‘Reporting without fear, or favour’: HMI 2000-2010, and oral history
2018
This thesis contends that the methodological approaches taken in exploring education
inspections in the last twenty years are largely unhistorical and result in a particular
view that contrasts current school inspections unfavourably with previous approaches,
as a result of the particular methodoligical stances adopted, often analysing teachers’
experiences of inspections using Foucauldian and performativity theoretical
frameworks. Even studies with a more-historical bent tend to present Her Majesty’s
Inspectors (HMI) as belonging more to a less-destructive golden age of ‘professional
relationships’. The evidence bases for the hypotheses tend to omit, to treat as
incidental, or to dismiss as misguided the views of inspectors, particularly the
experiences of HMIs. The literature suggests also that the office of HMI effectively
ceased to exist by the year 2000.
This research set out to locate previously unavailable evidence about the work of
HMIs after 2000 and to consider what that evidence revealed about the nature of the
role at that time, using the method of oral history. The research looked at the
experiences of a small group of former HMIs, who were active in the period 2000-
2010, through semi-structured, recorded interviews, subsequently transcribed and
analysed thematically, to see what the HMIs’ recollections reveal about the prevailing
debates, and to contribute to the growing body of literature about the value of oral
history as a distinctive branch of historical method.
The study argues that, throughout the period, HMIs operated as independently minded
individuals, who sought to transcend their particular circumstances, in order to sustain
a sense of the purpose and values which they considered underpinned the office. It
demonstrates also that oral history evidence is as valid and useful as any other
historical source, notwithstanding some distinctive contigencies and limitations
associated with it.
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