Head teachers chief rails against government's 'crazy schemes'
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Version 0 of 1. Britain’s head teachers are being urged to stop struggling to make the government’s “crazy” initiatives work and instead tell ministers to rethink the schemes they disagree with. Russell Hobby, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), will send out a rallying call to the country’s school leaders at a conference this weekend, urging them to stand up against bad ideas. “It is possible to make a good idea fail and, frankly, it is possible to make bad ideas succeed,” he will tell delegates to the NAHT’s annual conference, in Liverpool on Sunday. “You’ve proven that time and again in rescuing the government from its own mistakes. Perhaps you should stop doing that. It only encourages the crazy schemes when you find a way to make them work.” Hobby will also use his speech to warn that innovative headteachers in the state school system are being “tamed” by an all-powerful inspection regime which is compromising creativity and creating a compliant profession. Speaking at a conference briefing on Friday, Hobby, whose union represents 29,500 school leaders across all phases of education, said: “We should be a lot stronger in saying, ‘look you’ve not given us enough time. This is not well thought through’, and asking the government to go back to the drawing board.” Related: Schools providing £43.5m of extra support to children due to cuts – poll School leaders did not have to be “obstructionist”, he said, but should be sufficiently confident to stand up to government. “In the past we’ve proposed an office of educational responsibility, which should cost up and evaluate different education schemes. “If a government isn’t willing to do that, I think school leaders themselves should step up and say ‘actually, you know what, we’ve done the sums on this, it can’t be implemented in time’. He added: “If the government changes a league table measure, you don’t have to jump and change your curriculum in response to that, you can carry on doing what you were going to do anyway. If school leaders want some level of autonomy, to a degree they’ve got to practice it, not just ask for it.” Hobby will also use his speech to raise concerns about the influence of Ofsted. “Looking back on the last five years I think we will find that, far from delegating power and authority to school leaders, the secretary of state has in fact delegated power to the chief inspector of schools. “Schools must now spend too long guessing what the inspector wants instead of thinking about what their pupils need,” he will say. “I have come to feel that one of the most pernicious aspects of our inspection regime is the ‘outstanding’ grade. “We have handed the definition of excellence to our regulator rather than owning it as profession. Excellence – to which all schools should aspire – is individual and subjective. It is not captured by a checklist or framework. “Worse than this, the pursuit of someone else’s definition of outstanding creates a compliant profession. It exerts a hold over those leaders who should be most self-confident and critical. “The outstanding grade tames the mavericks. I believe schools can and should be outstanding. I just don’t think we should let a regulator define it.” Headteacher and NAHT vice president Kim Johnson, speaking ahead of the conference, agreed that a fear of Ofsted was stifling the more creative school leaders. “It’s about being a risk-taker isn’t it, it’s about being creative in your thinking about what you want to do and actually saying ‘here’s new ideas, let’s put them into practice’ but sometimes people are constrained because they think if they do that, Ofsted will say ‘that was wrong’”. Hobby said headteachers in the independent sector, who are not under the same pressure from Ofsted and government, enjoy greater freedom than those in charge of state schools. “You still see plenty of heads who will speak out in the state system, but I think there should be more of them, and I think we would be stronger and more self-confident. “If you have led a school to achieve great things and you’re achieving good academic results and a well-rounded education, you should be the kind of person that can speak out, and we should be able to listen to those heads and pay serious attention to what they say, because they have the credentials.” |