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Is the new chief inspector of schools just an

instrument of government?
Fran Abrams

Walking through Mossbourne academy's long, high, glass atrium you have to speak in whispers, for every
classroom door is left open to reveal rows of neatly uniformed children, heads-down in concentration. You
could literally hear a pen drop.

Sir Michael Wilshaw, the Hackney-based academy's first principal and now England's new chief inspector
of schools, believes every school could be like this.

"There's a 'no excuses culture' here," he says. "We tell the youngsters and we tell the parents we don't care
really what background you're from; it's where you're going that's the most important issue."

Six miles away, on the Isle of Dogs, Kenny Frederick, principal of George Green's school, visibly bristles at
Wilshaw's name. This week's league tables will show her school to be well behind Mossbourne on raw
results – but they won't show what she's up against: the "contextual value-added" measure, which used to
measure a school's performance against social factors such as the numbers of pupils on free school meals,
has been dropped.

Sometimes, Frederick says, her staff have to pick the nits from their pupils' hair before they even try to teach
them. She recently handed out dozens of alarm clocks to children who often need to leave for school before
their unemployed parents have woken up. It's not about excuses, she says. When ministers visit Mossbourne
they talk as if it's in a tough, tough area, but compared with the Isle of Dogs, Hackney's actually pretty well-
heeled. A third of the pupils at Mossbourne take free school meals – twice the national average – but that's
half the number at George Green's.

"We want the best for our youngsters, but there are excuses," Frederick says. "I have large numbers who
would otherwise be in a special school – other schools won't take them, and I think that's morally wrong. I'm
not going to refer to Mr Wilshaw's school, though I used to work in that area …" she hesitates, clearly
holding back. "Some areas, the children could be left out on the lawn and they'd do equally well because the
parents will bring in tutors and so on."

The new chief inspector of schools, who took up his post this month, certainly inspires strong emotions. The
education secretary, Michael Gove, has described him as a "hero", and the shadow education secretary,
Stephen Twigg, has declared himself equally happy with the appointment.

Wilshaw has not set out to endear himself to teachers. Even before officially taking up his Ofsted post, he
made a speech in which he said that in future a "satisfactory" rating by inspectors should be viewed as
unsatisfactory, and that Ofsted should look at whether heads were being too generous to failing teachers
when allocating performance-related pay.

A good head would never be loved by his or her staff, he added: "If anyone says to you that 'staff morale is
at an all-time low' you know you are doing something right."

The reaction from teachers has been predictable: one internet poster compared Wilshaw to a South
American dictator. "The lunatics have taken over the asylum," remarked another.

Wilshaw's appointment certainly signals interesting times ahead for schools, in particular, because his record
as a headteacher appears impressive. His first headship was at St Bonaventure's Roman Catholic school in
Newham, which he transformed from a struggling school into an outstanding one. Mossbourne, too, has
been held up as a shining example of excellence in an inner-city area.

Touring the academy, which opened in 2004, in a brand new building designed by Richard Rogers, Wilshaw
carries himself with a gait that expresses ownership, that he's the embodiment of the school – focused,
rigorous. Rules matter here.

"Little things like insistence on uniform, pupils standing up when the teacher walks into the room are all
important in giving structure to children's lives," he says. "We have a very long teaching day for some
children – if they are falling behind we keep them back at the end of the day so that they can improve their
qualifications."

There's no disputing that the strategy has paid off in terms of exam results. Eight out of 10 gained five or
more A*-C grades at GCSE including English and maths last year –well above average. This year, 10 have
been offered places at Cambridge.

Yet suspicions abound – could Mossbourne be attracting brighter pupils than other local schools? Certainly
the academy has a wide catchment area, so it is likely to gain applicants from motivated families – currently
60% of its pupils come from within a kilometre of the school and 40% from further away. Its proposed
admissions policy for 2013 entry reveals plans to increase the number from outside its immediate area to
50%, and to test and "band" pupils so its entrants reflect the national average spread of abilities. In an area
where pupils' test scores at age 11 are below that, this could give the school an advantage.

A visit to George Green's highlights just how difficult it would be to create a system in which every school
was a Mossbourne academy. In a London docklands area that's been plagued by unemployment since the
1970s, George Green's feels peripheral. Its buildings have been waiting for a facelift for years, and although
it's orderly, there's a look about its large quotient of white, working-class pupils – a greyness of skin,
shadows under the eyes – that says they're not thriving. Frederick laughs when this is pointed out: "We joke
about it when we go to sports matches in Hackney, because the boys there are so huge."

Despite having nearly twice as many pupils on free school meals as Mossbourne, George Green's GCSE
results are close to the national average, with half gaining five A*-C grades including English and maths.
And it, too, sometimes sends pupils to Oxbridge.

While Mossbourne may look like a school with a tough pupil population, five minutes in George Green's
says it isn't. A small batallion of helpers in red jumpers nurtures and cajoles the pupils here.

"I feel very intimidated by this government, and I'm not a woman who's easily intimidated," she says. "I
don't think they understand what we're up against, and I don't think they want to. I don't mind being
challenged, all of us want to do really well, but I don't want to be hit over the head all the time. If all I had to
worry about was raising levels of attainment I'd be laughing."

Conversations with leaders in the world of education about the new chief inspector of schools are revealing.
A real sense of anger is mounting, yet most aren't quite ready to express it publicly yet.

Chris Keates, general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers,
couches her remarks in broad political terms – she's due to have her first official meeting with Wilshaw later
this week. After all, she says, chief inspectors never have easy relations with the teaching profession, nor
should they. But she adds that last week's announcement of an immediate inspection of Downhills, a
Haringey primary school the government wants to force into academy status, leads to suspicion that Ofsted
is now a political weapon.

"I think the domain we're moving into now is of Ofsted being viewed by nobody as independent from the
secretary of state. It's now being seen by teachers not as an inspection system, but as an arm of government,"
she says.
"Many of the pronouncements coming out of Ofsted seem to be absolutely equal to things Michael Gove has
said. I think it's bad for the chief inspector and I think it's bad for public accountability."

Yet Wilshaw is unrepentant – and it seems unlikely he'll be gathering garlands from teachers any time soon.
The government was right to drop the "contextual value-added" measure, introduced by Labour five years
ago, from this week's league tables, he says. Talk about social factors simply "entrenches mediocrity".

"If you take into account ethnicity, free school meals and a whole range of other indicators, it can give the
impression that you're making excuses," he says.

"The essential truths are that a poor leader runs a poor school; a good leader runs a good school. A good
teacher can make a difference in a classroom; a poor teacher makes little or no difference. I think we know
what makes a good school. We just need to make sure it happens on the ground now."

• Fran Abrams will ask what difference schools really make to the lives of children from poor backgrounds
on BBC Radio 4's Analysis at 8.30pm on Monday 30 January
Sir Michael Wilshaw, Ofsted chief inspector

Sir Michael Wilshaw has just revealed that his favourite childhood toy was a silver gun, and his favourite
film is The Godfather. It is an emblematic moment. Known as a say-it-straight, rough, tough, make-‘em-sit-
in-silence type headteacher, it fits his legend perfectly. Given that Ofsted is sometimes talked about by
teachers as a form of mafia – forever watching and waiting to pounce – the answer seems entirely apt.

But it is at odds with the past hour of our conversation, where the chief inspector has been as quiet and
thoughtful as his ex-colleagues say he would be. His only Don Corleone-like mannerism is his tendency to
use militaristic language when talking about school-life: all battles, fights, and scars.

It is perhaps this love of conflict that has led to his reputation as a battle-axe. But is it fair?
Wilshaw reading Schools Week

Born in the foothills of the Himalayas, Sir Michael lived in India until he was two. His family then brought
him to south west London, where he later attended Clapham College, a Catholic boys’ grammar school run
by Xaverian brothers – as one might expect for a man who later became known for his strict behaviour
policies.

He began his teacher training aged 18, inspired by his history teacher Mr Pocock, a charismatic and
passionate man who instilled a love of the subject into the young Wilshaw.

Teacher training was not as onerous as it is for today’s trainees. “I had a great time,” he chortles. “Didn’t
work very hard. All the hard work has gone on since I left college!”

His first teaching job was in a school in Dock Head, south London, “teaching the children of dockers”. In an
apocryphal tale he talks of the pain when a girl at the front of one of his classes yelled out: “Sir, have you
thought of doing something else with your life?”

He laughs. But has he ever thought that – then, or now?

“No,” he says firmly, “because after those initial days I really grew to enjoy what I was doing, and just
realised that it was for me – and I got promoted quite quickly.”

He moved into senior roles by his 30s, and became a headteacher at St Bonaventure’s, in east London,
before his 40th birthday. Only once did he move out of the capital – to Woodford in Essex – and into a
school with a slightly more affluent intake.

“The great thing about inner city schools is that parents trust you to do what’s best for their children without
question, so I often found the parents there to be much more amenable”.

Does that mean he has picked schools where it’s been easiest to enforce his will?

Wilshaw meeting editor Laura McInerney

He riles. “It’s never easy. Teaching in Peckham and Hackney and Bermondsey was never easy … But the
parents are much more appreciative of what you do … Do well by their children, demand that they stay in
school until 7 o’clock in the evening, or come in on a Saturday morning, and they would rarely argue about
that because they knew that they didn’t have the capacity to do that, and looked upon you to support them,
and saw education as important, whereas I didn’t sense that that was the case at times in Woodford.”

As he talks about his first headship in the mid-1980s it is clear that he feels the unions, and the local
authority, made it tougher to turn around the school.

“Teachers were walking out of class every five minutes. I was doing lunch duty every day for about two or
three years, on my own, covering classes in the hall, otherwise there was no-one else to look after them. I
still bear the scars of those days.”

Today’s heads would argue that it is no less difficult, especially given the pressures of Ofsted. If he were 39
today, would he still want to step up to headship?

“I think it would be easier now! Because in the ‘80s, when I first became a head, to take on a teacher, an
incompetent teacher, was almost impossible – and I did it, to try and turn around the school. It was hugely
difficult.

“It’s that much easier now for a young, go-ahead headteacher to go in and tackle poor performance, do
what’s necessary and be rewarded for it – because it’s expected now.”

After 18 years at St Bonaventure’s, and having received a knighthood in 2000 for services to education,
Wilshaw moved to Hackney, also in east London, and opened Mossbourne Academy – one of New Labour’s
first academies, built on the same site as the infamous Hackney Downs that had closed some years earlier.

He is keen to explain that Mossbourne did not operate as many people think.

“People say, ‘It must have been very didactic, lecture-style teaching’, but it wasn’t. A lot of the teaching was
very innovative. The best teacher I remember was a modern languages teacher who regularly jumped on her
desk and taught from her desk, you know, and helped youngsters in groups. She taught them extremely
well.”

Morning briefings, held three times a week for 20 minutes, he says, involved teachers sharing things that had
gone well and swapping ideas.

Sucked in by his enthusiasm for professional development I ask who inspired him and who he learned from
at Mossbourne. He looks puzzed.

“It sounds very arrogant to say I didn’t need much help, but I knew all the pitfalls. And I could replicate all
the stuff that I had done in Newham in Hackney, with similar sorts of children.”

It does sound a touch arrogant. It’s also surprising. If you work as a headteacher for 30 years, and over that
time you don’t need to learn much from others, how does it feel to walk into a job at Ofsted that is so very
different?

“It was a real challenge,” he admits. “I was good at running one institution … but this was a whole new
challenge.

“As a head you are very much a hands-on person; you do it yourself, and you know what to do. In a large
organisation like this with hundreds of inspectors and different types of inspection, different remits, you are
working through other people. Communication is absolutely key.”

He says that some things went right, and some didn’t, “but I think – although I shouldn’t blow my own
trumpet – I think it’s a better organisation now than it was three years ago.”
Wilshaw speaking at the Festival of Education

There is evidence to support his claim. Since his leadership the organisation has moved inspectors inhouse
to ensure consistency in their training, it has created a new regional structure, and published several
important thematic reports, including one this week on non-examined year groups in secondary schools. He
also battled hard to win the right for Ofsted to inspect academy chains – something for which he is rarely
credited.

If all this is true, I ask provocatively, why has the organisation’s reputation tanked so rapidly?

“When people say, as you suggest, that people have a low opinion of us – parents don’t! Every survey we’ve
done, parents want us to be in schools every year, never mind every three or four years!”

He puts teacher and school leader fury towards Ofsted down to his relentless drive for challenge.

“Me coming out and being quite critical sometimes of leaders not doing what they should be doing, giving
my view about how schools should be run, immediately puts people’s backs up. … and what has become
clear to me is, once one person says ‘Ofsted’s broke’ … other people jump on that bandwagon.”

What of the idea that fear of Ofsted, that it is bullying headteachers, is causing the problem?

“I know we’ve got this reputation of being this tough organisation that costs people their sanity and their
jobs, but our job is – through inspection – to say what needs to be said and improve standards.”
It is this idea – that one must say or do what needs to be done – which bubbles throughout our conversation.
It is also why he gets his reputation as a battle-axe. As the character Vincent Mancini says in The Godfather
III “He should be careful. It is a dangerous thing thing to be an honest man.” Perhaps it is an apt film
metaphor after all.

IT’S A PERSONAL THING

Tea or coffee?

Green tea. I’ve only become a convert because my stomach’s bad.

Best childhood toy?

I remember Roy Rogers, and my parents bought me a couple of guns. Well, you know, toy guns. They were
silver, that’s all I can remember.

Best advice you were ever given about work?

People around me especially in the dark days when I was struggling with school, gave me that advice about
“keep strong, try to get a bit of work/life balance when you work 16 hours and day” and told me that I had it
in me.

Perfect Sunday afternoon?

Read papers, pint of beer, and a walk.

If you can only read one book again what would it be?

Middlemarch, I think. I read it three times when I was 17 and thought it was a wonderful book.

If you were stuck on a desert island, what film would you want to take with you?

I would probably take The Godfather because it’s one of the great films – cinematography, acting, plot,
storyline, everything. Wonderful, wonderful film.