Ofsted chief is straying from the Govian script

With Education Secretary Michael Gove, that has seemed a sensible approach. He is, after all, an intelligent man who has been characterised as a “smiling assassin”. Recently though, there have been too many cock-ups for conspiracy to be the only answer, most notably the EBacc debacle, which came about largely because Gove could not bend Ofqual to his will.

Last year, Gove’s appointment of Sir Michael Wilshaw as chief inspector at Ofsted looked part of a deliberate policy of populating key national posts with like-minded people. Such appointees would work in support of the reforms that Gove was pushing, or simply do what they were told by ministers. Some of what Wilshaw has done has, indeed, been Gove-like in its intensity and direction. There is no doubt that the school inspection bar has been raised significantly, for example.

Wilshaw is now, however, proving that he is more than a Govian disciple, acting in really surprising ways against Gove’s general policy thrust. So for the first time since 2005, Ofsted will be inspecting councils’ education improvement functions. While the word “academy” is absent, the phrases used are “schools and other providers”, so that “all children and young people have access to a good quality education”. Notwithstanding Gove’s rhetoric of setting schools free from local bureaucracy, his chief inspector has recognised that councils have a statutory role in working with academies to improve standards. That will come as a surprise to many academies – and perhaps councils.

Even more important, and against Gove’s strong anti-statist approach, Wilshaw is now promoting “the urgent need for agencies to have access to a single, accurate and comprehensive register so they can properly track children who go missing and understand any trends or patterns”. Ofsted is the only government agency still organised along the Every Child Matters principles – remember them? If the “comprehensive register” was to include children at risk – and it should – we would be back to ContactPoint, cancelled by Gove in 2010.

John Freeman CBE is a former director of children’s services and is now a freelance consultant  

Read his blog at cypnow.co.uk/freemansthinking