Response to my column in the Guardian today:
"I was Head of a school in one of the most disadvantaged areas of the country. We formed a group of ten schools who agreed to collaborate. We met regularly and looked at the good ideas happening in each school. I took a number of good ideas from my colleagues and they did the same. These covered a range of initiatives such as better reading standards, increasing the quality of experiences for children and getting parents involved. There were a number of other initiatives that made a dramatic difference.
At the beginning of this collaboration we had two schools out of ten that were deemed outstanding by Ofsted. After five years all ten schools were judged as outstanding.
Another five years down the line all ten Head teachers have now retired. The LA Education department no longer exists and the whole collaboration has stopped. Over the last five years now only one of the ten is outstanding.
Government policy is taking things backwards."
