I read with interest Jonathan Lawson’s response on behalf of the Office for Standards in Education to the BBC2 documentary Modern Times. Indeed, I am extremely sympathetic to the view that TV producers can present a distorted or biased picture and may very well set out to prove a “pre-determined thesis”.
Could this be a case of the “biter bit”? After all, is it not the case that OFSTED’s proposed inspection en masse of the London boroughs of Lambeth and Waltham Forest schools are also on the basis of a “pre-determined thesis” - namely that they are failing the children they serve. I was moved by the lead inspector’s concern that the programme would “fail to represent the complex nature of inspectors’ work”, and offer him my sincere condolences. I wonder whether the “complex nature” of the workings of inner-city schools will be reflected in the forthcoming inspections of the “doomed” of Lambeth and Waltham Forest? Somehow I strongly doubt it.
BRIAN JONES
Deputy head
St Chad’s school
Tilbury
Essex
