Amanda Spielman, 1979

Amanda read Law at Clare and went on to become a chartered accountant. Intellectual curiosity then lead her to UCL for a Masters in Comparative Education, propelling Amanda into a career in education and her current role as Chief Inspector at Ofsted.

Who was your greatest Clare influence and why?

I would have to single out Dr Riley, for his memorable first-day talk to the freshers. The essence of it was that we were now adults, with freedom to explore all the opportunities that gave us – but that we should try to avoid scandalising the bedders!

Amanda's Story

My university experience was the classic curate’s egg: good in parts.

At 18 I was bursting with intellectual excitement, but sadly it leaked away by the end of my first year. In 1979 the Cambridge maths course owed little to all that is now known about effective teaching and learning. Some lecturers were good but some perfunctory or incomprehensible; similarly some supervisors were good but some were Part 3 students themselves, with as yet no inkling of how to teach. Problem sets were often just past tripos questions, offering no structured pathway to build understanding and fluency and so to develop problem-solving.

In the courses where these problems intersected, I learned almost nothing and became thoroughly discouraged and miserable. I was too embarrassed to talk to my tutor and ask for help. Like more than a quarter of the maths intake, I chose simply to abandon maths after a year.

Fortunately my second choice, Law, proved more rewarding. The course was well structured, most courses had two parallel sets of lectures from which to choose, supervisions were generally excellent, and I enjoyed my time, though I never had the same thrill that I had once had about mathematics.

At the same time the wider experience was enriching – I had several social circles, got involved in student politics, tried rowing, coxed a Long Vac boat, played tennis, sang a little, partied quite a lot, and met a husband at Clare (alas that didn’t last, but I married again, a Magdalene man).

I went on from Cambridge to become a chartered accountant, then went into mergers and acquisitions, then strategy consulting, then private equity. The combination of maths and law was a powerful one and served me well. Slowly my intellectual curiosity resurfaced and at the end of my thirties, I scratched the itch by studying for a masters in comparative education at the UCL Institute of Education. This was tremendously satisfying and propelled me into a career in education, culminating in my current role as His Majesty’s Chief Inspector at Ofsted.

Oddly enough I would say that the unhappiness of my first year has been a strong influence in my current job. It has contributed to my determination that all children and students should benefit from curriculum and teaching that allow them to make all the progress they can. Human capital is the biggest asset we have; it should never be wasted.