No School Can Work For Everyone.

There is no such thing as one size fits all.

There are those who believe that grammar schools can work for everyone - Justine Greening thinks so, and is staking her reputation on it. 

I am not opposed to grammar schools - quite the opposite - I think they are great. They can be centres of excellence where our best and brightest students are stretched and challenged. For some lucky individuals they enable access to the best universities which would otherwise be denied them. But why anyone would think that grammar schools would be able to meet the needs of every child is beyond me. In fact I am angry for my colleagues in grammar schools - why would you want to dilute what they do so brilliantly??

Schools tend to do really well with a particular sort of learner. We become excellent at providing for them, understanding their needs, teaching them. Amazing work is done in all sorts of schools with all sorts of learners.

The student who will do well to gain a handful of F and E grades needs something different from the C grade student or the student who will get straight A*s. This any worth its school can cater for to some extent - differences in academic ability are the tip of the iceberg - although let's be clear that even a cursory glance at any school's data will reveal that they do better with certain groups of students.

There are students who cannot access the secondary curriculum because they have reading ages that preclude them from doing so. There are those who do not speak English well enough. There are students who are anxious, depressed, or traumatised who need calm quiet spaces or a reduced timetable. There are kids who have been damaged and who present with challenging behaviours.

There are learners with senory impairments and physical disabilities. There are dyslexics and dyspraxics. Those with ADHD, ODD, executive function disorders - you name it.

There is a reason that we have a range of provision: grammar schools, comprehensives, single sex schools SEND schools, PRUs, Medical Units... There's also a reason why so many parents flock to sign their kids up for the new free schools that keep cropping up - they are looking for something different for their children. Something that is not already there. And it's not always about results. In fact some parents want to avoid the data driven culture which is rife in our educations establishments.

No school - that I know of - does equally well with everyone.

When you walk into a clothes shop and see "one size fits all" on an item, you know it's a lie because we are all different shapes and sizes. When you walk into a school that claims to cater for everyone, well that's not true either.

I used to think that all students should be catered for equally in every school. Now I believe that's not either possible or desirable because what we desperately need are centres of excellence: places where knowledge and understanding of different needs can develop and be disseminated.

We need to develop an education system that caters well for everyone. To have schools which specialise in meeting different needs. To stop cutting funds to those school who appear to cater for a small number of students in the mistaken idea that they can be catered for in "good" schools. We need those small schools because they are the places where those kids do best and where staff know how to get the best out of them.