When inspectors from Ofsted, England’s education watchdog, descended on Flora Cooper’s Berkshire primary school this week, there was a small but poignant crowd of protesters waiting at the gates.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” the headteacher had tweeted the night before, of her plans to refuse them entry. “But someone has to.” In the end she let the inspection proceed – obstructing it risks a £2,500 fine – but her stand felt like a Spartacus moment for teaching nonetheless.
Cooper was moved, as so many have been, by the suicide of her fellow head Ruth Perry, whose primary school in nearby Reading had been abruptly marked down from outstanding to inadequate. Feelings are running high in schools around the country, and the unions’ call to pause inspections, allowing everyone to take a breath, seems eminently sensible.
As Samaritans says, there is rarely one simple cause of suicide, and this tragedy is now best examined by an inquest in possession of all the facts. In the meantime, children need shielding from the anxieties of the adults looking after them, which is why suggestions from one Suffolk headteachers’ group that staff don black armbands and observe a minute’s silence during Ofsted visits make me frankly uneasy. But the anger unleashed this week has been building for years now, and it deserves to be taken seriously.
