Driving force for change in education
Sir Chris Woodhead Former chief inspector of schools BORN OCTOBER 20, 1946 - DIED JUNE 23, 2015 AGED 68
DURING his six- year stint as head of the Office for Standards in Education ( Ofsted) Sir Chris Woodhead proved to be a truly significant force.
He was a controversial figure, whose abrasive style angered many including the then education secretary David Blunkett.
But at the heart of his crusade was the one issue he never wavered on: that every child was entitled to the best education possible.
To that end he made it his mission to speak out against the culture of low expectations, dwindling standards and persistent under- achievement, which had become the norm in too many schools throughout the 70s and 80s.
He once said: “I am paid to challenge mediocrity, failure and complacency.”
Certainly he started as he meant to go on. A year after John Major appointed him chief inspector of schools in 1994 Woodhead publicly announced it was time to get rid of “15,000 incompetent teachers”.
He said teaching unions were a huge negative influence on British schools and he had no time for trendy, progressive teaching theories.
“Somebody has to tell the truth,” he said, “and that somebody should be the chief inspector of schools.”
Born in London he was educated at grammar school in Surrey and studied English at Bristol University before working as a teacher to those children “who didn’t have books on the sitting room wall”.
In 1969 he married his first wife, Cathy, and they had a daughter Tamsin in 1975 but by the following year the couple were divorced.
Although the story didn’t emerge until 1999, it turned out that Woodhead had grown close to a sixth- form student at Gordano comprehensive school, Bristol, where he was teaching in 1976.
The fallout was immediate but it was 12 months before he resigned.
He became a professor at the University of Buckingham, author and columnist and was awarded a knighthood in 2011.
In 2006 he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease and seven years later, liver cancer.
Despite being an advocate of assisted suicide he said he would prefer to die at home surrounded by his loved ones with Beethoven playing in the background.
He is survived by his second wife Christine and Tamsin.