We don’t expect lesson plans from teachers and we don’t grade their lessons either. We trust our teachers to be professionals. Of course there is a system of accountability if teachers were to disappoint. Just because we trust and respect our teachers does not mean our systems are lacking in rigour. Steve Jobs once said that one should not hire clever people and set them targets. One should hire clever people and get them to tell you what to do. This is exactly what we do at Michaela.

We keep bureaucracy to an absolute minimum. This has a hugely beneficial impact on staff morale and performance. We have 100 per cent of our teachers staying on next year. And 100 per cent of our teachers have 100 per cent attendance at school. This provides the children with continuity and consistency and we exemplify the behaviour we expect from them. I often have conversations with families who are not good at getting their children into school every day. I say, the staff are always here and your children should be too. Our staff are always at school because they love being there, thanks to the ethos and environment we have created. I trust them and they trust me.

We centralise detentions and homework so that teachers don’t have to chase pupils. Our bespoke IT system to record bad behaviour has been created with minimal writing required from teachers. Homework is either self-marked or peer-marked: less paperwork for the teacher.

As headmistress, I am simply unwilling to bury staff in paperwork. But keeping bureaucracy at bay exposes the school to the risk of being slammed by Ofsted for doing just that. The problem with Ofsted inspectors is that they often believe their own rhetoric: boxes are all-important. How do I know this? Because all schools hire inspectors who double up as consultants to advise schools on how to play the game with their colleagues. It really is just a game, Ms Morgan. Many give schools scripts on what to say and how to argue with an inspector to raise the grade given by the inspector. The emperor really isn’t wearing any clothes. Please can we all stop saying that he is?

Although Michael Gove believed he had fixed things by not requiring self-evaluation plans from schools, inspectors are quick to point out that if a school doesn’t have one it immediately sets alarm bells ringing in their heads. But it simply isn’t the case, as one inspector told me, that one cannot evaluate one’s school on one’s own terms. He was absolutely convinced that one must always use the Ofsted handbook and apply it to the school. For him, that is simply what self-evaluation is.

I wonder what handbook Steve Jobs used to evaluate Apple?

After arguing at great length the other day with an Ofsted inspector on the value of written justifications, I asked him for the main thing he would change if he could go back to being a head. He had been head of two different schools before becoming an Ofsted inspector. He smiled and said that he would write a lot less down.

If we want innovation and creativity in our schools, we need to throw away the rulebook, get rid of Ofsted, and get rid of the pernicious, target-driven culture in our education system. Give heads the freedom required to run their schools the way they know works. Give families the freedom to choose the school that they want, meaning you need to abolish catchment areas, and prevent the middle class from rigging the system to work for them.

So much of the system is upside down. Please, Ms Morgan, be part of the struggle to turn it right-side up.