TRANSCRIPT
Chris Woodhead
and John Humphrys
John Humphrys:
Chris Woodhead was the most famous, perhaps I should say notorious, Chief Inspector of Schools that England has ever had. Diplomacy was not exactly his style. He infuriated teachers, or unions when he said that 15,000 teachers were incompetent. For many years then he was a figure of hate. To parents he was a hero. Last year he resigned but he was uncharacteristically silent about the real reasons for his resignation and what he thought about the way the Department for Education was being run. Well now he has broken that silence. In an article - the first in a series - in the Daily Telegraph - and he is on the line now. Good morning to you.
Chris Woodhead:
Good morning John.
John Humphrys:
And some very strong language here: betrayal for instance.
Chris Woodhead:
Yes. The language is strong, but I feel strongly. I am passionate about the education that our children receive and I think very real opportunities have missed. I wanted to point out those missed opportunities.
John Humphrys:
In specific terms, what?
Chris Woodhead:
The many many initiatives, the vast majority of them in my view, untested often fanciful, at best distracting teachers from their proper job. At worst diverting them into the old progressive child-centred ways that Mr Blunkett and Mr Blair appear to have rejected.
John Humphrys:
What sorts of initiatives? Because some of them have been very successful.
Chris Woodhead:
The national literacy and the national numeracy strategies have been very successful I agree and those were inherited from the Conservative Party of course. Initiatives like Citizenship, initiatives like painting skills, thinking skills. I mean thinking skills is a key element in the plan to quotes transform teaching at the bottom end of the secondary school. The idea is that painting skills can be taught in a vacuum, a knowledge vacuum, look at A levels, post-16 courses, key skills are now to be embedded, that's the jargon, into every subject discipline so in English you have to look for opportunities for numeracy and all the rest of it. It's a distraction from what I think the teacher's fundamental responsibility is. Which is to communicate their enthusiasm, their passion for their subject, to inspire children, as many children as we possibly can to leave school with a love of history, science, literature, whatever.
John Humphrys:
You're talking about the ideal world and the government didn't inherit the ideal world. No government does where education's concerned, it's always an uphill battle.
Chris Woodhead:
That is true. I'm talking about an educational ideal. I think it's an educational ideal that we've got to have the confidence to offer to all children, certainly from five to 14. I don't want children because they come from inner city disadvantaged communities to be denied the richness of education that is offer to their more fortunate peers.
John Humphrys:
Did you put these points to David Blunkett, and if not, why not?
Chris Woodhead:
Yes, of course I did. We had many conversations, I had many conversations with officials, I had some conversations with David Blunkett, some conversations with Estelle Morris, and a few with the Prime Minister. I try and say in the article today that for a long time I was persuaded that they were very much on my wavelength but gradually I became more and more sceptical I felt that there was more hot air than there was reality and as your education correspondent put it this morning, it suited their purposes to keep me on. That's what I came to think …
John Humphrys:
Because you were the fig leaf do you mean?
Chris Woodhead:
Yes, exactly, exactly. I mean whilst I was there then government was hard on standards. Then in some senses, yes they have been serious about standards. But in very others as I say I became increasingly sceptical and in the end I write in the article in The Telegraph today, I couldn't stomach what I saw as proliferation of untried initiatives, waste of taxpayers' money and a commitment to a vision of education that was essentially utilitarian when as I say I think education that is intrinsically and desperately important to every child …
John Humphrys:
Did you make these criticisms to Tony Blair himself?
Chris Woodhead:
Well, I didn't very often, perhaps only once did I have the opportunity to speak to the Prime Minister on a one to one basis. So I couldn't pretend to have privileged access. In our meetings we had occasionally at No 10, summit meetings they were called in which the Secretary of State and Ministers and officials, yes, they were arguing from this point of view and I was always trying to point up the difficulties in implementation that they were facing in the policies they were driving through.
John Humphrys:
And when you had your one to one meeting with Tony Blair, I gather it was after a do at Buckingham Palace, as one does, but what did he say?
Chris Woodhead:
(laughter). It wasn't a meeting it was a conversation on the staircase. He appeared, as he always appeared when I registered any doubt about what was happening to be genuinely concerned. He said, you know, go and talk to my advisers, my officials. I did that, but as so often was the case as always frankly was the case, nothing then happened, nothing changed. In the end, inevitably, I came to the conclusion that there wasn't much point in staying on if I wasn't having much influence within and it would be better to have the freedom outside the tent to say exactly what I think which is what I'm doing now.
John Humphrys:
Well, yes, but if you had stayed at least there was the possibility, whereas now people will say oh this is a bitter man, who didn't get what he wanted and who's probably going to become a Tory peer and that's why he's doing it.
Chris Woodhead:
Well, there are no conversations that I'm having about Tory peerages. Heaven knows in the future I might do anything …
John Humphrys:
Including that …
Chris Woodhead:
That is an issue that's on the agenda and I think the argument that this is a Conservative critique and that I'm making a party political contribution is absolutely ludicrous. These arguments that I'm putting are a-political. Why does the Left, I've always thought this, I ask myself this, why does the Left give the Right the monopoly on standards, on commensense in education, to use that Conservative term. Everybody who is sane and who has the interests of our children at heart wants, I think, the kinds of things that I am arguing for. It's not party political and I very much hope that it's not seen as personally bitter because I'm very much happy with my lot. I'm sitting talking at the end of a telephone at a most beautiful landscape. I had my six years, I had my innings, I did what I could. The Secretary of State is the Secretary of State and as I say in the first sentence in The Telegraph article, if I came to disagree I had no option - I had to go and I accept that.
John Humphrys:
If you were now marking yourself out of 10, at the end of your tenure, what would you give yourself?
Chris Woodhead:
Oh, heaven knows John, I think …
John Humphrys:
Well, did you leave it better than you found it?
Chris Woodhead:
I think I did, but I'm not claiming that personal individual credit. I think OFSTED, the Office for Standards in Education, the inspectorate, made a tremendous contribution, in two senses, in one we found excellence in so many schools and we ensured that good schools got the credit for it and conversely, where there were failings we brought those failings out into the open and then secondly, the things that we said, did influence the climate. To some extent they influenced the government policies, both the last government and this government.
John Humphrys:
I thought you said you weren't getting anywhere. That argument says that you should have stayed on.
Chris Woodhead:
The two examples I want to give of that are the examples that I've just touched on: the literacy and the numeracy strategies. They're only two, but they are desperately, desperately important because they transform primary education. You ask me what I'm proud of, well I'm proud of the fact that inspection evidence led to the fact that more and more children are leaving primary school able to read, add up and all the rest of it. And with regard to the world of teaching as opposed to the world of politics I think the contributions that we made have changed the climate. Ten years ago nobody was talking about phonics in reading. Whole class teaching was anathema in many primary schools. Now these tried and tested methods are having the impact that they should have and to some extent that is down to what OFSTED did.
John Humphrys:
Chris Woodhead, thank you very much.
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Please Note:
This transcript was typed from an on-air broadcast and not copied from an original script. Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the 91Èȱ¬ cannot vouch for its accuracy.
