A creature created by New Labour

(Click the title to link to the article)

One of those 'you couldn't make it up' stories. Particularly nauseating for me as I started my teaching career at the said Crown Woods School, one of the LCC's 'flagship comprehensives'. Was it as good as it could have been? Of course not; it was a school of its time, using corporal punishment, wasting time and energy on uniform and, in too many classrooms, offering only the same old crap. But, crucially, the leadership and most of the staff were passionately committed to the concept of the comprehensive school and the principle that all young people were equally important and deserved a high quality education. Some subjects, notably English, were taught to mixed ability groups and during my short time there a successful move towards less selective teaching groups took place.

Now wind on fifty years and we have a morally bankrupt self-publicist recreating a selective system within one school. People might understandably think that other schools have done this and it's true that setting has become ubiquitous and the even more dubious banding also exists in too many schools. But out and out streaming is rare and I cannot believe that anyone else would be stupid enough to create separate mini-schools with their own uniform, for God's sake! To compound this egregious enormity, some (don't know what happened to Arden, Dean and New) of the historic Crown Woods 'house' names are used to name the 'schools'. Admittedly, it wasn't great to have houses (the influence of public schools was felt even at the birth of the comprehensive school), and naming them after forests because the school was Crown Woods was always a bit naff but, see, I was tutor to Sherwood 5. I can still remember the names of the kids who made up this microschool (if you will) and it was an absolute joy to teach English to a group containing those who would now be classed as having special needs and those who would go on to uni. English ability was not, of course, evenly distributed but all of them had something to offer, be it creativity, expressiveness, organisation, the gift of the gab (always underestimated in schools for obvious but unworthy reasons), logical thinking, lateral thinking, dramatic skills, analytical reading and all the other qualities which English, properly taught, can foster.

Anyway, the point of this post is that this sort of monstrosity being created in place of the real Crown Woods would not have been possible had not the whole comprehensive system been so extensively undermined by the likes of Blunkett and even poor old Estelle Morris (remember the bargepole?) who probably resigned because she no longer felt able to spout the nonsense she was told to. As in so many other areas, Blair has a helluva lot to answer for.