ABSTRACT
What follows is a lightly edited version of evidence submitted to the 1998–9 Commons Education Sub-Committee Inquiry into the Work of Ofsted. The editing has removed paragraph numbering, the executive summary and the conclusions, but has incorporated a further brief statement which the author submitted to the Committee in the light of its reported meeting with Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector (HMCI) in February 1999. If there is a theme, it is that ‘standards’ – the obligatory educational watchword of all governments these days – are a moral absolute rather than merely something to be measured on an 8-level scale, and that they must, therefore, be applied with equal rigour to all aspects of the education service: to those who inspect no less than those who are inspected, to those who make policy no less than those who implement it.
