The thrust of this book isn’t hard to decipher, the witty title says much, but also undersells it.
This is not a book about exams, grades and testing as much as it’s a book about English education in general : what’s good about it, what’s not, what should change but won’t, what might change and should be tried.
Naturally, at the root of the issue is that much of the system and how it works is shaped by an obsession with testing.
Wright tours the country asking pupils about their experiences of schooling, asking their opinions on what it’s for, why they are motivated or not motivated at school, how they view grades, exams, teachers…
What emerges is a complex picture recognisable to anyone who has children navigating an education system. Firstly, that “school” is not a monolith and the stages of schooling – particularly primary and secondary – need to be discussed differently not lumped together. Secondly, pupils – and by extension how schools interact with them - cannot be understood without their family circumstances, their individuality, their peer group pressures and the demands of the society around them.
This may seem prosaic, but as Wright delves deeper and deeper into the issues schools and teachers need to deal with : from safeguarding, to behaviour, to absenteeism, to SEND, the sheer complexity and sensitivity of the myriad demands on schools becomes bewildering.
Within that landscape the national obsession with grades and testing forms a structural scaffold that drives expectations and behaviours. Wright is ambivalent about exams, understanding their signalling importance while lamenting the way in which they narrow the experience of learning into what is measurable and therefore valued. He says :
Teaching without testing whether something has been learned is a dangerous game. But to teach to the test can undermine the usefulness of what you teach in the first place.
The early chapters of the book focus on these “paradoxes” at the heart, not just of English education, but of modern education systems. He outlines how privilege, of background and home circumstance, provides hidden advantage and he dismantles the falsehood of meritocracy that underpins so much of the story we tell ourselves about what our education system is for.
..the heart of the problem is that the idealised “meritocratic” logic of the system results in schools whose purpose is not the general education of all pupils according to their natural aptitudes, but rather the sorting of kids into the positions in society that they “merit” according to an academic scale. The most pernicious result of this is that the pupils themselves can see the lie for what it is.
The book is structured in three parts – what is school for, what is it like and how can it be done differently. The first two parts are crafted around, and illustrated by, the stories of specific children ; children who are good and bad at exams, children with behaviour issues, children who have been excluded or who have SEND. Anchoring the dry, technical issues in the real experiences of exemplar children gives the book a strength and immediacy which keeps the reader engaged. It’s good storytelling.
Wright writes warmly and affectionately about the pupils he teaches and the ones he interviews here. His empathy for the children he speaks to is evident, and, this combined with a good northern sense of humour makes for easy reading. His analysis is sharp, deep and borne of long experience, but he allows his humanity and passion to come out, often in prose which is lyrical. Teaching is storytelling he says:
The stories we read, and borrow from, give us a pattern that can make sense of the incomprehensible complexity of our own lives. They give us something we never find anywhere else: a beginning and an end, and a path from one to the other. It doesn’t matter how simplified they are. A map works not by showing everything, but by highlighting the most significant and unchanging landmarks – and stories are a map to regions of the human heart that are otherwise unnavigable.
Wright ends his book with five suggestions for how to improve the education system. They are generally modest, sensible and grounded – the most radical is a “Passport Qualification” taken a year before GCSE’s allowing a much broader and richer assessment of ability plus time to explore different futures. This would address one of the English system’s weakest aspects, over-emphasis of academic routes and a tendency to force specialisation much too early.
“What we measure defines what we do” he says – break up OFSTED, get rid of key stage 2 SATs. Continue with oversight and accountability but push the national conversation to a broader discussion of what we, society, value – which is more than a number and a grade. It’s not hard to agree with such appeals, it’s good common sense. But, in our fragmenting polity how are we ever going to agree on such defining issues ?
This is a great guide to the current state of English education – with many observations and conundrums that are relevant well beyond England’s shores. It’s thoughtful, caring and wise. It does not pretend to have all the answers, but it provides a map for the debate. It may be more like a “buried treasure” map than an Ordnance Survey, but you have to start somewhere. This book is a pretty good place to begin.
Andy Brock - May 2026
Thanks Andy!