Hold the front page....full on fascist propaganda from the heart of number 10...rather than democratic debate in the house of commons, as per our agreed constitution.
Was listening to LBC earlier on during a long car journey. One thing I hadn't gathered was that the Rwandan government are actually able to return migrants we send them under this 'deal'. So we could end up sending a plane load over, and then gettting 3/4 of the passengers back. Which would be fucking hilarious to be frank.
I heard a different interpretation: that in return for taking our migrants, we have agreed to take an unspecified number of Rwanda's own 'vulnerable refugees'. Not clear who these people are or why they might be vulnerable, or indeed why they might be safer in the UK than in totally safe country Rwanda.
You're in a leadership position, and leadership comes with the often stark light of examination. Such a massively disproportionate response to such examination is less an issue of the examination itself, regardless of how accurate or just it may be, and more of the individual's suitability for that leadership position.
I defer to teachers on this subject, and they all tell me that OFSTED and their inspections/inspectors are total cunts and that they aren't surprised someone has topped themselves because of it.
My dad is a retired headteacher. He thought they were cunts so when he retired he started to train as an ofsted inspector as he thought he could bring some balance. He left halfway through as he found you had to be a cunt.
Depends on your point of view. Ofsted isn't there to asses the quality of schools, it's there to terrorise and dismantle the whole state education system. I can imagine that if you actually care, and take responsibility for trying your best to help your school and provide opportunity and development to kids, the whole thing is massively damaging.
Of course a tory would probably just not give a fuck about the impact on other people, and just happily let it rip through the sector to achieve their wider goals.
...but not everyone is able to dissociate their feelings about outcomes, as a result of wider damage, and focus on what's good for them. Like a sociopath.
People in management positions think that people examining their performance are unfair, more at 11. And still, that isn't my point. If harsh and even unfair examination of your work performance is something you take to heart so seriously that you top yourself, you were patently unsuited to that position in the first place.
Partly, but also pointing the finger at the people who hired her in the first place. Being a headteacher is a senior leadership role and as such requires a particular type of person, not just someone who has put in the years and is good with the kids. You have to do and see the nasty bits, which includes being judged by the authorities put in place to do the judging, and she was clearly not suitable for doing that.
There are lots of people occupying roles for which they are entirely unprepared for. Especially in public services under constant assault. As well as the obvious unfit members of the government.
Neither I, nor you, know whether this person was unsuitable for that role. Or whether without appropriate funding and support, and under constant impossible pressures, that particular role became unsuitable for people - with an inevitable percentage of tragic outcomes. As we see increasingly in many sectors.
Of course its much more comfortable to think "we've done nothing wrong, everything is fine, that one was just broken when we unpacked it".
I obviously don't know the specifics here, but she may well have been a great head t archer, great teacher and school manager, but didn't fill in form 39.6.5 1000 times as required by 'tge rules' and so gets totally discredited and feels a total failure etc etc.
Owen Farrell is/was England rugby captain and one of the best players in the world but had had to get out of the kitchen. Should he just TUP?
Should he have just stacked shelves in Tesco as he can't take it?
People at all levels are just humans with feelings and don't respond well to unfair criticism.
Russ's point about leadership is important, but sometimes the rules are so shit that the world stops making sense. As I understand it, The 'Failing' judgement was based on just the one criterion: safeguarding. In other words, a range of policies that schools are required to put in place to show that they are protecting their students. Hugely important, of course, but very hard to demonstrate. Closer to a tick-box exercise than most of the other categories. That's why the judgement must have felt so harsh. To go from Excellent to Failing because of one small (though important) criterion must have felt insane to Ruth Perry.
And no, Tricky, Ofsted is not there to 'terrorise and dismantle the whole state education system'. It's mainly ex-teachers and educational professionals who generally do a difficult job very well. It's not all a Tory conspiracy.
I mean.... that's a terrible analogy, and a perfect example of my point. It's a terrible analogy because he does a physically dangerous job (not to disregard the actual and horrible physical risks faced by teachers, but rugby players are taking huge damage to their bodies every week as an essential part of the job) that is examined and judged in public by thousands of people and the global media, often unfairly, and it's not at all surprising or unreasonable that all that would take its toll on his mental health, and it's a perfect example of my point because he said "yeah, I don't need this, I'm stepping away for a bit" which is the behaviour of a well balanced individual suited to the role.
Let me try it this way. If we accept that Ofsted are terrible people doing wicked awful things, and I have no reason to disbelieve that although I do suspect that it's somewhat overblown and there may be some element of the public sector being unable and/or unwilling to accept the kind of judgement that is routinely meted out in the private sector, why aren't more headteachers looking for the nearest bridge or bottle of pills? Either Ofsted specifically singled her out for worse treatment than others get, or she was less capable of handling the regular pressures of the role than her peers. Either which way, she could at any point have taken the route that Farrell did and said "fuck you, I'll go do something else".
I'm not meaning to come off as heartless here although I realise that it may seem that way, but the fact is that she clearly wasn't suited to the pressures of her role. That's a recruitment, management and support issue.