A NATIONAL Leader of Governance in Cumbria has raised issues with Ofsted’s North-South divide warning.


Professor Colin Richards Professor Colin Richards, the chairman of the governors at Millom School, says Ofsted is “half-wrong” in not making more of regional disparities.

In a letter to <i> The Guardian</i> , Professor Richards, writes:

<i>Dear editor,

The chief inspector is particularly good at getting alarmist headlines (“Deeply troubling” divide in English secondary schools alarms Ofsted”, December 1).

The regional disparities to which he draws attention are certainly ‘concerning’.

There is certainly no room for complacency but nor for outright condemnation either. We do need to remember that those disparities reduce to four per cent when comparing the proportion of non-disadvantaged pupils achieving the benchmark of five GCSE grades A* to C, including English and mathematics.

He is half-right to point out that the divide in standards is not simply a product of greater numbers of disadvantaged children in the North and Midlands but half-wrong too in not making more of the regional disparities in poverty and employment opportunities which impact disproportionately outside the South and West and especially on white working class pupils of secondary school age.

He castigates local authorities in particular for lack of political will but makes no mention of any lack of will among academies and academy chains.

He fails to realise that the complacency with which he charges many school leaders and governors in the North and Midlands is also shared by his own organisation.

Many of us in the system would dispute his bold unsubstantiated claim that “Inspections are consistent and comparable” and his all-too-confident certainty of his own judgments and prescriptions for education policy.</i>