Exam Nation by Sammy Wright (Bodley Head £22, 288pp)
Yesterday at 8am, hundreds of thousands of 18-year-olds – and their anxious parents – found out their A-level results, with the joy or despair that followed.
Those grades were the culmination of years of hard slog, exams and assessments – but what exactly did that one day really tell us about these teens’ achievements?
After the chaos of grades during the pandemic and the correction in last year’s results, many parents may be questioning just this. As a result, this provocative new book by Sammy Wright, an experienced teacher and former member of the UK Government’s Social Mobility Commission aims to ask us: just what is school for?
Pupils receive their results today at Parrs Wood High School in Didsbury, Manchester
Pupils at Solihull School, in the West Midlands receive their A-level results today
It may sound like an obvious question. In theory, school equips our children to become independent and productive citizens, to get good jobs and forge their lives. In reality, says Wright, the current system means one thing: passing exams.
For those who were pleased on August 15, that’s fine; for millions of others who are disappointed or who didn’t even get that far in the first place – where does it leave them?
To write this book, Wright has put in the hard yards. He visited 20 schools over the course of a year and interviewed hundreds of children. Most places are anonymised except for a few high-profile and controversial schools such as the Michaela Community School in North London and the Reach Academy in Feltham.
He also looks back on his own two-decade career in teaching, including an encounter with former student, Kingsley Ben-Adir, the Bob Marley: One Love actor, who is interviewed.
The book is split into three parts: what is school for, what is it like, and how can it be done differently. Wright begins by skewering the current problems that bedevil teachers and students. In particular, he looks back to the gaming of the system that has been in place since performance tables were introduced in 1992.
Wright is excoriating about what he sees as the marketisation of the school system, and in particular the way Ofsted operates so that its simplistic one-word grades all too often end up giving high scores to schools that benefit from privilege rather than academic excellence, referring to Ruth Perry, the Berkshire headteacher who took her life in 2023 after an inspection.
But don’t be fooled into thinking this is nothing more than a woolly liberal tract, despite Wright’s criticism of the private school system.
He analyses the different approaches of such thinkers as Ken Robinson and E.D. Hirsch and is clear that we still need exams, a curriculum, and to assess and measure schools. He praises Michaela (famously dubbed Britain’s strictest school) for its lack of bullying, and honest approach to competition.
If your child’s results weren’t as good as you and they had hoped, don’t despair, there are plenty of options available to them aside from university
Actor Kingsley Ben-Adir, who went to William Ellis School in Gospel Oak, north-west London, and stars in Bob Marley: One Love, was inspired by two teachers to become an actor
The book really comes to life with the children that Wright interviews – both aspirational and resigned, who are super ambitious or who cannot see the point of learning various subjects and who understand that their peers play a huge role in their school life.
Wright’s talent is to let these voices shine through – these interviews have the ring of authenticity (as do his sometimes hilarious, sometimes depressing anecdotes about his own teaching life). And it also makes clear there are no easy answers – Ben-Adir, his star interviewee, was inspired by two teachers to take up acting, but even then his path to fame was not straightforward.
Wright also has a neat turn of phrase; you can see how he’d be an inspirational English teacher. I particularly enjoyed his comparison of Michael Gove as Education Secretary in a gamed system, with Captain Renault in Casablanca walking into Rick’s Café and being shocked to find there is gambling going on.
It certainly challenges you as a middle-class parent who’s blithely told their children how important passing exams are (and gone through every school open day looking at their results first).
As Wright points out, the straight-A student who becomes a teacher may end up less well off than the pupil who sets up a plumbing business, and that plenty of people who go to university end up in ‘staggeringly boring’ jobs.
I was convinced as well by Reach’s decision to run classes through from age three to 18, avoiding the often traumatic shift from primary to secondary and meaning families can end up having a 20-year relationship with a school with the positive investment that can follow from that.
Wright also puts his money where his mouth is and attempts to come up with practical solutions himself. This includes changing Ofsted so safeguarding and education inspections are divided; having
GCSE-style qualifications a year earlier to provide a bridging year for retakes or a year without exams for those who are contemplating A-levels. He also advocates lotteries rather than catchment areas and wrap-around care to fit in with parental work patterns.
In the end, however, he concludes the best schools have one point in common – they all tell a story, and help their pupils tell a story about the need for something that transcends the individual – whether that’s Michaela’s aspiration or Reach’s community.
And so whatever results your child got yesterday, if you found them a school that gave them that foundation, it will set them up for their best future.
