Book Review: Leading and Managing in the Early Years By Carol Aubrey. London: SAGE Publications, 2007. 187 pp., ISBN 978—1—4129—3497—8 (pbk), £22.99

Abstract

Many secondary schools, in their desperation to improve results, are being encouraged to reduce literature study to anodyne exercises . . . in how to please the examiner, turning young people away from a love of books.Mansell identifies twenty different ways in which test and examination results are used to hold teachers accountable, driving them to behave in ways that benefit schools rather than the children. Those who have visions and values of their own and resist the demands of hyper-accountability are severely punished. At Hunters Hall, a state primary in a working-class area, 140 children sing regularly in two school choirs and almost every year group is full because the school is overwhelmingly popular with parents. The 1999 inspection report praised the 'very strong' leadership and 'high quality teaching' at the school. Despite its acknowledged strengths, Hunters Hall failed one of the first inspections under the new Ofsted regime in 2005. The head believes the inspectors had a 'set agenda' exclusively concerned with test results, so that the quality of education was deemed inadequate without regard for other evidence. According to Mansell, the performance data that drives hyper-accountability is insufficiently reliable to support such comparative judgements, partly because the choice of indicators (e.g. 5A*-C) is arbitrary and value laden but also because: . . . the statistics are largely meaningless as a guide to improvements in our schools, because too much about the exams system has changed over the years to enable any sensible comparisons to be made.