Exam Nation : Why Our Obsession with Grades Fails Everyone – and a Better Way to Think About School

Author: Wright, Sammy

United Kingdom, Great Britain

Published on 15 August 2024 by Vintage Publishing (The Bodley Head Ltd) in the United Kingdom.

Hardback | 288 pages
162 x 241 x 31 | 490g

Exams, grades, league tables, Ofsted reports. All of them miss the point of school and together they are undermining our whole approach to education.

‘A tremendous book, like the best lesson ever – informed, funny, fair’ Richard Beard‘Extraordinary and brilliant . . . the book education has been waiting for’ Laura McInerney, co-founder of Teacher Tapp'Such a compelling read, no matter your outlook on our educational system' TelegraphWhat is school for? Drawing on his twenty years as a teacher, hundreds of interviews and his experience on the UK Government's Social Mobility Commission, head teacher Sammy Wright exposes the fundamental misconception at the heart of our education system. By focussing on the grades pupils get in neatly siloed, academic subjects, we simply end up ranking them and our schools into winners and losers: some pupils are set on a trajectory to university - the rest are left ill-equipped for the world they actually face.

Wright's entertaining and hugely important book shows that schools are - and should be - so much more than this. With wisdom and humour, balancing idealism and pragmatism, he sets out what a better way would look like and how we might get there.

‘Written with heart and humour, Exam Nation brilliantly illuminates the realities and blindspots of the system’ Jeffrey Boakye‘At last. A report from the front line of schooling that shows how British education has become swamped by the cult of the exam’ Simon Jenkins‘A book that tells the truth about Britain’s national exam obsession - and the harm it does’ Anthony Seldon