Ofsted boss Christine Gilbert was hauled up before a committee of MPs yesterday and proceeded to demonstrate why it had proved incapable of helping to prevent the death of Baby P in Haringey or even assess accurately the performance of Haringey children’s services (it said in a formal review they were top hole even though the Baby P case was already going through the courts).
Even though the Ofsted estimate that 210 children had died preventable deaths in the preceding 16 months grabbed the headlines (itself a reduced figure from an earlier Ofsted estimate of 282, so do they really know?) it rapidly became clear that Ms Gilbert’s outfit was wholly obsessed with box ticking and ‘data’, much of which is clearly inaccurate.
But Ofsted deserves far more than criticism from a Parliamentary committee.
It should be left to its core activity of supervising schools (which it doesn’t do very well either) under a new boss and a new body should be set up to supervise social services.
But won’t this just lead to more employment for useless bureaucrats you might ask?
Unfortunately Yes.
[Image Attribution: krishna_avanti_bhumi_pu_ja]