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9781529931464

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An essential read – as entertaining as it is insightful – for anyone who cares about the way we treat young people . . . This book is a pleasure to read and its strength is that it is not . . . an enraged, politicised polemic. It is a considered and nuanced . . . diagnosis, looking at education from every possible angle . . . Exam Nation wears its sometimes disturbing findings lightly and mixes in healthy doses of self-awareness and black humour throughout . . . brilliant -- Viv Groskop * Observer * A deeply absorbing book that should be read by anyone who wants to understand how our current system really works — or rather, about the many ways in which it doesn’t . . . Wright’s most powerful argument is that as long we have our current system in place we are simply wasting the potential of the long school years — and our nation’s young . . . Wright deserves the highest marks for giving us deep insight into his considerable experience in the classroom and elaborating on all these complex themes with subtlety and a keen intelligence * Financial Times * Well-researched, compelling and thought-provoking . . . funny and self-interrogating . . . such a compelling read, no matter your outlook on our educational system . . . it will force any reader interested in education, with whatever their prejudices, to think about the experience of school, what it is for and who it is serving. And how, perhaps, we might make it better -- Lucy Denyer * Telegraph * A thoughtful and considered analysis of our education system that asks searching questions about what school is for . . . with sympathy and intelligence. He makes a series of recommendations for improvement . . . most of which are eminently desirable -- Michael Gove * The Times, *Book of the Week* * The timing of Sammy Wright’s book couldn’t be better . . . [this] should be a good moment for some serious soul-searching about the state of our schools . . . His journey through the history of English education, its relationship to class, and our exam culture, meets that challenge . . . it is rich in analysis of the current problem and in solutions, too -- Fiona Millar * Guardian *

Author Information

Sammy Wright is Head of School at a large secondary in Sunderland. He sat on the government's Social Mobility Commission from 2018 to 2021, becoming a key voice in the debates over exam grades during the pandemic. He has taught for twenty years at schools in Oxfordshire, London and the North East. His debut novel Fit won the Northern Book Prize.

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