Product reviews for About Our Schools

What has happened to English schools over the past 40 years? Are they stronger after decades of rapid and often bewildering change? Tim Brighouse and Mick Waters, with their extensive knowledge and experience of all levels of schooling, are uniquely qualified to give us the answers.

Drawing on lengthy interviews with dozens of leading educational figures – ministers and former ministers, civil servants, directors of academy trusts, school inspectors, local authority officers and more – as well as their own personal recollections, Tim and Mick share new and sometimes shocking discoveries about how decisions that affected millions of children were reached.

Through sometimes hilarious anecdotes as well as unfailingly perceptive analysis, this book reveals the truth about what was happening behind the scenes as almost everything in the world of education changed – from the school curriculum to marking schemes, from teaching methods to pupil exclusions, and from the rise of academy trusts to the role of head teachers.