Education: Give teachers their head and they'll give you their heart I think it is fair to say that he won't be invited to give the keynote speech at the next Socialist Workers" Party conference, but from a parent's perspective, I'm a lot less interested in attributing the root of the problem to the militancy of the "disastrous Seventies and Eighties" than I am in sorting the whole sorry mess out. I've met school heads who were martinets and school heads who were pussycats, but who got the job done, displaying equal, if opposite permutations of forcefulness. But I've also encountered wishy-washy, drippy-droopy school leaders who couldn't be trusted to mop up a spill in the canteen much less run an inner-city primary. The upshot was that their staff ridiculed them personally and countermanded them professionally, which did no one much good. Yet it would be simplistic to place all the blame at the door of ineffectual heads, just as I fear, it is slightly heavy‑handed to accuse staff of deliberately sabotaging standards. Much of the conflict lies in the spectre of performance-related pay - a policy that Sir Michael supports, which is the norm in the city academy system, whence he came. Certainly, my elder daughter attends an Ofsted-rated "outstanding" girls" academy where the staff's energy and enthusiasm cannot be faulted. But my younger daughter attends an "outstanding" primary school where, to the best of my knowledge, there's no such salary structure in place. Yet here, too, the staff are wholehearted, dynamic and ambitious. I can only infer that it's the quality of leadership that's the clincher; a clear vision, the ability to choose teachers who share that vision and the drive to push through change where change is needed. For those children whose progress can be measured in conventional grades, there's an argument for teachers" salaries or bonuses to reflect success. But what about children who aren't academic? Those who may be severely dyslexic, autistic, suffer from Asperger syndrome or have other difficulties that impair their learning? Of course they deserve to have the very best teachers, but how will the application, the dedication, the sheer God-given patience of those teachers be recognised financially? We might like to imagine that teachers turn up to work for sheer love of the job, but they don't. Or they might love their jobs, but they quite rightly expect to be remunerated for the graft they put in. I suspect the reason why some teachers are difficult to manage is because they alone know what goes on in a classroom and what works with the children they have sitting in front of them. I'm sure Sir Michael is right when he says that teachers don't much like being told what to do. Who does? He exhorts heads to challenge teachers with a rather odd turn of phrase: "This won't make you popular, but if you wanted applause you would have joined the circus." And unless they heed the crack of Sir Michael's whip, they're probably going to wish they had.