Hip Hip Hooray. Mr Manning is terribly chuffed this morning not to have to waste any more of his time prepping stressed-out adolescents on their key stage 3 SATs which yesterday were binned by Balls. Yet how do you measure achievement while taking account of the context? Getting one of his 'broken' pupils to laugh out loud at a Shakespearian joke ranks very high on Mr Manning's success indicators. Only he and the school know the significance of this. For the same pupil to get a 'D' at GCSE English would also be a major success - in the pupil, teacher and school's eyes - but never in the league tables.
With the challenges of their intake, his inner city comprehensive that takes pupils excluded from other schools is rightfully proud to achieve a 75% A-C grade GCSE pass rate in 5 subjects. Yet this percentage does not do the school justice in that it cannot reflect the context in which these results have been achieved. We surely need a more intelligent and sensitive approach to gauging a school's success, and definitely not one another one that shackles teachers to more paperwork. Mr Manning is off on Friday for an unpaid weekend away with 140 of his pupils - aspirations will grow, confidence flourish and emotional intelligence will soar amongst those 11 year olds in those 2 days. Can any of that be measured?
