress with their test and exam data.
Let us not forget, furthermore, that “attainment” rules - i.e. all the other aspects of schools are deemed to be of no consequence, no matter how good they are, once Ofsted have latched on to negative test data, often very spurious value-added data, and have decided to use it as the basis for a ‘hypothesis’ that a school is a failing school, even before the inspectors have ventured within a hundred miles of the school in question.
So the question now arises - will the children’s select committee determine that this fucked-up Ofsted regime is failing and positively harmful to the education system, given its condemnation of many satisfactory and good schools, and its failure to identify many crappy and failing schools - failing in all or many respects apart from test and exam results.
I’m not holding my breath. But what the hell - at least the commons committee has spotted the issue and acted quickly to investigate it. The point is - it’s obvious that Ofsted has been totally exposed by this case. They’re guilty as hell of labelling Haringey children’s services as ‘good’, whereas proper investigation has revealed they’re complete rubbish - at least the social services part of their operations. The reason for them being rubbish, apparently, ironically, is that they operate more on the basis of ticking boxes on forms than by properly investigating the well-being of children.
Did Shoesmith, an educationalist, bite off more than she could chew when she was promoted to Director of children’s services? Is Gilbert, an educationalist, qualified to preside over an organization that inspects social services and child protection in home settings? How could Ofsted have got things any MORE wrong than in this tragic case? Will Gilbert now admit that the entire modus operandi of Ofsted is misconceived and untenable? Will she hell.
Except that she already has - by admitting that local authorities should be hit by ‘lightning’ (i.e. unannounced) inspections. But will those inspections still focus on data, or will they do something different?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/dec/03/ofsted-haringey-children-department
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Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Layer 93 Accusations, Recriminations, and Children’s Services.
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Last month the headteachers of 61 state-funded primary schools and seven secondary schools in Haringey wrote an ‘open letter’ in support of their Director of Children’s Services, Sharon Shoesmith, saying that her resignation, or dismissal, would be detrimental to their pupils. They said they felt compelled to show their support for Shoesmith and they consider her “an outstanding public servant”.
They added: “Should the Child P case result in her loss from the borough, then our children and young people will lose one of their most effective, determined and committed champions.”
“Initially, in her role of director of education, Shoesmith transformed a demoralised education service, derided by many headteachers, into one with which we are now proud to be associated.
“The exceptional rate of improvement of many of the borough’s schools would not have been possible without the support of the service that Ms Shoesmith rebuilt, revitalised and led.
“Since more recently becoming the director of Haringey’s Children and Young People’s Service, Shoesmith has continued to work relentlessly and with a determination that the service she leads and develops ensures best practice in providing education, care, support and protection for all of our young people.”
Well, I don’t know about you, but when a large posse of headteachers saddles up with the intention of riding to the rescue of their leader, then I’m inclined to pay attention to their views. After all, these are all people who are appointed and maintained in their posts on the basis of having a track record of good judgement, clear thinking and concern for children’s well-being.
Or at least that used to be the case . Further study is needed on the degree to which the new generation of headteachers has been appointed on the basis of their commitment to reaching arbitrary academic targets and their expertise in cramming children for mind- and spirit-deadening tests, first and foremost. As far as the culture of classrooms and schools is concerned the achievement of targets has become synonymous with well-being.
But hold on - where’s the open letter of support for Shoesmith from senior managers in the social services part of her empire? What are their views? Do they not consider her an outstanding public servant? Could this be a case of someone who has great vision and leadership skills as far as education is concerned, but NOT having any relevant experience or any great understanding of social work, and therefore no ability to impact on the quality of that part of the council’s service?
Similarly there are many instances of Directors of children’s services departments coming from a social services background with no experience or expertise in education. What makes such people equipped to be the head of a huge empire of schools and associated service departments? What real responsibility can they exercise when they are utterly reliant on the information they receive and the views they are presented with from their junior managers and their senior colleagues who do have a background in education? Are they not susceptible to having the wool pulled over their eyes? Do they even know the right questions to ask?
And was it such a great idea anyway for the government to create mega-departments for ‘children’s services’ in an attempt to ensure ‘joined-up thinking’ within local councils? I myself was privileged to witness at first hand how one of these departments came together within an inner-city LA. It was pretty obvious to me that the person who was being groomed for the top job had no real clue as to how schools should be led and managed, and no independence of judgment on pedagogy and curriculum, for example, let alone anything to say about creating quality learning environments.
But then that person didn’t need to. All that was necessary was to sign up for the government’s ‘standards agenda’ and away we go! Government thinking has been and still is that generic management skills of a high order are all that matter when it comes to leading bureaucracies. MBAs rule! OK?
But it’s interesting to consider what the curriculum might consist of on a course for the National Professional Qualification for Directors of Children’s Services. What would you need to know and to have done in order to get a place on the course? Possibly some experience of teaching as well as social work could be an advantage? Experience of team building within both a state school and a social services department? An understanding of pedagogy as well as therapeutic practice?
No matter - the government was in a rush to force all local authorities into creating huge departments of ‘children’s services’, whether or not individuals could be found who were qualified to lead them. And lord knows there were plenty of ambitious and willing candidates lining up to take on the top positions, whether or not they’d paid their dues and had at least SOME experience within both the relevant disciplines and professions.
And let us not forget - generic management and leadership skills are what we’re looking for! We’re all realists now - are we not? After all, we don’t expect the Prime Minister to be an expert on economics, education, health, social services, defence strategy, and the whole damned caboodle, do we? Not any more, at any rate.
There was no time to waste, apparently - and no time to prepare council departments properly, let alone to train and prepare people appropriately, for the huge amalgamation of departments that was proposed. And so it came to pass that a new generation of super-managers was put in place, with very interesting consequences throughout the land.
Meanwhile, the well-qualified Ed Balls, the minister for balls-ups in schools and families, has his own ideas about competence and leadership ability within Haringey council, and it turns out he has no regard at all for the views of the 61 Shoesmithite headteachers in that part of the world. So either he’s right to have dismissed Ms Shoesmith, in which case the 61 headteachers are all idiots for trying to keep her in post, or he’s wrong and Ms Shoesmith should not be slung out on the very day that an inspector’s report on the malfunctioning of her department is delivered. After all, if she’s not been in post very long, and she’s not yet up to speed with the social services part of it, is that her fault?
And what about Ofsted, which reported quite recently that Haringey provide ‘good’ children’s services? Christine Gilbert, Ofsted’s head honcho, witters on, with her tight little mouth and her pursed lips, about the need for unannounced inspections, but of course she’ll escape any blame for the death of Baby P, even though she’s ultimately responsible for the council in question being put into the second highest category for children’s services and therefore viewed as a successful local authority.
“Lightning Inspections” are what she now wants, but did it really take a hideous death like this to tell us that the system for carrying out inspections of children’s services has always been a total waste of time and money, in that it gave those departments months and even years to prepare for scrutiny - to put together all the bullshit statistics in the world to cover the backs of the top bureaucrats? At enormous public cost in terms of distraction from the proper task, and in officer hours spent on compiling huge dossiers with which to deceive the Ofsted inspectors and persuade them that targets were being hit, or at least addressed effectively.
Oh yes - it’s been OK to give the poor bloody schools 2 or 3 days’ notice of an Ofsted inspection - but bureaucracies are a completely different matter, are they not? Well Ms Gilbert, it’s fine being wise after the event, but it was YOU that’s overseen the introduction of a system for inspecting schools on the basis of data and statistics, and it’s YOU that’s gone along with the same approach for the inspection of children’s services.
“We can’t rely on statistics”, she now bleats, but that’s exactly what she and her Ofsted buddies have been happy to do, until now. And she now agrees that inspectors should talk directly to children and young people about their perceptions of what’s being done in their name.
More bullshit. It wouldn’t have made any difference to Baby P, and it won’t make any difference to those poor bloody schools that have been given the bullet and put into Special Measures under her regime, in spite of inspectors being told by the pupils that they enjoy their school, in many instances, and they believe that they achieve well in spite of all the adverse factors, like recruitment and retention difficulties, which so often impact on their schools and their well-being. It seems Ms Gilbert may no longer be so enamored of the ‘targets culture’. Now that the game’s almost up she may as well just come out and say, “I was just doing my job”. Carrying out orders, you see. Well aren’t they all?
So we may now be heading back towards a culture of inspections where human observation and actual analysis of what’s happening within schools and local authorities is the basis for judgments, rather than data and statistics. We may no longer need to tolerate Gestapo methods whereby headteachers are put in a chair and ordered to explain their lack of productivity and failure to hit targets, with a firing squad awaiting those who refuse to play the game or fail to satisfy with their answers. “Why is zis Value Added so bad!? Why is your school not reaching Floor Targets in Englisch? Answer me!!”
Sorry Germany, I mean you no disrespect. I’m just trying to draw some parallels with the methodology that’s been adopted by New Labour (and its running dogs like Ofsted) in its “refusal to tolerate low standards” or indeed to tolerate, let alone support, those who have tried to offer real education to their children rather than focus exclusively on the “outputs” demanded by the system we now have in this country. As I once heard a senior bureaucrat say, “Level 4 is the be-all and end-all”.
One thing’s for sure though. As of today there are going to be a lot of Directors of children’s services and their senior management colleagues who will be tearing around like the proverbial blue arsed flies in a frenzied determination not to have the double act of Ofsted and Balls do a Shoesmith on them at the drop of a hat. Lightning inspections will demand lightning and unceasing pre-emptive preparations.
I’d suggest that people in children's services departments who detect public money being wasted on this sort of self-preservation activity should do some whistle-blowing - but maybe we need to bear in mind what’s happening right now in the Damian Green affair, and consider that this might not be a wise move. Maybe someone should set up an anonymous call line, like Childline, for distressed civil servants and all those who work in the public services, who truly care about the public good, and in particular care about the wellbeing of children.
Maybe it’s time to think the unthinkable, to say the unsayable, and suggest that it’s only when people at the grassroots become activists in pressing for systemic change and in insisting on proper involvement in running our public services, that we’re likely to see a curb put on the wasteful and self-serving activities of the top bureaucrats, with their incessant conferencing and awaydaying and senior management huddling and cuddling.
But whilst you might get 60 or more people to speak out in favour of someone they like and think is doing a good job, just try getting even 6 people to put their heads above the parapet and publicly say something critical of those who hold the levers of power and who appear to be in a position to make their lives difficult.
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Whassa Matta You? Itsa Not So Bad!
There’s an incredible centre-page photograph in the Guardian today of St Mark’s Square in Venice flooded to the level of café table tops, with the water flowing over the steps of St Mark’s Cathedral and the Doge’s Palace. Apparently 99% of Venice is flooded.
A high tide and strong winds have created a water level that’s a meter and a half above normal - the highest level in 22 years.
The conservation society Italia Nostra said that the flooding was proof of the inability of politicians and officials at all levels to manage Venice’s serious problems. This event would seem to be the equivalent of the failure of British weather forecasters at the time of the great gale of 1987, but given that the whole world’s been talking about rising sea levels it’s a bit much to say “we had no way of knowing”.
The Guardian reports that the city’s mayor, Massimo Cacciari, ‘ a philosopher by profession’, has shrugged off calls for a declaration of emergency. He’s reported to have said, “There were no deaths or injuries, and none of the buildings fell down”.
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Given the grimness of what’s happening in the world it’s good that we can still turn to people and places where a good laugh is guaranteed.
From the current edition of Private Eye:
A cartoon of a grinning Sir Ian Blair walking to the bank carrying a massive kiss-off cheque for £400,000, over the caption The Laughing Policeman.
An old tramp warming himself next to an open fire by throwing on to it copies of Heat magazine.
A speech bubble coming out of Obama’s mouth saying, “Can the media hype me up any more?”, with another speech bubble at the side saying “YES WE CAN!”
2 skinny aliens standing in front of a flying saucer saying to an enormously fat guy, “Take us to you larder!”
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Chris Rock’s latest show was broadcast on Channel 4 this week, and was, as expected, brilliant. He’s a complete original, pacing the stage for two hours, totally in command and never once resorting to comic cliché. His only ‘catchphrase’ is “There - I said it!”, which is what he says when he says the unsayable. Which he does on a regular basis. I love this man. He focuses on the topical, the real and the relevant, and makes people laugh till they cry at the outrageous absurdities we see around us every day.
He does a brilliant bit about rap-friendly white folks who rap along to the lyrics of the great rap artists, but choke when they get to the word ‘nigger’ - whenever they’re with him, that is.
Chris says it’s actually OK to yell it out in that context, but as to whether white folks can copy their black friends who use the N word in other contexts, the answer is “Not really”.
Not unless they’re saying, “Fuck me harder, nigger!”
Though he agrees that if you’re getting into a fight with someone it’s fair enough to pick on their defining characteristic, like being one-legged or black, since it’s unreasonable to expect someone to show respect for someone they’re in a fight with.
Sorry, Christine. That really is a horrible wrinkly little cat’s arse of a mouth you’ve got there.
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article5161092.ece
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Last month the headteachers of 61 state-funded primary schools and seven secondary schools in Haringey wrote an ‘open letter’ in support of their Director of Children’s Services, Sharon Shoesmith, saying that her resignation, or dismissal, would be detrimental to their pupils. They said they felt compelled to show their support for Shoesmith and they consider her “an outstanding public servant”.
They added: “Should the Child P case result in her loss from the borough, then our children and young people will lose one of their most effective, determined and committed champions.”
“Initially, in her role of director of education, Shoesmith transformed a demoralised education service, derided by many headteachers, into one with which we are now proud to be associated.
“The exceptional rate of improvement of many of the borough’s schools would not have been possible without the support of the service that Ms Shoesmith rebuilt, revitalised and led.
“Since more recently becoming the director of Haringey’s Children and Young People’s Service, Shoesmith has continued to work relentlessly and with a determination that the service she leads and develops ensures best practice in providing education, care, support and protection for all of our young people.”
Well, I don’t know about you, but when a large posse of headteachers saddles up with the intention of riding to the rescue of their leader, then I’m inclined to pay attention to their views. After all, these are all people who are appointed and maintained in their posts on the basis of having a track record of good judgement, clear thinking and concern for children’s well-being.
Or at least that used to be the case . Further study is needed on the degree to which the new generation of headteachers has been appointed on the basis of their commitment to reaching arbitrary academic targets and their expertise in cramming children for mind- and spirit-deadening tests, first and foremost. As far as the culture of classrooms and schools is concerned the achievement of targets has become synonymous with well-being.
But hold on - where’s the open letter of support for Shoesmith from senior managers in the social services part of her empire? What are their views? Do they not consider her an outstanding public servant? Could this be a case of someone who has great vision and leadership skills as far as education is concerned, but NOT having any relevant experience or any great understanding of social work, and therefore no ability to impact on the quality of that part of the council’s service?
Similarly there are many instances of Directors of children’s services departments coming from a social services background with no experience or expertise in education. What makes such people equipped to be the head of a huge empire of schools and associated service departments? What real responsibility can they exercise when they are utterly reliant on the information they receive and the views they are presented with from their junior managers and their senior colleagues who do have a background in education? Are they not susceptible to having the wool pulled over their eyes? Do they even know the right questions to ask?
And was it such a great idea anyway for the government to create mega-departments for ‘children’s services’ in an attempt to ensure ‘joined-up thinking’ within local councils? I myself was privileged to witness at first hand how one of these departments came together within an inner-city LA. It was pretty obvious to me that the person who was being groomed for the top job had no real clue as to how schools should be led and managed, and no independence of judgment on pedagogy and curriculum, for example, let alone anything to say about creating quality learning environments.
But then that person didn’t need to. All that was necessary was to sign up for the government’s ‘standards agenda’ and away we go! Government thinking has been and still is that generic management skills of a high order are all that matter when it comes to leading bureaucracies. MBAs rule! OK?
But it’s interesting to consider what the curriculum might consist of on a course for the National Professional Qualification for Directors of Children’s Services. What would you need to know and to have done in order to get a place on the course? Possibly some experience of teaching as well as social work could be an advantage? Experience of team building within both a state school and a social services department? An understanding of pedagogy as well as therapeutic practice?
No matter - the government was in a rush to force all local authorities into creating huge departments of ‘children’s services’, whether or not individuals could be found who were qualified to lead them. And lord knows there were plenty of ambitious and willing candidates lining up to take on the top positions, whether or not they’d paid their dues and had at least SOME experience within both the relevant disciplines and professions.
And let us not forget - generic management and leadership skills are what we’re looking for! We’re all realists now - are we not? After all, we don’t expect the Prime Minister to be an expert on economics, education, health, social services, defence strategy, and the whole damned caboodle, do we? Not any more, at any rate.
There was no time to waste, apparently - and no time to prepare council departments properly, let alone to train and prepare people appropriately, for the huge amalgamation of departments that was proposed. And so it came to pass that a new generation of super-managers was put in place, with very interesting consequences throughout the land.
Meanwhile, the well-qualified Ed Balls, the minister for balls-ups in schools and families, has his own ideas about competence and leadership ability within Haringey council, and it turns out he has no regard at all for the views of the 61 Shoesmithite headteachers in that part of the world. So either he’s right to have dismissed Ms Shoesmith, in which case the 61 headteachers are all idiots for trying to keep her in post, or he’s wrong and Ms Shoesmith should not be slung out on the very day that an inspector’s report on the malfunctioning of her department is delivered. After all, if she’s not been in post very long, and she’s not yet up to speed with the social services part of it, is that her fault?
And what about Ofsted, which reported quite recently that Haringey provide ‘good’ children’s services? Christine Gilbert, Ofsted’s head honcho, witters on, with her tight little mouth and her pursed lips, about the need for unannounced inspections, but of course she’ll escape any blame for the death of Baby P, even though she’s ultimately responsible for the council in question being put into the second highest category for children’s services and therefore viewed as a successful local authority.
“Lightning Inspections” are what she now wants, but did it really take a hideous death like this to tell us that the system for carrying out inspections of children’s services has always been a total waste of time and money, in that it gave those departments months and even years to prepare for scrutiny - to put together all the bullshit statistics in the world to cover the backs of the top bureaucrats? At enormous public cost in terms of distraction from the proper task, and in officer hours spent on compiling huge dossiers with which to deceive the Ofsted inspectors and persuade them that targets were being hit, or at least addressed effectively.
Oh yes - it’s been OK to give the poor bloody schools 2 or 3 days’ notice of an Ofsted inspection - but bureaucracies are a completely different matter, are they not? Well Ms Gilbert, it’s fine being wise after the event, but it was YOU that’s overseen the introduction of a system for inspecting schools on the basis of data and statistics, and it’s YOU that’s gone along with the same approach for the inspection of children’s services.
“We can’t rely on statistics”, she now bleats, but that’s exactly what she and her Ofsted buddies have been happy to do, until now. And she now agrees that inspectors should talk directly to children and young people about their perceptions of what’s being done in their name.
More bullshit. It wouldn’t have made any difference to Baby P, and it won’t make any difference to those poor bloody schools that have been given the bullet and put into Special Measures under her regime, in spite of inspectors being told by the pupils that they enjoy their school, in many instances, and they believe that they achieve well in spite of all the adverse factors, like recruitment and retention difficulties, which so often impact on their schools and their well-being. It seems Ms Gilbert may no longer be so enamored of the ‘targets culture’. Now that the game’s almost up she may as well just come out and say, “I was just doing my job”. Carrying out orders, you see. Well aren’t they all?
So we may now be heading back towards a culture of inspections where human observation and actual analysis of what’s happening within schools and local authorities is the basis for judgments, rather than data and statistics. We may no longer need to tolerate Gestapo methods whereby headteachers are put in a chair and ordered to explain their lack of productivity and failure to hit targets, with a firing squad awaiting those who refuse to play the game or fail to satisfy with their answers. “Why is zis Value Added so bad!? Why is your school not reaching Floor Targets in Englisch? Answer me!!”
Sorry Germany, I mean you no disrespect. I’m just trying to draw some parallels with the methodology that’s been adopted by New Labour (and its running dogs like Ofsted) in its “refusal to tolerate low standards” or indeed to tolerate, let alone support, those who have tried to offer real education to their children rather than focus exclusively on the “outputs” demanded by the system we now have in this country. As I once heard a senior bureaucrat say, “Level 4 is the be-all and end-all”.
One thing’s for sure though. As of today there are going to be a lot of Directors of children’s services and their senior management colleagues who will be tearing around like the proverbial blue arsed flies in a frenzied determination not to have the double act of Ofsted and Balls do a Shoesmith on them at the drop of a hat. Lightning inspections will demand lightning and unceasing pre-emptive preparations.
I’d suggest that people in children's services departments who detect public money being wasted on this sort of self-preservation activity should do some whistle-blowing - but maybe we need to bear in mind what’s happening right now in the Damian Green affair, and consider that this might not be a wise move. Maybe someone should set up an anonymous call line, like Childline, for distressed civil servants and all those who work in the public services, who truly care about the public good, and in particular care about the wellbeing of children.
Maybe it’s time to think the unthinkable, to say the unsayable, and suggest that it’s only when people at the grassroots become activists in pressing for systemic change and in insisting on proper involvement in running our public services, that we’re likely to see a curb put on the wasteful and self-serving activities of the top bureaucrats, with their incessant conferencing and awaydaying and senior management huddling and cuddling.
But whilst you might get 60 or more people to speak out in favour of someone they like and think is doing a good job, just try getting even 6 people to put their heads above the parapet and publicly say something critical of those who hold the levers of power and who appear to be in a position to make their lives difficult.
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Whassa Matta You? Itsa Not So Bad!
There’s an incredible centre-page photograph in the Guardian today of St Mark’s Square in Venice flooded to the level of café table tops, with the water flowing over the steps of St Mark’s Cathedral and the Doge’s Palace. Apparently 99% of Venice is flooded.
A high tide and strong winds have created a water level that’s a meter and a half above normal - the highest level in 22 years.
The conservation society Italia Nostra said that the flooding was proof of the inability of politicians and officials at all levels to manage Venice’s serious problems. This event would seem to be the equivalent of the failure of British weather forecasters at the time of the great gale of 1987, but given that the whole world’s been talking about rising sea levels it’s a bit much to say “we had no way of knowing”.
The Guardian reports that the city’s mayor, Massimo Cacciari, ‘ a philosopher by profession’, has shrugged off calls for a declaration of emergency. He’s reported to have said, “There were no deaths or injuries, and none of the buildings fell down”.
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Given the grimness of what’s happening in the world it’s good that we can still turn to people and places where a good laugh is guaranteed.
From the current edition of Private Eye:
A cartoon of a grinning Sir Ian Blair walking to the bank carrying a massive kiss-off cheque for £400,000, over the caption The Laughing Policeman.
An old tramp warming himself next to an open fire by throwing on to it copies of Heat magazine.
A speech bubble coming out of Obama’s mouth saying, “Can the media hype me up any more?”, with another speech bubble at the side saying “YES WE CAN!”
2 skinny aliens standing in front of a flying saucer saying to an enormously fat guy, “Take us to you larder!”
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Chris Rock’s latest show was broadcast on Channel 4 this week, and was, as expected, brilliant. He’s a complete original, pacing the stage for two hours, totally in command and never once resorting to comic cliché. His only ‘catchphrase’ is “There - I said it!”, which is what he says when he says the unsayable. Which he does on a regular basis. I love this man. He focuses on the topical, the real and the relevant, and makes people laugh till they cry at the outrageous absurdities we see around us every day.
He does a brilliant bit about rap-friendly white folks who rap along to the lyrics of the great rap artists, but choke when they get to the word ‘nigger’ - whenever they’re with him, that is.
Chris says it’s actually OK to yell it out in that context, but as to whether white folks can copy their black friends who use the N word in other contexts, the answer is “Not really”.
Not unless they’re saying, “Fuck me harder, nigger!”
Though he agrees that if you’re getting into a fight with someone it’s fair enough to pick on their defining characteristic, like being one-legged or black, since it’s unreasonable to expect someone to show respect for someone they’re in a fight with.
Sorry, Christine. That really is a horrible wrinkly little cat’s arse of a mouth you’ve got there.
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article5161092.ece
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