The graph on the wall tells the story of it all?

“The graph on the wall

tells the story of it all”

Depeche Mode, Everything Counts (1983)

The Headmaster bears the burden of some pretty grim clichés. I’m thinking along the lines of a tall and stooped figure, spectacles low on a beaky nose and the inevitable long, black and slightly tatty gown evocative of the spectral dementors of the Harry Potter novels.

The ability to suck out all your memories of happiness aside, one thing most people associate with Heads of most sorts is an inexorable desire to see the exam results of their school rise on an endless upward trajectory. No stone will be left unturned in order to achieve this goal, no textbook unopened, no iPad unilluminated.

I am not one of those Headmasters (and all those double negatives have given me a headache). Don’t get me wrong, I want the pupils at King’s to achieve their individual best academically and as a selective school we should be rightly proud of the superb results the students collectively achieve. I simply don’t believe it’s right or healthy to focus on exam results per se.

As a school the well-being of our students must always be our first priority and such things will be jeopardised if they are subjected to undue stress and pressure to perform. Teaching to exams tends not to be a very wholesome or enjoyable experience, for both teacher and student, and certainly doesn’t engender the love of learning we are keen to instil.

Worst of all from a school’s reputational perspective, an unhealthy appetite for maxing out grades can lead to what the Enormous Crocodile (from my favourite Roald Dahl book) termed secret plans and clever tricks. Some of the finest educational institutions in the land have recently fallen foul of public exam jiggery-pokery and when you’re rumbled, it ain’t a nice place to be.

Arguably the greatest American Football coach of recent times was a chap called Bill Walsh. For all those who enjoyed staying up into the early hours for the Superbowls of the 1980s during the sport’s British TV apotheosis, he was the silver-haired and square-jawed chap with the San Francisco 49ers who won the Superbowl an unprecedented three times during that decade.  

Walsh later wrote a fine book called The Score Takes Care of Itself, in which he uncovered the secrets of his success. After a couple of wretched seasons in charge (I’ll return to the power of learning from failure in another post), Walsh established what he called the Standard of Performance amongst all 49ers staff. This fundamentally involved getting the basics right; a culture of high expectations, positive relationships, an excellent understanding of individuals and great training. Walsh knew that if these key things were in place, his team would win on match day (in fairness, having Joe Montana at quarterback probably helped a bit too).

If you simply substitute great training for great learning in the classroom, these are the very same factors that lead to exceptional value-added performance in individual students (how well they do relative to their abilities – far more important than just grades) and therefore to exceptional exam results. And that’s the way I want our staff at King’s to approach exam results. If we get the basics right, the results will take care of themselves, without risk to anybody’s mental health and without the need for secret plans and clever tricks.