Critical friend

[1] The term has its origins in critical pedagogy education reforms in the 1970s and arose out of the self-appraisal activity which is attributed to Desmond Nuttall.

The critical friend is characterised as falling between the extremes of the "hostile witness" and the "uncritical lover"[4] whereas earlier texts go so far as to allude to Janus in discussing the concept.

[5] This dichotomy appealed to Hutchinson who frequently used the term while leader of the South East Midlands Citizen's Charter Quality Network run by the Cabinet Office in Whitehall.

The phrase is still most commonly used in education circles but its wider use in the public sector can to a large part be attributed to Andrew Hutchinson and his natural enthusiasm for the concept, being described as 'a natural critical friend acting with positive intent' in 1999 by the then Chief Executive of Coventry City Council, Iain Roxburgh, who is now Director of the Warwick Research Consortium.

[7]Critical friends play an important role in decision making, for example in governance of schools where they hold the head teacher and other leaders to account, while supporting their wider aims without being sycophantic.