Publication of the week:

PROFESSOR CHRIS WOODHEAD

Friday 22 May 2009

Chris Woodhead, A Desolation of Learning (Petersfield: Pencil-Sharp Publishing, 2009). ISBN: 978-0-9562573-0-7.

Professor Chris Woodhead's new book A Desolation of Learning is published today. It reveals the extent to which state education has been corrupted by utopian and utilitarian ideas and argues for market solutions to the crisis of collapsing standards. Mr Cameron's Conservatives will not necessarily approve!

Class War (2002) was Professor Woodhead's verdict on the systemic failures within the British education system and a bold agenda for reform. A Desolation of Learning is a retrospective on the 8 years since he resigned as Chief Inspector of Schools amidst a flurry of controversy over his views on the importance of a strong and politically independent schools inspectorate. Are our schools any better? Have standards improved? What are the key areas he would target for reform today? Professor Woodhead argues that the Labour administration has wrongly shaped expectations and policy based on a misguided and questionable vision of a social utopia and a misguided linking of educational attainment and economic well-being. Political pressure has resulted in the emasculation of organisations like OfSTED and the National College for School Leadership, whose remit is reduced to peddling ministerial enthusiasms.

Professor Woodhead argues that we need:

independent school headteachers to assert their independence.
the Conservative Party to find its voice and generate momentum for change.
schools to be free of bureaucratic constraint, and parents to be empowered, via the implementation of a voucher scheme, so that a genuine educational market may be established in Britain.

Professor Chris Woodhead is Professor of Education at the University of Buckingham and Chairman of Cognita. He broadcasts and writes regularly on education policy.