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The education system has been immune to any kind of threat for too long

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The education system has been immune to any kind of threat for too long."Later, he provoked an outcry by saying that there were 15,000 bad teachers who should be sacked and, more recently, he argued, to the embarrassment of ministers, that national tests were unreliable and that, anyway, some schools were cheating.He has lambasted primary schools which are still making models out of egg boxes instead of instilling the three Rs in pupils and pronounced the money spent on educational research a waste. Academics, he suggested in one of his most swashbuckling attacks, are at "the heart of darkness" because they promote unsound teaching methods.But his personality is more complicated than at first appears. During his career, he has been accused of being a liberal, a Conservative (under the previous government) and now a standard bearer for New Labour. Nearly 20 years ago, he expressed his fears about education under Margaret (now Baroness) Thatcher thus: "The economic recession might explain the present hardening of attitudes, the backlash against anything savouring of a progressive ideology."While he was deputy head of English at a Gloucestershire comprehensive school, Fenella Strange, then a sixth-former, remembers him as "this charming, other-wordly bloke.

The word I would use more than any other would be idealistic We considered ourselves years older than him... one felt one should hold his hand as he crossed the road".When he was a lecturer in Oxford University's department of education, he handed round a box of apples to the students in the hope that they would inspire creative writing.Mr Woodhead is tall, lean, mildly self-deprecating and looks younger than 52, perhaps because of his enthusiasm for rock-climbing and hill- walking. He has an enviable grasp of the English language: one of the keys to his influence is that he never uses educational jargon He is divorced and has one daughter. His present partner is Ruth Miskin, head of a successful primary school in the London borough of Tower Hamlets.The son of an accountant and a school secretary, Chris Woodhead attended Wallington grammar school in Surrey, where he was caned twice - once for cheating in a Latin test and once for turning the French master's pictures to the wall. The latter summed him up in his report in a single word: "Wild".His way to the top has taken him through the heart of the educational establishment which is the subject of so many of his criticisms. He read English at Bristol, followed by a postgraduate certificate of education, (PGCE) taught English in several schools and taught on Oxford University's PGCE course.When he left Oxford in 1982, he became an English adviser and later deputy chief education officer in Cornwall and Devon.

Ironically, he is now questioning whether local authorities have a future: a pamphlet on the subject from the right-wing think-tank, Politeia, is expected shortly.His first job on the national scene was as deputy chief executive of the National Curriculum Council His rise to the top was swift. A year later, he replaced the sacked chief executive and was soon appointed by Kenneth Clarke, then secretary of state for education, to be one of "three wise men" reviewing primary education. He was briefly head of the merged testing and curriculum council before he became chief inspector.Asked once whether he was ambitious, he said: "I think I must be, but not in such a way as to have structured my career from day one. I suppose I have seized the moment."There has been more fuss about Mr Woodhead's latest foray into controversy than on any previous occasion.

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