Industry focus: 'Phantom Ofsteds' at a London Academy
An interview with ‘Mike', a London education worker, about the phenomenon of ‘phantom Ofsted' inspections, casualisation and mass dismissals of agency workers.
In London there is a local authority which claims to be the richest in Europe. Despite this, one-third of children in the borough live below the poverty line. In contrast, half of school age children in the locality are privately educated. This means that students left in the state system are overwhelmingly from the local estates. A sizeable percentage of them come from recently settled immigrant families. It is against this backdrop that this particular council began a program which has seen nearly all of its comprehensive secondary schools converted into academies.