To Miss With Love was an obvious choice of title for Ms Birbalsingh's book, but maybe not the best. The love here is pretty much a one-way street, teachers making nearly all the effort and only the occasional pupil, like Stoic, deciding to join them. Stoic is a a realist. As he puts it "if you were black, you had to be bad...So I made the decision to go without friends, and to work hard instead."
Stoic is well-named, as are most of Ms Birbalsingh's characters (try Babybarrista for the same idea in law). The teachers are Mr Goodheart (HT), Ms Sensible (DH), Mr Sporty, Hadenough, Ms Useless, Ms Joyful, Ms Alternative (who leaves), Inspirational (who has left to go to Basic School, where they have mixed-ability, and who hates it) Mr Cajole (DH, these places always need more than one) Ms Magical (whom KB admires, and who gets a satisfactory from an formulaic Ofsted inspector). Pupils - Seething, Deranged, Munchkin, Cavalier, who is bullied badly by Furious, gets expelled and comes back to put Furious in hospital - justice! - Adorable, Beautiful (Furious's girlfriend, and cause of the bullying of Cavalier), Dopey, Dreamer, Psycho, Smartie, Inspired ( a pupil KB talked to once, and who got to Oxford) etc. Ofsted hangs over the book like the sword of Damocles until near the end, when the school is rated good - which shows how much David Bell's Ofsted knew - and Mr Goodheart congratulates KB, aka Snuffleupagus or Snuffy, on her having made sure the inspectors did not see the fight or the ambulance turning up for Furious.
The Secretary is Ms Reliable, parents Ms Principled, Mr and Mrs Well-meaning (he Chair of GB, and keen for teachers to learn from the pupils, even if it is how to spot drug dealers on slow bicycles), Mrs Important (solicitor, mother to Adorable, who has her phone stolen by Furious), Mr Inevitable and Ms Desperate, foster carers to Furious, and completely at sea. Oh, and Mrs Nutter, who yells down the phone at KB over her objection to Seething's nose stud -"You teachers are always victimising these kids. I know what you teachers do. It's illegal...I've taught Seething how to stand up against you teachers. I've taught Seething how to stand up for her rights."
The book is summed up in a phrase toward the end, when KB talks of "the excruciating madness that is the secondary-school system", but I have to admit to a touch of disappointment. KB is not the only writer to shine in brilliant, brief moments - I think the same of Burns - but the powers that be have got to her. KB's blog had the directness of something that happened yesterday. It seems from her account, here, that the problem is that the truth is actionable, and Penguin were afraid of being sued, as were the lawyers from The Sunday Times once it was clear that schools she had worked in could be traced. The book is still interesting, still true at heart, but the immediate, pin sharp focus has gone. And of course her critics are now saying that she's written a work of fiction because she's disguised children's identities - one of them is even citing an Ofsted report on a school she taught in as evidence that it was a good school, no doubt the report in which Ofsted failed to spot the fight and the ambulance. The criticisms of Ofsted in the book seem fully justified, as it is set in Ofsted's bad period of 2005-10.
Are most schools as bad as Ordinary and Basic? No, but South London schools in the early seventies certainly were. I was at Beaufoy, and my head of department, a man of 6ft 4 and built to match, was put in hospital for three weeks by a gang of pupils who attacked him on the school site. The Inner London Education Authority refused to take action, as they usually did. Tulse Hill had a reputation worse than ours, and yet when a colleague of mine took over as HT, the first thing he said was what a good school it was! I have worked for Mr Goodheart. It's now six months since KB's brilliant, brave, conference speech. What she said needed to be said, and she was and is an authentic voice from the lower depths. Thankfully, it is not all as bad as this. I hope that she will be happier in her next job.