Another installment of the Haringey saga. The council, or should that be Ed Balls, has appointed a new director of children’s services. According to the London Evening Standard, Peter Lewis will earn £200,000 a year. That’s considerably more than Sharon Shoesmith was said to have been paid.
Is Mr Lewis that good? Well, the Standard tells us that Ofsted gave his previous department at Enfield a glowing report. That’s very reassuring.
Oh but wait a minute, Ofsted said the same thing about Haringey last year. It only changed its mind when the newspapers started calling for blood, after which it suddenly discovered that Haringey had, apparently, been crap all along.
So much for glowing Ofsted reports then.
Perhaps the real reason for Mr Lewis’s high salary is that Ed Balls couldn’t get anyone to take the job for less. The incumbent will inevitably become a target for the tabloids the minute anything goes wrong.
I’m not sure what the media-led witch hunt in the wake of the Baby P case has achieved, apart from increased costs for Haringey’s council tax payers.
The test is the pay level for the person immediately below. If they aren’t getting 150K, something is wrong.
To this you should also add pension etc etc. It strikes me the same amount could run quite a viable day care centre, Scandanavian style, which would allow mothers to continue with education/work should they choose to.
I’ve had a similar thing with Ofsted. When it suited, I had a glowing report. Later it appeared to be wrong and then it was again. Go figure.