Inquiry into headteacher’s suicide says ‘macho culture’ of inspections must end

Review commissioned after the death of Ruth Perry criticised ‘the spurious notion that only a one-word judgment can adequately describe the quality of a school’. Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA

An independent inquiry into the death of the Reading headteacher Ruth Perry has called for an end to England’s “macho culture” of inspections and school accountability.

The review, commissioned by Reading borough council after Perry’s suicide last year, said the tragedy should “highlight the folly of the macho culture of high-stakes accountability” inflicted on England’s schools.