The Ruth Perry inquest was no surprise to teachers like me

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The Ofsted process has completely missed obvious, but vital, aspects of a school’s work (PA Wire)

The findings of the Ruth Perry inquest come as no surprise to teachers, governors and educationalists across this country. What is surprising though is that such a cold, stark, pseudo-objective school inspection system has prevailed for so long or that it was conceived in this way in the first place.

Teaching is a multidimensional process, as is learning, and teachers will tell you that it can be joyous and highly satisfying but it is often emotionally draining and mentally exhausting. Good teachers sell their reserves of energy, personality, enthusiasm, patience, kindness, tolerance and love every day. They put their own mental health on the line every day.

Children and teenagers are delightful and inspiring but also challenging, fragile and vulnerable. Like everyone else they need great skill, compassion and imagination if they are to thrive. Without these, children do not make progress in any area and there is no academic rigour. Humans are social beings.

From the very start, the Ofsted process has completely missed these obvious, but vital, aspects of a school’s work as it embodies the polar opposite of the ethos it comes to inspect. I spent 40 years watching the systematic reduction of the social and emotional elements of teaching at close quarters through misguided curriculum reforms, high stakes, dehumanising assessment processes, and the use of schools to address political concerns about society. I can tell you that the findings of this inquest merely scratch the surface. In the private sector? Not so much.

David Lowndes

Southampton

Rishi has lost the dressing room

Rishi Sunak is now doomed. In simple terms he’s lost the dressing room. The membership never wanted him, now neither do his MPs. He’s politically inert – no plan, no strategy and no support. It’s actually getting painful to watch.

Dale Hughes

Address supplied

No wonder Boris folded under pressure

On the first day of the Covid inquiry, Boris Johnson stated that he would have acted differently with the benefit of hindsight. For once, I’m inclined to take him at his word. After all, how could he have possibly foreseen how things would turn out?

Never before, throughout his entire life – his careers, his marriages, his spawning of miscellaneous offspring – has he even once had to take responsibility for any of his manifest failings, errors, mistakes or mistruths. I’m sure he might well have behaved differently had he been aware that this time he was finally going to get his comeuppance.

Julian Self

Milton Keynes

Jenrick’s resignation should not be this seismic

How ineffectual must a government be, for the resignation of a minister as ineffectual as Robert Jenrick to be a cause for concern? And yet here we find ourselves. In the middle of yet another crisis.

Pete Thackeray

Bristol