THE chief inspector upholds his reputation as the world’s most tactful man in a letter to the NUT’s assistant secretary, John Bangs, about the Geoffrey Owen debacle.
(Owen, you recall, was let go by OFSTED after one complaint too many about his methods. As this paper revealed last week, Chris Woodhead called it the hardest decision he had taken and offered to “oil the wheels” of Owen’s search for work.) Bangs had asked Woodhead now to apologise to the nine schools whose complaints about Owen had been rejected. We find the delightful response in the latest edition of The Teacher, the NUT’s house mag.
“I have no intention whatsoever of writing to schools,” writes HMCI warmly. “Our decision received extremely wide media cover and I assume headteachers of these schools can read.”
So no apology then, Chris?
