School Wars by Melissa Benn

Author:Melissa Benn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

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The results conundrum brings us back to schools like Mossbourne and my old school Holland Park, nowadays another much vaunted example of the high-performance, tough-love culture. When writer Michele Hanson, once a music teacher there, went to visit the school, she noticed how staff must always ‘be on their toes. They must “Check, monitor, assess, challenge student progress/performance by rigorous application of current results against predicted data”. And “Middle Leaders: are you role-modelling teaching techniques … and developing the skills of your team by monitoring and coaching best practice?”’33

The language may be deadly, but these developments have provoked a lot of discussion among parents and educators. Are these places appalling, soulless exam factories or are they common-sense, durable versions of the comprehensive vision for troubled modern times: tightly run ships focussing on exam success, particularly for those students whom it has eluded up to now? School leaders in the maintained sector generously acknowledge that it is possible to learn something from the Mossbourne model, such as the close attention paid to individual progress; excellent pastoral care and rigorous data monitoring, while retaining a more informal pedagogy, direct lines of accountability and a generally warmer atmosphere. This is the direction to go in. But it is not the official version. Given the current direction of English schooling, the strange marriage of privatisation and hyper-accountability, with all its pressures and restrictions, looks as though it is here to stay.

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