Guardian

Wednesday July 5, 2000

Ofsted makes patronising remarks about performance and accountability in your report (Is Ofsted right to attack local education authorities?, July 1). They are, perhaps, best judged in the context of the following complaint against Ofsted by County Durham LEA. The facts of the complaint, by Durham education authority against an Ofsted registered inspector, Ofsted itself and against Her Majesty's chief inspector, Chris Woodhead, are now a matter of record.

Mr Woodhead intervened in the complaint before Ofsted's investigation was complete, to express a view in Ofsted's favour and directed the investigator to communicate his view to the complainant. Ofsted's own adjudicator judged this as "unwarranted" and "implicitly threatening". Last month - three years after the original complaint, and when, throughout, Ofsted had found no fault with itself - we received an unreserved written apology from both Ofsted and HMCI, to myself, a colleague and the LEA.

But a more significant issue has emerged. Mr Woodhead has been involved in intervening in a complaint in breach of any published Ofsted procedures. At no point has he given an account of himself. The LEA has demanded that such accountability be undertaken and at every stage it has been rejected. The LEA also offered that the matter should be referred to an independent arbitrator. That, too, was rejected.

Where is Ofsted's accountability? Wherein lies accountability for Mr Woodhead's personal conduct in this affair? This complaint has been sent to ministers and the parliamentary select committee to which alone, apparently, HMCI is accountable. It remains stubbornly and bizarrely unclear why the government's all-powerful political principles of modernisation and accountability should bind everybody but Ofsted. We have the central paradox of a government committed to educational accountability but its ministers are unable to act when a highly damaging gap in accountability on a national level has been exposed.

The real question is not whether Ofsted has the right to judge LEAs but whether Ofsted has the credibility to judge anything until its stables are cleared out?

Keith Mitchell
Director of education, Durham county council