Every other Christmas, as I re-watch the Harry Potter movies, I dust off my unpopular opinion of how the series should have ended differently. (Spoilers ahead.)
I am a fanboy of screenwriting-guru Robert McKee. “The finest writing not only reveals true character,” he says in Story, “but arcs or changes that inner nature.”
This is why I think Harry Potter should have stayed dead, leaving Neville Longbottom to take down Voldemort in the finale. Harry doesn’t really change. He’s ‘The Boy Who Lived’ from page one. His sacrifice to raise others up would have been much more meaningful.
Neville, on the other hand, is a character with a fantastic story arc. First seen being reprimanded by his gran for losing his toad “again”, by the showdown in the seventh book, he has grown into the hero who is first to charge Voldemort, with no protection from plot-armour prophecies.
The tedious expectation that Potter will always be the hero who saves the day has a lot in common with the way schools are looked to as the solution for, well, everything.
It is particularly apparent in the debate around English and maths, where the entire, brief “solutions” paragraph in the Association of College’s policy paper English and Maths: Towards 100% Success’ argues that it “has to start pre-16”.
That paper was published the day before the general election, so it is little wonder that the new government has since consistently focused on schools while sidelining FE on issues of teacher pay, VAT, and the level 3 pause and review.
Meanwhile, like Neville, colleges have undergone a dramatic and inspiring character arc, rising as unexpected heroes of English and maths. There has been a 94-per cent improvement in the achievement of these subjects through post-16 in the decade since the resit policy was introduced.
In fact, it is the only policy area in education where the disadvantage gap is actually closing. FE teachers’ enthusiasm for research has built a wide range of evidence, from the impact of mastery pedagogy on GCSE scores to the power of empathy, to the wellbeing opportunities resits can provide.
Colleges have undergone an inspiring character arc
By 2019, the last year before Covid caused accountability measures to be paused, the top 20 FE colleges were averaging strong progress scores in English and maths. Those same colleges, when the resits policy was introduced just a few years before, were averaging negative headline measures.
To put it bluntly, when they started out they were making students worse at English and maths. They were toadless.
How they changed that was by supporting their staff and believing in their students. A Dumbledore’s Army of resit teachers got their heads down into research about gillyweed, had the courage to stand up to the friends who needed convincing, and pulled something extraordinary out of a hat, turning the toughest but most important policy in education into a success.
You might think I’m stretching the applicability of Potter too far. Possibly, but it’s Christmas so indulge me.
Voldemort wanted to purge Hogwarts of ‘mudbloods’ and the weak and the vulnerable. We need to be absolutely clear that those at risk if we ease up on resits are the economically disadvantaged, and Gypsy, and Roma, and Black, and SEND students.
They have the lowest prior attainment at 16 only through lack of opportunity. It is their right to catch up that is protected by the policy.
We know from the department for education’s embarrassing backpedalling on the condition of funding last week that civil servants would be content negotiating Voldemort’s purge down to 2.5 per cent.
“We must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy,” Dumbledore might have counselled them.
I will hold onto my hope for the underdogs to be given the moment that Neville was denied; FE, and the students continuing with English and maths in 16-19, triumphantly taking us from the current 78 per cent achievement rate to the heights of 90 per cent or beyond.
The curriculum and assessment review provides an opening for DfE’s redemptive character arc too, perhaps mirroring Dumbledore’s own regretful reflection on his sorting hat: “Sometimes we sort too soon.”
Please stop cutting off opportunities at 16.
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