ABSTRACT
There is evidence from official safety reports following serious accidents at work, such as the Piper Alpha disaster, that a reliance on external inspection creates a climate in which people feel that they are not trusted and so lose pride in their work. In schools and colleges, such reliance upon external inspection has led in many places to resentment and sometimes to dread. The determination is to beat the inspectors at their own game. The enemy at the gate drives the defenders together and does not naturally lead to a careful consideration of that which is being defended. The problem of how best to encourage schools and colleges to develop quality from within is a difficult one to tackle. Lateral thinking can be vital in the sense described by Edward de Bono (1970): ‘vertical thinking is digging the same hole deeper. Lateral thinking is trying again elsewhere.’
