Sweeping up for the enemy

John Thomas

"...illiterate at the age of 11, expelled from school and to have failed English O level – totally flunked it, with an unclassified ‘U’. Three times. Ms Atkins’s academic career is marvellously inglorious – she left school with an O level in biology" - a New Labour appointment was it? Sounds just perfect.

Oflife

Socialists like to lower the goal posts. That is why their communities never rise or progress, whilst 'posh' middle class areas (such as Thame) thrive, offering a quality of life several orders of magnitude greater than council estates. One day, the far left will realise that the key to success in life is to strive for the top. Or to quote a former slogan used by (I think) the US Marines: "Be the best you can be." The left betray the very people they are supposed to assist and represent. Twits.

TomTom

"one might not expect the head of Ofsted to have been illiterate at the age of 11, expelled from school and to have failed English O level – totally flunked it, with an unclassified “U”. Three times.

Ms Atkins’s academic career is marvellously inglorious – she left school with an O level in biology – for the woman now in charge of the nation’s educational standards. "

"Her godmother is Shirley Conran, former wife of Sir Terence Conran and author of Superwoman. Her aunt, Vera Atkins, is believed to have been Ian Fleming’s inspiration for Miss Moneypenny. "

"The teenage Ms Atkins – and you can imagine her, all hair and attitude – went on to what she refers to drily as her “illustrious career” at Camborne technical college, to do a course on children’s residential care, a subject that is still an obsession for her. "

It is not WHAT you know but WHOM you know !

DougS

You couldn't make it up!

I'd like to see the government sweep away all of the Quangos and reintroduce only those that we really need.

They could take the opportunity to more carefully choose the quango inhabitants, and adjust their salaries to realistic levels.

Miranda Rose Smith

Hence the creation of quangos such as the Office for Standards in Education or the Inspectorate of Probation.

What is a quango?

W. Smith

"How did such people get appointed in the first place? By officials who have been acting as fifth colunmists in the culture wars these past several decades."

Quite. And the moron in charge of our questionable probation service is also economically illiterate. Even though prison has been made ridiculously expensive through the rights-driven pampering of inmates, governmental figures nevertheless show that custodial sentences are good value for money.

elixelx

Hey, for £40,000 pa, 3 months holiday pa. 4 hours work plus 4 hours of "admin" a day, I could happily be a paragon of ineptitude, incompetence, and indolence--and those kids will learn more life-lessons from observing me than they will ever get from Mr. Chips!

Veracity

My nephew is on probation and it is a farce. He sees a different probation officer almost every time he attends and they actually complain if he is a few minutes early. he merely signs in and is offered no HELP AT ALL. To whom are these people accountable? So no detention behind bars and no supervision outside . Welcome to anarchy!

Ronnie

Miranda Rose Smith.

Quango - Quasi Autonomous Non-Government Organisation.

Sometimes known in other countries as NGOs.

As me anything :-)

Dominic Rooney

QUANGO - Quite Useless And No Good Office

Ian Hills

Putting the fear of God into repeat offenders might help deter them from crime, but obviously the lawyers' wealth creation tool, human rights legislation, will have to be scrapped first.

Bare-bones prisons would be cheap to build - in fact the prisoners could build them. Remote Scottish islands in the freezing seas would be hard to escape from. After building their prisons, they could break up rocks for sale as hardcore. Not working hard enough means no privileges, like breakfast.

The BBC would film their suffering as a terrible example of right-wing government in action. Good - this would make many thugs think again about crime as they guzzle their lagers in front of the box.

The all-important punishment aspect of imprisonment would be good for the victims of crime.

Tiberius

I'd like to know how schools are supposed to "weed out bad teachers". What with the unions, standard conditions and pay, LEAs, and general employment law, it's easier to make a camel pass through the eye of a needle.

Edward McLaughlin

Perhaps Zenna has a point and we should make it our mission to ensure that a small percentage of airline pilots have poor hand to eye co-ordination, enjoy a twixt-shift snort or two, and display a limited grasp of the workings of arithmetic.

This way, our travelling public will be totally unphased as they hurtle towards what will hopefully be a level playing field.

David Lindsay

If every school should have one bad teacher, then spare a thought that every time that Ofsted inspected either of those of which I was then a governor, it could find no such person. Not a single one. Ever.

It must have been desperately disappointing for Ofsted. In fact, I do not know how or why those gravely deficient institutions were, and are, kept open.

watttyler

my brother is a deputy head teacher, and he could not get a single o level when he was at school.

I recommend people read "Heart of Dog" by Bulgakov if people want to understand why idiots get over-promoted in a Marxist country (of course, idiotic Britons first have to realise they live in a Marxist country).

John Norman

Reminds me of Clive James watching a self-satisfied, inadequate, self-congratulatory aerobics/dance teacher "Wouldn't you like to put your hands around his neck and throttle him?"

John Norman

Queerly Unbelievable And Needless Government Official

maddy1

Every MP. should be forced to teach in the recess and filmed doing so!
Getting the MP to live in the inner city areas along with the senior gov. lawyers would aslo help the crime fugures!

Miranda Rose Smith

Quango - Quasi Autonomous Non-Government Organisation.

Sometimes known in other countries as NGOs.

As me anything :-)
Dominic Rooney
July 12th, 2010 3:29pm
QUANGO - Quite Useless And No Good Office
Dear Ronnie and Mr. Rooney: Thanks.

GeoffM

The "huge cost" of the prison population is taken as a given. I have heard figures of £34, 000 pa.

Crazy.

Any business would break down the costs and then target the components.

Has anyone EVER seen a breakdown? No!

Everything should be "cost benefited".

Policy needs to be targeted also. At present prisons get sizeable reductions in sentences for just keeping their noses clean. That is not right - it should be "given".

Carrot and stick - reward them for achieving measurable goals and penalise them when the fail.

Get them working to pay back some of the cost. Cut luxuries, privileges.

A prisoner should leave prison able to survive in the outside world, be a better demonstrably better person AND be scared of going back inside.

john east

Ms Atkins is a silly woman.

I did well at school, only failing Geography out of nine O-levels. Yet even today, forty years later, I cannot forgive my old geography teacher, in his first year as a teacher, who very unprofessionally made it clear that he did not like me, and turned me right off geography as an interesting subject.

This stupid woman has got everything back to front. School should be a time of training, not psychological warfare. There is time enough to learn how to deal with bad people once one has obtained one's qualifications.

David Bouvier

We should condemn this idiot for her opinions not her credentials.

Not everyone who didn't get on at school is stupid. Though the counter examples don't make the contrary a rule either.

And there are plenty of fools with credentials too.

Louis Berk

Interesting opinions and sadly ones which are supportable from the point of view of economics. Firstly, we can't eradicate all poor teachers from the profession because we don't have enough good ones in the first place - this is not an attack on my colleagues just a statement of the obvious. Similarly, you can't refute the cause and effect of reducing prison costs by turfing out violent offenders and not expecting some of them to re-offend. The costs to our society of having perfect teachers (how about starting salaries which vie with those of recruits into investment banks or City law firms?) or viable long term incarceration, where human decency suggests that the punishment should not be cruel and unusual, is just too high. The british citizen has voted again and again for low taxes and lower public sector expenditure and has to suffer the consequences of that decision. That's why I put my children through private education and have very large locks on my doors.

Wily Trout

I wonder how long it will be before 'competence' is added to the list of grounds upon which you may not be discriminated against.

Maddy1

None of you will admit to the extreme misery children cause other children in our schools. this is the key factor, in poor performance. As if teachers have any relevance to teaching performance these days!

Andy Brim

Atkins could use the poacher-urned-gamekeeper excuse that Tony Blair would wheel out everytime he got caught out; cash for this, cash for that etc.

''And who better, then, to spot the under performer than an underperformer herself?''

William Boyd

The Spectator's Toby Young failed all his 'O' levels first time round (or so his Wiki claims).

But right ... pretty amazingly naff. I note that 'distinguished Social Entrepeneur' (it really does sound like somethong out of Zhivago) Zenna Atkins goes on to become a Chief Executive for some international private schools outfit (GEMS International) so she can't be completely stupid can she?

Noa

I applaud Andrew Bridge for acknowledging the high cost of incarcerating dangerous and violent criminals.

I am disappointed however that he did not 'think out of the box'; by acknowledging that a popular and cost effective method of protecting society from murderers is execution and that his ineffectual probation service is long overdue for reform; realigning it's priority to protecting society's interests, rather than 'reformation' of often prematurely released crimininals.

Andrew Bridges, Chief Inspector of Probation

Melanie’s Motion: That The Difficult Question Not Be Put

Whether people wish to accept the uncomfortable fact or not, a (small) proportion of ex prisoners will commit a serious crime at some point after their release. Unquestionably this is catastrophic for the victim(s), but the unwelcome truth is that something dreadful will always happen somewhere in a free society, whatever the various authorities do to minimise that possibility. Whether we consider the matter explicitly or implicitly, the Question is How many people are we prepared to keep locked up and for how long in order to prevent each serious crime? Undoubtedly this is a distasteful Question to pose, though there are others such as the public funding of certain cancer treatments, that generate comparably high human emotions.

As an independent Inspectorate, I sought to put this Question into the public domain, in the Foreword of my Annual Report, to enable more informed debate and awareness, but I advocated/proposed/suggested nothing. Currently we’re keeping a minimum of 60 people in prison each year in order to prevent each ‘Serious Further Offence’, and at about £40k a year each. I agree with Ms Phillips that it is not for the ‘regulator’ to advocate an answer, so I didn’t – it is for the taxpaying electorate to decide the answer – but I now oppose her motion that The Difficult Question Not Be Put. People can judge the issue for themselves, and also see how we go about assessing the effectiveness of Probation and Youth Offending work, by going to http://www.justice.gov.uk/inspectorates/hmi-probation/docs/HMI_Annual_Report_09-10_WEB-rps.pdf

Noa

Should Mr Bridges be blogging in his official capacity during office hours on matters that are outwith the scope of his officiasl remit,(the cost of punishment) and which can be perceived as partial, as the Probation Service is likely to be a main beneficiary from a reduction in prison expenditure?

Surely the Chief Inspector should be setting a better example for the members of the Probation Service?

Henry Ogden

Andrew Bridges writes:
"..Currently we’re keeping a minimum of 60 people in prison each year in order to prevent each ‘Serious Further Offence’, and at about £40k a year each..."

Even assuming that £40k generic cost is correct is £2.4m per year an unreasonable expenditure to prevent serious crime recurring?

Could we not save at least this amount by abolishing the Probation Inspectorate quango?

david skinner

I attended Stonewall's 5th annual conference,on July 2nd, where Ofsted were represented. This is an extract from my report of that day.
KEYNOTE ADDRESS - OFSTED NADA TRIKIC- INQUISITION
The sense I had of this address was that Ofsted would become the instrument of inquisition. It would be peering into the hearts of minds of school to see if any heresy or homophobic blasphemy was taking place. Clearly the repeal of the law against Judeo Christian blasphemy has been replaced by homosexual blasphemy.
The Daily mail reported that ¡°The Government¡¯s childcare watchdog has been heavily criticised after appointing to a senior post an official embroiled in a notorious paedophile scandal. Ofsted has named John Goldup as its social care director ¨C a job which gives him effective control of the protection of youngsters in care homes and nurseries across the UK.
At the time of his appointment, Mr Goldup said: ¡®I am absolutely convinced that effective inspection and regulation are the key to driving up improvement.¡¯
But during the Eighties and early Nineties, Mr Goldup was the second most senior figure in the children¡¯s department at Islington Council in North London.¡±
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1217982/Top-Ofsted-job-official-embroiled-council-child-sex-scandal.html#ixzz0SxW8fhfR
¡¡

http://www.careleavers.com/blog/john-goldups-appointment-as-social-care-director-at-ofsted-have-your-say.html