Why it’s easier for Ofsted to play tough than other regulators - David Behrens

His experience is not untypical. Teaching is supposed to be a rewarding vocation but its benefits are often outweighed by the ridiculous bureaucracy and by having to leave the classroom with barely enough money for the bus fare home. Those who stay the course deserve our abiding admiration.

But they don’t always get it, and this week the challenges of working in such a climate were brought into sharp focus by the news from Berkshire that a headteacher had taken her life because an Ofsted report had rated her primary school’s leadership “inadequate”.

As a result, the regulator is being boycotted by other schools and finds itself accused of scapegoating individual managers for failures at government and parental level.

School inspections are important; parents – those fortunate enough to have a choice in the matter – need to be able to make informed decisions about their children’s education. But in regulating public services there is a balance between assertiveness and aggression, and not one of Britain’s watchdogs has got it right.

Ofsted, in overseeing a sector run by people who have, by and large, put service before self, is at an advantage over sister organisations like Ofwat and Ofgem, which regulate water and energy respectively. Both those industries are populated by avaricious corporations for whom governance is an inconvenient impediment, and who need the toe of a steel boot every so often to be made to act in the public interest.

Yet when those firms are censured at all, any pain is soothed by pocket-money fines and “gentlemen’s agreements” not to upset shareholders.

School managers, on the other hand, are expected to live in fear of snap visits by inspectors wielding big sticks. It’s tantamount to bullying. Schools go out of their way to prevent behaviour like that in the playground but it appears to be common currency in the headteacher’s office.

And it’s easier for Ofsted to play tough than it would be for the other regulators because it has a softer target. That’s how all bullies operate.

Meanwhile, its opposite number in the water sector is being played for a fool by companies who persistently dump raw sewage into rivers. Ofwat itself has admitted that poor performance has been “the norm” at many companies, including our own supplier in Yorkshire.

At the same time, it has presided over hosepipe bans, excessive pay rises for bosses and a cosy old boys’ network in which regulators and regulatees swap roles as if in a superannuated version of musical chairs. Yet it has consistently shied away from setting challenging performance targets.

Last month, Ofwat was handed new powers to stop companies from paying dividends to shareholders if they failed to meet their obligations – but it remains to be seen whether this will be any more of a deterrent than a teacher making the class stay behind to write, “I must not be made fun of” 100 times.

Over in the energy sector, Ofgem is facing a boardroom clearout as retribution for its woeful handling of the fuel crisis. It could have done more to cap bills and save the 30 small suppliers who went out of business but it was too timid to take on the giants who control the industry, preferring to appease them than provide a service to the government, let alone the rest of us. This was never more true than when it watched British Gas send debt collectors to break into the homes of vulnerable customers to fit prepayment meters.

If teachers behaved as aggressively as that, do you think Ofsted would be so high-handed at inspection time? Of course not. There would be a conversation over drinks, an agreement to push the problem down the road or under the carpet, and a public statement to save face.

But Ofsted knows the people it oversees will quickly roll over. It knows too that it can whip up a frenzy of fear and then publish reports on the flimsiest of evidence. There is little scope for headteachers to challenge a grading they consider unfair yet the stigma lingers for years. This can’t go on. We need more teachers, not fewer, and Ofsted is frightening them away. On its own measure, that makes it inadequate. It’s time to send in some of its own inspectors.