Come on, Bored. Feeling like a lone obsessive

Teams from Ofsted will carry out a wave of “simultaneous and focused” school inspections in individual towns and cities amid fears thousands of children are being given a poor education.
Official visits that had been due to take place between January and July will be concentrated into just a week to give a more accurate picture of standards in a particular area.

The watchdog will also attempt to intervene directly at those councils that schools suggest are failing to provide “effective leadership” under plans for a new local authority inspection system.

Launching his annual report, Sir Michael said that deprivation did “not determine" school standards, warning that many well-off areas contained large numbers of failing schools.

Heads and governors of the worst schools face being replaced by a new leadership team under plans to drive up standards in the state system.

But on Friday it emerged that the Government had concerns over at least 100 of its flagship academies – independent state schools with complete freedom over the curriculum, admissions, staff pay and the length of the school day.

For the first time, they are being asked to submit detailed scorecards to the DfE every six weeks monitoring their performance against a range of criteria including pupils' exam progress and attendance.

Heads are also expected to rate their school's performance from “excellent” to “of concern” in categories such as finance, admissions and the quality of lessons to enable officials to pinpoint where problems lie.

The disclosure risks causing embarrassment to the Government which has promoted academy status – and freedom from council control – as the key to driving up standards in schools.

It is of course the case that leaks are a part of political life, and I tend to regard them all with equanimity.

‘Tim Loughton opposed transparency on child protection and sided with those all over the country who want to maintain a culture of secrecy. He thought publishing full Serious Case Reviews was a big mistake and opposed a proper investigation of the Edlington case. He had no interest in the details of what had gone wrong or redaction of the SCR. He strongly opposed Gove, special advisers, and officials in their insistence on trying to get to the bottom of the Edlington case, which he thought was a paranoid waste of time for no political gain because there was little publicity. His approach to child protection as a political issue was disgraceful.

‘Loughton spent his time pandering to pressure groups so they would praise him on Twitter. Loughton wouldn’t focus on child sex abuse unless it was all over TV and the DfE now has to pick up the pieces.

‘Loughton was a lazy incompetent narcissist obsessed only with self-promotion. Journalists should consider his actual behaviour when he calls for inquiries and attacks us for not taking issues seriously that he refused to handle professionally.’