The outgoing chief schools inspector, Sir Michael Wilshaw, was on fiery form last week, sending an open letter to the education secretary critic

ising seven major academy chains – just as ministers are reputedly considering making all schools become academies.

We wonder whether Wilshaw reads this column, as among his concerns was the soaring pay of the chains’ chief executives, an issue that has been preoccupying us lately, while he also highlighted the staggering £8.5m total paid to consultants by the seven trusts.

But he didn’t mention severance pay: where individuals receive money on leaving that a trust may or may not have been obliged to offer. “Gagging clauses” included in such payments across the public sector have caused controversy.

Academy accounts show the seven trusts, which include three of England’s four largest chains, spent £621,683 between them on severance payments in 2014-15. More broadly, the accounts of the 12 largest school chains list £1.6m being paid in severance, with the Harris Federation, lauded by ministers, the top spender, with £284,000. With money in classrooms in short supply, spending it on outgoing staff will continue to be contentious.

De Souza to head Ofsted?

Meanwhile, could the Department for Education move to replace the increasingly outspoken Wilshaw with a perhaps more supportive figure, by appointing a favourite of this column as chief inspector?

We hear rumours that Dame Rachel de Souza – briefly a part-time Ofsted inspector and currently CEO of the Norfolk-based Inspiration Trust – might be in pole position for the £180,000-a-year post.

Intriguingly, Inspiration hired headhunters recently to seek out a new “director of education”, on up to £100,000 a year, to support De Souza and her headteachers. Having such a figure as well as a chief executive might seem top-heavy in an organisation that from September will run just 13 schools. So could the new appointee actually be intended as a replacement for De Souza?

A trust spokesman did not deny De Souza might become the next chief inspector of schools, saying only that it was “speculation”. And, he added, the trust could afford a director of education because it ran its schools efficiently.

Incidentally, last week, the trust had to defend itself after an assembly at the Hewett school, Norwich, reportedly saw pupils encouraged to consider the “self-confidence” of the Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump. The Hewett was taken over by the Inspiration Trust in September despite a big parental campaign. The trust’s defence was that the assembly was not meant to endorse Trump’s views.

Phonics favourite



Relations between the DfE and one of its favourite advisers, Ruth Miskin, are in the spotlight again after ministers announced that her company is to run a series of roadshows promoting reading for the government, in a contract worth up to £50,000. Ruth Miskin Training is running 10 roadshow events, free to schools, which the department says will allow them to “share best practice in the teaching of phonics and early reading and support the government’s aim of ensuring high-quality systematic synthetic phonics in every primary school”.

By a happy coincidence, Miskin’s company provides phonics training in support of its Read Write Inc teaching scheme. Ruth Miskin Training was also revealed last month as joint winner of the largest grant provided by the Education Endowment Foundation to trial new approaches to core subject teaching in schools. Miskin has served repeatedly as a government adviser, including on the 2011 Bew inquiry into primary assessment and on the coalition’s national curriculum review.

Asked for details of the roadshow contract, the DfE did not want to offer any response in writing, instead reading out a statement for our “guidance”. This said that Ruth Miskin Training had gone through a competitive bidding process for a contract worth up to £50,000.

A selection panel of DfE officials and an “independent phonics expert” had assessed several bids, against criteria specified in advance. The DfE added that “a broad range of phonics schemes” would be promoted through the roadshows. However, questions about this relationship seem unlikely to go away.

Hounslow school battle



Finally, controversial and expensive plans to build a 1,400-pupil free school on a protected green space in Hounslow, west London, seem likely to be delayed after residents launched a judicial review application against the move.

As we reported in November, the government spent £11.75m in February 2015 buying a sprawling tract of metropolitan open land – the urban equivalent of green belt – in Osterley for the Sikh-ethos Nishkam school west London.

Hounslow council granted planning permission in December, expecting the school to open in September 2017. But residents began the judicial review process last week, arguing the council had failed to follow procedures. They say the school is unlikely to be built to schedule now.

The council said it was “resisting” the judicial review application. Its leader, Steve Curran, added: “The planning permission is effectively halted by this legal action. This delay may have a significant impact on the school being built and opened to take the first pupils in September 2017.”