Guardian columnist Ted Wragg.
Photograph: Graham TurnerThe teacher, journalist and treasure of the education world Ted Wragg, who died early yesterday morning, is remembered in many of the papers today. The Guardian quotes a column about his experience on Channel 4's The Unteachables. "There was one moment when I came out of a study-camp lesson, where most had behaved like complete idiots, seething with rage, muttering, 'I am about to ruin a perfectly good career by taking each of them behind a tree and beating them up'," he wrote. There aren't many teachers who won't have felt like that at some point.
The Telegraph, in contrast, remembers how his longtime foe, the one time chief inspector of school Chris Woodhead, labelled him part of the "real heart of darkness" in education.
Wragg was the teachers' champion. The NUT describes how he was never cowed by a politician. When the day-to-day debates about education in the country might focus on parents' choice, or what Tony Blair can get past his cabinet, he was about the real nitty gritty of what went on between teachers and their pupils in the classroom.
EducationGuardian.co.uk carries a tribute from Rebecca Smithers, the Guardian's education editor, who remembers him warts and all - including a falling out with the Guardian during the general backlash against the teachers' unions in the early 1990s. But that's ancient history; Wragg had been back writing regularly for the education section since 2002.
His academic research at Exeter University was widely respected, but often masked by his wit which found itself into Rory Bremner's sketches when he moonlighted as a scriptwriter. His university's online message board of condolences is proof of his influence. Writing for EducationGuardian.co.uk, his Exeter colleague Professor Robert Burden remembers Wragg's academic career.
Recollections of Wragg and his writing dominated an awards ceremony last night, which he had been scheduled to open. You can read a back catalogue of his columns here, including how he got his own back on Chris Woodhead in 2002 in a review of Woodhead's book. "Thank goodness Woodhead is not running the NHS, otherwise we might all have leeches stuck to our bums," he concludes.
