Woodhead controversy: An unworldly teacher who became the hated scourge of his profession

CHRIS WOODHEAD rarely apologises. He is both admired and detested because he is a man who deals in certainties. His detractors include most teachers, who see him as the scourge of the profession who depresses morale by castigating schools for low standards and trendy teaching methods. They argue that his confrontational style involves so much stick and so little carrot that he will never improve schools.

His admirers include politicians of every party who believe that he is a courageous crusader for parents and children who, for too long, have had to put up with an inadequate education system. For some commentators and newspapers he is a hero whose every word is revered. He has reportedly dined with Prince Charles at Highgrove and he and his partner have taken tea with the Prime Minister.

It is true that he is unpopular with teachers partly because of the body he heads: the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) has brought a new system of regular inspection to schools; the bottom line for a bad inspection report is failure and sometimes closure. And individual teachers are graded.

Perhaps teachers need a hate figure on whom they can vent their anger about a decade of change which has overturned their world. But the chief inspector's personal style must play some part in the difficult relationship between the profession and Ofsted. In Wales, for instance, where a similar regime has been brought in, there has been no outcry from teachers.

One Labour politician, a Woodhead fan, said: "Seventy-five per cent of what he does is absolutely right. But there are some question marks over the rest." Mr Woodhead argues that he speaks as he does because that is the only way to bring improvements in a system which is resistant to change. He also enjoys his combative role. When he is attacked, he comes out fighting and relishes a good scrap.

He began his job in 1993 by writing an article in the Daily Mail headlined "Sack the Useless Teachers". In an interview at the time he remarked: "An element of threat is not necessarily a bad thing. I personally respond to threats. The education system has been immune to any kind of threat for too long."

Later, he provoked an outcry by saying that there were 15,000 bad teachers who should be sacked and, more recently, he argued, to the embarrassment of ministers, that national tests were unreliable and that, anyway, some schools were cheating.

He has lambasted primary schools which are still making models out of egg boxes instead of instilling the three Rs in pupils and pronounced the money spent on educational research a waste. Academics, he suggested in one of his most swashbuckling attacks, are at "the heart of darkness" because they promote unsound teaching methods.

But his personality is more complicated than at first appears. During his career, he has been accused of being a liberal, a Conservative (under the previous government) and now a standard bearer for New Labour. Nearly 20 years ago, he expressed his fears about education under Margaret (now Baroness) Thatcher thus: "The economic recession might explain the present hardening of attitudes, the backlash against anything savouring of a progressive ideology."

While he was deputy head of English at a Gloucestershire comprehensive school, Fenella Strange, then a sixth-former, remembers him as "this charming, other-wordly bloke. The word I would use more than any other would be idealistic. We considered ourselves years older than him... one felt one should hold his hand as he crossed the road".

When he was a lecturer in Oxford University's department of education, he handed round a box of apples to the students in the hope that they would inspire creative writing.

Mr Woodhead is tall, lean, mildly self-deprecating and looks younger than 52, perhaps because of his enthusiasm for rock-climbing and hill- walking. He has an enviable grasp of the English language: one of the keys to his influence is that he never uses educational jargon. He is divorced and has one daughter. His present partner is Ruth Miskin, head of a successful primary school in the London borough of Tower Hamlets.

The son of an accountant and a school secretary, Chris Woodhead attended Wallington grammar school in Surrey, where he was caned twice - once for cheating in a Latin test and once for turning the French master's pictures to the wall. The latter summed him up in his report in a single word: "Wild".

His way to the top has taken him through the heart of the educational establishment which is the subject of so many of his criticisms. He read English at Bristol, followed by a postgraduate certificate of education, (PGCE) taught English in several schools and taught on Oxford University's PGCE course.

When he left Oxford in 1982, he became an English adviser and later deputy chief education officer in Cornwall and Devon. Ironically, he is now questioning whether local authorities have a future: a pamphlet on the subject from the right-wing think-tank, Politeia, is expected shortly.

His first job on the national scene was as deputy chief executive of the National Curriculum Council. His rise to the top was swift. A year later, he replaced the sacked chief executive and was soon appointed by Kenneth Clarke, then secretary of state for education, to be one of "three wise men" reviewing primary education. He was briefly head of the merged testing and curriculum council before he became chief inspector.

Asked once whether he was ambitious, he said: "I think I must be, but not in such a way as to have structured my career from day one. I suppose I have seized the moment."

There has been more fuss about Mr Woodhead's latest foray into controversy than on any previous occasion. But he will keep his job and most teachers, reluctantly, will acknowledge the justice in that. They want him to be judged not on his views about relationships between teachers and pupils, but as history will judge him, on his effect on schools and on his success in raising standards.

World of Woodhead

"If the teaching profession is unable or unwilling to implement change, then standards of teaching are not going to rise. Thus far, many teachers have shown themselves resistant to change.

Good schools recognise their weaknesses and act upon them. Poor schools and poor teachers drift from year to year, repeating the mistakes of the past."

Daily Mail

5 September 1994

"There appears to be an agreement that it is in nobody's interests for such [poor] teachers to remain in the profession. That agreement must now be translated into management action."

Daily Mail

6 February 1996

"It is the burial of a concept of primary education that says that in some mysterious way the innate potential of each child has merely to be unlocked."

Daily Mail

3 June 1996

"As adults or relative adults we have a responsibility to those who are younger than us and therefore it [sexual relations between pupils and teachers] isn't a good idea at all. But I don't think necessarily that a teacher should be automatically drummed out of the profession. I think human beings can get themselves into messes and I think those messes can sometimes be experiential and educative on both sides."

The Independent

6 February 1999

"My comments should not be taken in that context. It is not my true stance."

The Observer

7 February 1999