Layer 218 . . . Remembrance, Spiritual Intelligence, Education, Finland, Ofsted, Haringey and Role Models.

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It's 11.00am on the 11th November and all over the country there's a 2 minute silence. Harry Patch, the last surviving soldier who fought in the trenches is now dead. But still we remember.

Is there really a place in a cathedral service for God Save The Queen? Have all our monarchs really been gracious and noble? And will they be in the future? I wonder who decides these things.

Archbishop Rowan Williams looks splendid in his robes as he preaches about poverty and injustice, political stability and international cooperation. He's talking about the recreation of shattered idealism. He's talking about facing life with vision and courage. He's talking about powerful moral clarities. He's talking about value and meaning. He's talking about selfishness and superficiality. He's talking about honesty and dishonesty. He's talking about trust and hope and love. And then he talks about bringing the reality of God closer.

No wonder we fail to develop proper measures of spiritual intelligence in ourselves and others when the issue is continually muddied and confused by talk about God - as if we can't have spiritual intelligence without this primitive urge to invoke a God.

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Here's a report on how a proper system of education works:

It's by Warwick Mansell.

Finnish schools succeed because teaching is valued

Innovation in Education conference In Finland, just one in 10 applicants wins a place to train as a teacher, and all take master's degrees

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/nov/09/finland-values-teaching

Truly comprehensive schools that do not set or stream pupils and see teachers as valued experts form the basis of the world's most highly-regarded education system, a Guardian conference was told today.

Finland, whose pupils have been the top performers in international tests run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, puts equity in the way it treats children as among its top priorities.

It also benefits from the popularity of teaching in this country of only 5.3 million people. Just one in 10 applicants for teacher training is successful, and all teachers take masters' degrees.

Timo Lankinen, director-general of the Finnish national board of education, told the first Innovation in Education conference in London that much of the country's success stemmed from its decision in the 1970s to introduce a comprehensive secondary structure.

He said: "This has been our biggest innovation, and it is one of the reasons for our success."

The key to promoting innovation in education was trust in teachers, said Lankinen, pointing out that Finland has no inspection system, national tests or league tables.

He added: "We see that this creates a virtuous circle around teaching. It means that teachers are very active in the development of education. Nationally and locally, we want to support them at every stage."

The 200 conference attendees were asked to vote electronically on what they thought were the biggest obstacles to innovation in education.

They listed "fear" at the top, followed by "government policy", "Ofsted" and "lack of money", although two thirds were optimistic overall about the potential for creative thinking.

Lord Puttnam, the film-maker, Labour peer and former chairman of England's General Teaching Council, told the conference that ministers' fear of tabloid headlines should also be on the list.

He said: "Another obstacle occurred to me: government fear of the Daily Mail, which is real. I have seen several potentially very innovative and very interesting things sadly thrown into reverse because of fear of an unwanted and unwarranted headline."

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Ofsted in Need of Special Measures?

Meanwhile, our appalling Ofsted regime, and its discredited HMCI Christine Gilbert, stagger on into further disrepute:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/nov/10/ofsted-apology-shoesmith-case

Ofsted apologises for initial failure to find report drafts in Shoesmith case

Regulator ordered to explain delay by judge in case over sacking of children's services head following Baby P death

The children's services watchdog was forced to apologise today for making a "serious and deeply regrettable" mistake in failing to disclose potential evidence in Sharon Shoesmith's high court case over her sacking in the wake of the death of Baby P.

A judge described the late emergence of the documents from Ofsted as "very unsatisfactory" and ordered the regulator to give him "chapter and verse" on why it had said no draft versions of a scathing report into children's services at Haringey council, in north London, could be found, only for them to turn up last week.

The evidence includes 70 pages of handwritten notes by one of the inspectors. They were already with the regulator but were only discovered by an in-house lawyer working on a freedom of information request after the hearing in October had ended, the court was told.

In her judicial review , Shoesmith said the way the Joint Area Review was carried out breached the rules of natural justice. She alleged that Ofsted failed to allow her to comment on the report before publication, and that the way the body handled it reflected pressure from the children's secretary, Ed Balls.

At a specially convened hearing today Mr Justice Foskett gave Ofsted two weeks to ensure there was no other material that should have been presented to the court. He had planned to rule this week on Shoesmith's attempt to have her sacking from her £130,000-a-year post last December declared unlawful, but said the documents meant the judgment would be delayed until nearer to Christmas, or possibly later.

"It's not fair on any of the parties ... and frankly it's not fair on me either," he said of the possibility that not all the information was available.

Ofsted said : "We very much regret that this has happened. We have apologised unreservedly to the court and other parties. Unfortunately mistakes sometimes happen and whilst this is a serious one and deeply regrettable, we have nothing to hide." Foskett ordered Ofsted to pay the legal costs of today's hearing and said the taxpayer-funded regulator must also meet the cost of Shoesmith's lawyers going through the newly disclosed evidence.

He demanded "a full explanation" about the way requests from Shoesmith's lawyers for information about the existence of the draft reports were dealt with. First they were "batted away", then the reports were said not to exist, "and now they do", Foskett said.

The court heard that Shoesmith's legal team had twice requested drafts of the Jar and been told they were not relevant. They asked a final time on the last day of the court hearing last month, after the Guardian reported a whistleblower's claim that a separate report had been secretly downgraded, but were told Ofsted had been "unable to locate any further drafts".

The emergence of the documents was a "source of very considerable concern", he told the court, and Ofsted's submissions showed "very serious failings" over its duty of candour and response to requests for information.

So is there any chance that Ofsted might now be put into Special Measures and its Chief Inspector forced to resign? Taking into account the way it was hoodwinked by Haringey Children's Services into giving them a favourable report, when all along Haringey's social services and child protection system were a shambles?

Don't hold your breath. Don't forget HMCI Gilbert's married into the New Labour mafia.

Though I don't blame Shoesmith for suing for damages, since she was clearly someone on a steep learning curve who was doing her best in a tough job. Not unless she was party to Haringey's hoodwinking of Ofsted, that is.
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The Value of Role Models

On a more positive note, I've been thinking about the importance of having sporting heros who are positive role models that exemplify physical, spiritual, emotional and social intelligence. I've written previously about my admiration for Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton, and also about Stuart Broad.

In the Guardian this week there's another major article on Broad, who could become not only a brilliant all-rounder but also be a beacon of intelligence and decency for any young person who comes across him.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/nov/10/stuart-broad-england-south-africa

In the same centre page spread in the sports section there's a feature article on the new WBA heavyweight champion, the amazing David Haye. I heard him speaking on the radio a couple of days ago, after his remarkable victory at the weekend, and it was obvious that he's someone who resembles his own hero, the incredible Muhammed Ali, in more ways than one.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/nov/10/david-haye-america-unification

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/nov/08/david-haye-nikolai-valuev1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_haye
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHNmeusCbhg&feature=related
Never mind the actual sporting prowess - the importance of these people as role models is seen by how well they match up with Maslow's list of the characteristics of fully evolved human beings - see Layer 20 - http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/04/layer-20-fully-evolved-humans.html
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Layer 100 Justice, Democracy and Accountability

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Interesting news from Greece - the cradle of democracy. It looks like people are in revolt against their government - taking to the streets and rioting. It seems the police can’t contain the situation - there are too many people who are clearly very angry with the government. A sign of the times? And of things to come? Power to the people?

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I’ve changed my mind about Christine Gilbert. Last week I wrote a couple of blog pieces about the way in which Ofsted had totally failed to make the correct judgment about the effectiveness of Haringey’s children’s services, and the fact that Gilbert admitted that Ofsted must take ‘some’ of the responsibility for the death of Baby P. I also said that I didn’t really care whether or not Gilbert remained in post as long as the Ofsted regime was reformed root and branch.

Well, actually, I DO care. I now realise that I care a lot. Gilbert has continued to say that the last inspection of Haringey’s children’s services was right to judge them a ‘good’ and effective local authority - she says it’s only that the quality of their work has gone down since that inspection.

Does anyone believe this, outside of the self-serving ‘I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine’ circle of senior bureaucrats who run government departments and local authorities?

The reason Gilbert deserves to be sacked is because those who live by the sword should be prepared to die by the sword. Thanks to the regime she’s been responsible for, there are a great many decent and dedicated people who’ve been thrown out of their posts because Ofsted decided that their schools weren’t hitting arbitrary targets, and that there’s ‘no excuse for failure’.

Leaving aside the issue of whether those schools were indeed ‘failing’ because their targets weren’t being achieved, the point here is that natural justice and proper process demand that people who are accused of lacking competence should be given the time, opportunity, encouragement and support they need (we all need) in order to improve, and only if they fail to apply themselves diligently, conscientiously and energetically to improvement should they be recommended for dismissal.

Since this no longer happens in a pseudo-macho world where aspirational careerists like Gilbert have no time to waste in their determination to prove their value to the world by ‘driving up standards’, then neither should it happen when the advocates and drivers of the current system are seen to fuck up badly themselves.

Did Gilbert and Ofsted help to prevent Baby P’s death? No. Did they fail to identify Haringey as a failing local authority? Yes, of course. Is Gilbert now appealing to all local authorities to come clean and admit to failings that Ofsted itself has failed to spot? Yes. Is the Ofsted inspection procedure bureaucratic and lacking in rigour? Yes. Does anyone have any confidence that Ofsted has made correct judgments about other local authorities they’ve inspected, or about quite a lot of schools for that matter? NO.

Gilbert is a lame duck, and I for one want to see her dead in the water. After a short suspension the director of Haringey children’s services, Sharon Shoesmith, has been summarily sacked. Fair enough - if she was in fact directly responsible for the fakery and bullshit that was only discovered when inspectors finally got round to looking closely at what went on, or didn’t go on, within her department. Or indeed if she failed to make herself aware of what was happening. Now it’s time for Gilbert to go.

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I slipped the following web reference into yesterday’s blog even though this piece wasn’t officially published till today.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/dec/09/sats-education-review-jim-rose

SATs are indeed the elephant in the room, as Jim Rose says. In an age of accountancy and ‘accountability’ we live and die by numbers. The number crunchers rule. Facts and figures are what’s needed, as Dickens might have said. Give these people nothing but facts and figures. These alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.

Thomas Gradgrind would be proud of Ed Balls, our esteemed Minister of State for Education, etc. Dear Ed, ‘the scrote’ as he’s becoming known, has made up his mind that we need to adopt another great American idea - giving grades to schools.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/dec/08/school-report-cards

‘Every school in England could be rated on a scale of A to E under plans published today to introduce a New York style "report card" for schools.’

New York style eh? So that’s it then - reduce everything to a single letter in order to describe an entity as complex as a school. How fucking dumb can we get? What a great wheeze to appeal to idiot voters who need everything to be SIMPLE. Is the electorate so stupid as to welcome such a thing? Well, New Labour wouldn’t be New Labour if it hadn’t already run this one past some ‘focus groups’, so we have to assume it’s a runner.

Would any parent be happy to have their child categorized as a B, a C or a D? Would anyone feel comfortable with hanging that label on a child, knowing that the sum of its parts cannot possibly add up to a single letter?

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Will New Labour never understand that the age of dumb-arse neo-conservatism is OVER? Stupid solutions to complex problems will no longer be tolerated. Obama is putting in place a team of intellectuals and experts. Could New Labour possibly do the same? Could they hell.

To the contrary - Brown is bringing back Mandleson and no doubt some of the old crew who screwed things up in the first place. Which speaks volumes about the bunch of supposedly bright young things that he promoted to the cabinet when he became PM. None of them have a clue about what’s now needed to deal with the issues of the day. They’ve been brought up in the age of Thatcherite and neo-conservative orthodoxies, and they have no other frames of reference, or ideologies or sets of beliefs. There’s no real wisdom or enlightenment in their thinking - just management-speak and business-school orthodoxies. There’s no capacity for creative thinking either. A useless bunch.

Interesting that Frank Field wrote a column in the Guardian yesterday suggesting that a government of national unity might be a solution to our problems.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/08/government-debt-gilt-sales

He’s of the opinion that this is the way to show the rest of the world that our political class is united in its outlook and its economic policies. In principle a government of all the most able politicians from the various parties sounds quite attractive, but not when they all occupy the same middle ground with the same middling ideas and none of them has a real clue about what’s actually needed in order to forge a better and more prosperous society where fairness, social justice and equality are the guiding values.

My betting is still on a hung Parliament next time. (No more scrote jokes, please.) In which case it may make sense to try to build consensus through bringing together a cabinet of all the talents, and letting them debate issues properly before making policy. That at least would be better than letting the Tories take over and run amok.

The Commons itself would then have to do a damn decent job of scrutinizing the Executive. And we’ll need an elected second chamber that’s also seen to be an effective body with real powers of scrutiny and challenge. And we do need proportional representation.

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Returning to my opening paragraph, there are two columns of note in today’s Guardian.

1. In his, Terry Eagleton notes that John Milton was born in Cheapside 400 years ago today. “Our great dissident poet who did more than just hymn the praises of revolt.”

At the heart of Milton's political vision lay a belief in liberty and self-government. Pressed to an extreme, this doctrine could appear anarchic: grace freed humanity from law and authority.

Milton did more than hymn the praises of revolt, as Blake and Shelley did. He was also a political activist and propagandist, an architect of the modern liberal state. As a militant ideologue in the defence of liberty, he assisted in the revolutionary upheaval that brought modern Britain to birth - a revolution all the more successful for us having quite forgotten that it ever happened.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/09/milton-republic-terry-eagleton

2. Polly Toynbee’s usual excellent column focuses on incomes, social justice and tax policy:

The hard truth is that a middle-class child is 15 times more likely to stay middle class than a working-class child is likely to move upwards: birth is destiny more than people know.

Thirty years ago people had a clearer idea of where they stood in the social hierarchy. The politics of class described the nature of social injustice. Widespread membership of trade unions and noisy public pay bargaining ensured that most people had some understanding of the distribution of incomes and the unjust inheritance of power. But once Labour - in need of the middle-class vote - abandoned the cloth cap for the illusion of classlessness, it stopped spelling out inconvenient class facts.

Instead Britain has absorbed the great American Dream - anyone can make it, opportunity is there for the taking. The celebrity culture encourages that statistical myth, with its images of Cheryl Cole or Alan Sugar, who made it against the odds. If religion was once the opium that kept the people in their place, the celebrity fantasy does it even more effectively now. If you don't escape a poor background, that's your fault for lack of talent: nothing structurally wrong with the chances you had. Without the politics of class, people are left to internalise their disadvantage: it's personal, not political.

Richer people simply [do] not believe that 90% of the population earn less than £40,000, or that the middle fifth of the population earn around £20,000. If people don't know these facts, how can they judge what's fair?

So if Labour wants to make fairness its guiding light, it will have to make up for lost time by the energetic explaining of some essential facts. Ignorance, even among the supposedly well-educated, is greatly underestimated by politicians. A few in the group who started out thinking the new top rate of 45% might be too steep revised their opinion greatly once they understood it. The more they knew about how incomes were distributed, the more they were inclined to opt for a progressive system.

Researchers working on these focus groups over several months note a marked change of opinion since the credit crunch hit. In recent weeks attitudes not just towards bankers but to all the rich have hardened into real anger about the greed that now puts jobs, homes and pensions at risk. Labour politicians have rightly sensed that change in mood. They have left it late; they are on the back foot now with polling data showing them not trusted to put across facts and figures honestly. How different it would have been had they talked more openly from the start about the unfair distribution of money and power. But better late than never - if that's what they mean to do.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/09/gordon-brown-labour-tax-income-class

PS Yesterday I forgot to mention two excellent letters to the editor in the Guardian:

From Ross Sutton:

Christine Gilbert, head of Ofsted, now seems to be admitting what many workers in social services have known for a long time - Ofsted is incompetent, naive and not fit for purpose (We failed over Haringey - Ofsted head, December 6).

Successive governments have persistently signed up to the philosophy that every service provided can be evaluated in the same way as the sale of groceries, started, unsurprisingly, by Thatcher, but they are seriously mistaken. The government culture of avoiding risk at all costs while leaping to allocate blame has systematically eroded the professional judgment, confidence and optimism of the workforce in local government, and the health and education services.

Christine Gilbert appears unwilling to take responsibility for the serious failings of Ofsted, and likewise the government is much more inclined to blame the poorly paid, overworked and largely unsupported workers rather than accept any culpability for their part in the wasteful and delusional inspection process. Since the government stands four-square behind the inspection service, all stick and no carrot, why has neither the home secretary nor the children's minister resigned, and why is Christine Gilbert not considering her position?


From Ian Willmore
Former Deputy Leader, Haringey Council

Christine Gilbert's defence of Ofsted is a little more sophisticated than Haringey council's early efforts in that she is at least willing to appear to acknowledge responsibility for failure, but it is ultimately no more convincing. In particular, there is no good reason to accept her claim that Ofsted's 2006 review, which gave Haringey a three-star rating, was accurate. This is yet another shocking parallel with the Victoria Climbié case, where it emerged that the Social Services Inspectorate (Ofsted's predecessor) had only the year before Victoria died given Haringey a positive review. Until the Laming inquiry began to ask difficult questions, the inspectorate continued to claim that there had been a sudden deterioration in performance between the review and Victoria's death. This claim was rapidly exposed as nonsense.

Ms Gilbert's own remarks expose the truth of Ofsted's performance in the Baby P case. As long as inspectors took council officers' assurances at face value, everything seemed in order. As soon as individual case files were examined, multiple failures rapidly emerged. Of course, Ofsted had no choice but to conduct a review after Baby P had been killed. The issue Ms Gilbert and ministers need to address is how inspections can be improved so that problems are exposed before a disaster occurs. This is unlikely to happen as long as Ofsted continues to pretend that its previous inspections were accurate. So far, Ms Gilbert is simply accepting responsibility in theory while denying it in practice. At least Haringey's council leadership had the decency in the end to accept their failures and resign.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/dec/08/ofsted-schools-social-services-letters
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Layer 97 “We Have To Take Responsibility.”

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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.stm

6.15pm 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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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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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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