A HEAVY-HANDED approach to education is driving teachers and new recruits away from the profession and putting children’s futures at risk, it has been warned.

As she retires from teaching after 30 years, Oxford Spires Academy principal Sue Croft warned pressure from the Government, academy trusts, the regional schools commissioner and Ofsted posed a threat to social mobility and to learning.

Mrs Croft, who took over at Oxford Spires when it replaced the struggling Oxford School and transformed it into one of the city’s top-performing secondaries, said: “I am really worried we are heading towards a culture where the individual expertise and potential to problem solve in the classroom is being eroded and there is too much top-down [leadership].

“I do not think we are making it attractive enough for bright young people to get involved and give it their all.

“If you have a top-down approach and you have disgruntled staff with low moral or staff who move on very quickly or move out of teaching, the ultimate effect on children is that they will not have specialists in the classroom.

“They certainly will not have continuity and the human element of teaching that is the crucial part in terms of social mobility will be lost.

“You do not turn around a school in an area of deprivation without using human relationships: strong relationships, caring relationships, a culture of caring is absolutely crucial.”

Many schools, including Oxford Spires Academy, are now run by academy trusts but continue to also be accountable to the Department for Education, school watchdog Ofsted and regional schools commissioners - unelected officials with responsibility for academies in large subdivisions of England.

Earlier this month the departing headteacher of the Dragon School, John Baugh, told the Oxford Mail there was too much political interference in education and that schools should be run independently.

Recent statistics from the National Foundation for Educational Research show each year 10 per cent of English, maths and science teachers across the country leave the profession.

And last year this paper revealed a teacher recruitment crisis had left schools in the county struggling to fill posts in some subjects such as ICT, technology and design and religious studies.

Mrs Croft said: “There is an increasing system where people like to make decisions at the top but actually have no ownership of the people who are trying to deliver it in the classroom.

“There are too many fronts on which you have to deliver. You have got so many people to whom you are accountable.

“The Government is beginning to talk about giving the profession back its professionalism.

“There are some nuggets of hope but at the end of the day people who rise to the top find it very difficult to give decision making powers to the people below.”

Mrs Croft was appointed as the first headteacher of Oxford Spires Academy in 2010 ahead of its opening.

It replaced the Oxford School, which was rated as ‘satisfactory’ by Ofsted - a rating which has since been changed to ‘requires improvement’ - the watchdog’s second-lowest.

Since 2013 Spires has been rated ‘good’ and regularly comes near the top in GCSE and A-Level league tables in Oxfordshire.

Education expert John Howson said top-down leadership stemmed back to 1976, when the Prime Minister spoke in Oxford to highlight inequalities in state education.

The Oxfordshire county councillor said: "One of the areas there was grave concern was the 'secret garden' of the curriculum, entirely at the hands of the professionals.

"During the 1980s that view hardened up and and we ended up with the Education Reform Act. This was the start of centralisation of the curriculum.

"It gradually became more and more politicised and less and less at the hands of the professionals. Over time, the Government got more interfering, in view of raising standards.

"It's absolutely right that the Government should have a view of the quality of education and what should be taught, but there is a limit of the extent to which it should get involved.

"You don't tell a doctor how to perform operations. This is a profession: people should be able to profess."

A DfE spokesperson insisted that teaching 'continues to be a popular profession', adding: "We want to free teachers up to do what they do best - inspire all young people to fulfil their potential.

"That is why we have worked with the unions, teachers and Ofsted to challenge unhelpful practices that add to teacher workload. This includes not introducing any changes to the curriculum, qualifications or accountability without at least a year's notice."