I come from a family which has produced a fine crop of school teachers over the years, varying from the regular primary teacher to others dealing with children with severe handicaps, even blindness.
Teachers, with few exceptions, are a hard-working and devoted breed. Those with whom I have had dealings recently claim that the most difficult and frustrating part of their work resides in the ever increasing red tape. The idea of trying to relate salary to teaching performance is ranked as an insult, since there is no such thing as a standard child by whom performance can be calculated, and no standard background to determine behaviour patterns in the child.
For most teachers, therefore, the word Ofsted [Office for Standards in Education] is offensive, and its applications almost obscene. To have to control, as well as teach, a crowd of children whose parents may never have learned the word discipline, is difficult enough, without being followed throughout several days every now and then by a grey suited individual armed with a clipboard and a sheaf of questions lacking imagination or logic.
There is a strange bias in picking teachers for such attentions. Why not an Ofsted-type régime applied to other public servants? Suppose, for instance, inspectors were appointed to follow civil servants from pillar to post in Whitehall. Might that not reveal some strange interpretations of the word "servant"? And in the Palace of Westminster itself, what objection could there be to a little grey man with a clipboard noting what happened in the bars, the committee rooms and the chamber as each MP went about his or her business? Performance-related pay might become a reality, given a few statistics. MPs under questioning would have to make a good case for what they had achieved in the shape of questions and statements, during their daily government of the country. I am not sure what the investigating body could be called, but I am sure its officials would endure a hard life and precious little sympathy.