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Ofsted head: 『The last thing a chief inspector should be is a crusader』. Oh really?
A year into her job Amanda Spielman is riding into battle on the subject of hijabs – but she doesn』t relish the limelight, she says
Should you be afraid of Ofsted?
Peter Wilby
Tue 6 Feb 2018 07.15 GMT
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No chief inspector of schools got off to a stickier start than Amanda Spielman. The education select committee unsuccessfully opposed her appointment in 2016 because, it thought, she lacked not just teaching experience but 「passion」.
「It is not a job where you simply throw opinions around,」 she told the MPs. When one committee member said the chief inspector should be 「a crusader for high aspirations and standards」, she replied that 「when you start crusading you can often lose track of … objectivity, honesty and integrity」. She does not regret that comment. 「The last thing a chief inspector should be is a crusader,」 she tells me when we meet at Ofsted’s headquarters in London. 「I think the sector is pretty exhausted by an awful lot of crusader language.」
Yet crusading is precisely what critics now accuse her of. When Neena Lall, head of St Stephen’s, an east London primary school, banned girls under eight from wearing a hijab, Spielman leapt to her defence despite parents and community leaders forcing the ban’s reversal. Even more remarkably, she sent inspectors to the school to show solidarity. 「School leaders,」 she said subsequently, 「must have the right to set school uniform policies … to promote cohesion … Ofsted will always back heads who take tough decisions in their pupils』 interests.」
Spielman pointedly called on 「others in government」 to give similar backing. 「Muscular liberalism」, she said, was needed 「to tackle those who actively undermine fundamental British values」.
This was not the first time her views on the hijab had made the headlines. In November, she told inspectors they should 「talk to girls who wear such garments to ascertain why they do so in school」.
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Why this fuss over a piece of cloth? 「It’s not about the garment per se,」 she says. 「But the hijab is associated with modesty and usually worn at puberty. Do we want five- and six-year-olds worrying about whether they』re being modest? Some schools are in areas where there are community tensions so inspectors have to consider whether those tensions are being brought into schools in a way that affects children’s welfare and happiness. We can give heads the confidence and strength to act.」
She is clearly anxious that Ofsted shouldn』t suffer a reprise of the 「Trojan horse」 affair in Birmingham, when it was criticised for being too slow to act on allegations of attempts to impose an Islamist ethos in state schools. She has a file on her desk to show me. It includes materials from a state school saying husbands have the right to beat their wives. 「These weren』t tucked away in a cupboard, they were on display in the library.」
She continues: 「Perhaps we have been bit cautious about reporting these things because we haven』t wanted to be inflammatory. So many people think the subject is untouchable, and remain silent. But Ofsted is in the frontline and we can』t run away.」
She is particularly exercised about some private faith schools, Christian and Jewish as well as Muslim, that teach a narrow curriculum. Many are unregistered and therefore illegal and, to enter them, inspectors sometimes take the police. But even in registered private schools, Ofsted has the power only to inspect. It would be up to the Department for Education to close them. 「We would like it to take swifter and stronger action,」 she says. 「It makes me uncomfortable when a school has been inspected pretty much every year and, though it may have once scraped compliance, it is found consistently inadequate.」
When she started at Ofsted a year ago, Spielman was unaccustomed to the limelight. She had been a banker and management consultant before becoming involved with Ark, the academy chain, and going on to chair Ofqual, the exams regulator. Whereas her Ofsted predecessor, Michael Wilshaw, was widely known as a former head – once described by Michael Gove, then the shadow children’s secretary, as 「a real hero」 – few had heard of Spielman.
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She now says, in her precise, slightly stilted manner, that 「there’s been a dynamic that’s been really hard for me to learn to handle」. She has generated headlines on subjects ranging from a 「harmful」 health and safety culture in schools to children not gripping their pencils properly but some were unintentional. A speech to a nursery sector business conference 「which I expected would attract zero attention」 led to headlines about how schools weren』t teaching nursery rhymes. Her concern, she says, was merely that a minority of schools weren』t taking sufficient account of the need to familiarise ethnic minority children with mainstream culture. But that wasn』t how it came out in the headlines. 「Learning to calibrate has been a big thing in this first year,」 she says.
Spielman has also spoken frequently about schools that, to boost their league table positions, 「game the system」 by, for example, teaching to the test or taking less academic children out of exams. Is she blaming schools, or the government? 「Ofsted and league tables were created 25 years ago to complement each other. Somewhere along the line, that got lost. The inspectorate has slid into intensifying performance measures rather than complementing them.
「We』re developing a new inspection framework to get back to complementarity. Are high grades achieved through teaching, as it should be, or through intensively training pupils to answer specific types of exam questions? Inspectors should be asking that. We should be able to differentiate between the exam crammers and the true educators.」
So will Ofsted mark down the crammers and even categorise them as inadequate? She hesitates. 「Inadequate suggests outside help is needed. If a school with high results were going overboard on gaming, that ought to be fixable. It wouldn』t be the result of chaotic management. It’s more likely the school would end up in RI [requires improvement], which suggests the management team has the capability to put things right.」
Spielman appears keen to create a kinder, gentler Ofsted that repairs its ragged relations with teachers. She has said she wants to end the 「culture of fear」. Isn』t this inevitable when a bad Ofsted rating can threaten careers? 「The fear narrative is a bit out of proportion. You can』t come up with even one busload of heads who lose their jobs because of an inspection.」 Fear, Spielman says, is largely manufactured by people selling consultancy services, who have a vested interest in making schools anxious.
「We want to minimise the expectation that schools have to do something special for an inspection. I go along to quite a few inspections and the heart sinks when the head whips out the 『Ofsted folder』. You think of the hours that went into compiling it and how that creates the monumental workload teachers complain of. Perhaps we should just decline to look at those files.」
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Judicious and calm, Spielman has the manner that people expect from a chief inspector. Even when she doesn』t give straight answers to straight questions, she mostly seems as if she’s trying to.
At university, she served on the student union executive as a Liberal (before the party became the Lib Dems) because 「I』ve always been interested in what makes a good institution and how to achieve social and economic progress」.
Do people still mention her lack of teaching experience? Rarely, she says. 「Being involved with Ark and Ofqual gave me a broader exposure to primary, secondary, FE and apprenticeships than most people get in a school career. Ofsted also covers social care and nobody says I should have been a care worker. Saying I shouldn』t do this job because I never taught is like saying someone shouldn』t work for the Civil Aviation Authority if they haven』t been a pilot.」
But, I venture, it would be odd if they hadn』t even been a passenger. Had she or her children attended a state school? For her secondary education, she went to a small girls』 private school in Dorset and then to St Paul’s Girls, London, where her A-level grades propelled her to Clare College, Cambridge, to read maths, before she switched to law. As for her two daughters, she won』t answer. 「I don』t think you』re entitled to ask,」 she says, which I assume means they have been educated privately. She herself went to a state primary in Glasgow where she moved from London as a small child when her mother got a university lectureship. That gives her some relevant experience, albeit not in a country where Ofsted regulates schools.
Our final exchange is on knitting, her favourite pastime (「lots of mathematical people like knitting」), and she proudly shows me a knitted puppet 「Amanda」 she received as a leaving present from Ofqual. She was seen knitting in a meeting, I say. 「No,」 she replies with startling vehemence. 「I wouldn』t dream of it. It would send a terrible signal as chief inspector if I sat knitting.」 Later, she recalls she did knit during an informal weekend gathering of education’s great and good.
But anybody who envisages her as a Madame Defarge, knitting beside the guillotine during the French revolution, is way off the mark. It is not her style to revel in public executions as some of her predecessors did – unless your school is foolish enough to allow British values to be undermined.
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本文來源：https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/feb/06/ofsted-chief-inspector-amanda-spielman-hijab
