Teachers and education experts this weekend paid tribute to Sir Tim Brighouse, “one of the great educators of this century” and “a delightful human being”, who has died at the age of 83.
The former schools commissioner for London and chief education officer for Birmingham and for Oxfordshire, who said he had learned from his own mistakes in teaching and believed in teachers’ ability to change the world, died on Friday after a short illness.
Brighouse was appointed chief adviser to the London Challenge school buddying scheme in 2003, at a point when only 16% of students in the capital gained five GCSEs at grades A to C, and is credited by many with a dramatic improvement in pupil performance.
Simon Smith, headteacher of East Whitby primary academy in North Yorkshire, said he had kept Brighouse’s list of “20 things teachers do” on his wall since he first started out in teaching over 20 years ago. The list includes “offering a welcome to every child” in the morning, “remembering a birthday”, “finding the invisible child” and “stealing crisps”.
Smith said: “As a young teacher what he said really resonated with me and it still does. He understood that when you get the relationships right the learning follows. That list is the most important one I’ve ever had. He saw that teaching is about being human.”
Ed Dorrell, a partner at the policy and research company Public First and a friend of Brighouse’s for 15 years after interviewing him regularly as an education journalist, said: “He was a delightful human being and a fantastic educationist. He loved children and he loved teachers and understood what made them tick.”
Dorrell, whose grandfather gave Brighouse one of his firsts jobs, recalled how the veteran reformer tackled the many difficult conversations he had to have with schools. “When he was leading Birmingham, he told me before he went he would always find out something unique that was happening at that school,” said Dorrell. “He’d say: ‘I’ve come to see you today because I want to hear about this great thing you do.’ He made them feel proud. Then the hard conversations were easier.”
Over the years, Brighouse was a notable adversary of Ofsted, particularly under Michael Wilshaw, and said in the Guardian last year that “accountability has gone too far and become punitive”.
Many educationists regretted this weekend that Brighouse was never given the chance to lead the schools inspectorate himself.
Prof Chris Chapman, chair of educational policy and practice at Glasgow University, who chatted to Brighouse via email only last week, said: “It’s a great shame he was never chief inspector. He could be sharp and hard when he needed to be, but he always did it in a very humane way.”
Chapman first met Brighouse when he was a newly qualified teacher in Birmingham and Brighouse was the director of education.
“How many education directors would know the names of all the new teachers? Well, he did,” he said. “He would visit your classroom and later you’d find a postcard or note in your pigeonhole.”
He added: “He knew how to galvanise the workforce. He did it in Birmingham, Oxfordshire, London, and nationally and globally. He was one of the great educators of this century.”
