Bureaucrats: Big, Bad, and Bullying.

The news item which most caught my attention today was the death through suicide of a primary school head teacher. Her school had been subjected to an Ofsted inspection and given a low grading. It appears that the inspection itself and the poor grade had driven her to such a depth of depression that she couldn’t bear to live any longer.

(And it’s worth mentioning that one of the criticisms levelled at the school concerned the case of a young boy who performed a dance in which he simulated flossing his teeth. The inspector said this indicated that the school was ‘encouraging the sexualisation of children.’ Children are encouraged to floss their teeth in furtherance of dental health. Please tell me, if you can, how this translates into the sexualisation of children.)

This all paints a tragic picture, but let’s look at the bigger one.

Ofsted is the government’s school inspectorate in the UK. It represents one phalanx of a burgeoning army of bureaucrats who are – along with the corporate world – growing into an ever greater controlling factor in British culture. And I don’t think I’m being overly fanciful in suggesting that politicians of all the major parties are conniving in this process. I’ve been saying it for some years now, and the tragic death of a committed educational professional has brought it to head.

The public needs to be aware of this, and they need to push strongly against it. If we don’t, it will only get worse until we’re struggling through life under the cosh of something approaching the SS, the Stasi, and the KGB.

And now I really am being fanciful. Am I? Maybe a little, but only a little.