4th January 2013 9:00
By Blue Tutors
The National Union of Teachers (NUT) has raised concerns over potential conflicts of interest with regard to Ofsted inspectors, the BBC has reported. Expressing reluctance about the increasing pressure on many schools to become academies, the accusations infer that many educational experts are using positions within Ofsted to open potential avenues of employment elsewhere.
One example concerns Sir Paul Edwards who is the Chief Executive of the Schools Partnership Trust (SPT), is contracted by the government to work on its academies and free-schools programme. However Sir Paul explained that his work for the government has so far been with only one school in an area where the SPT doesn’t operate, and as such there is no conflict of interest.
There a handful of other examples, but here is no example where an educational advisor has criticised a school under the umbrella of a government organisation, whilst at the same time being in a position to profit from the possibility that the school may become an academy. The question is whether the advice given is given because the advisor intends to benefit from the potential academy at some time in the future.
Christine Blower, general secretary of the NUT said that the government should be employing professional civil servants to conduct school inspections, rather than relying on ‘hired hands’, and that this would reduce potential corruption. She added that there is ‘a lack of oversight and insufficient regard given to where these functions may conflict’.