By Adi Bloom
Is Hogwarts a state school or a private school?
Large corners of the internet are devoted to answering this question. JK Rowling has even weighed in, to insist that Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is, in fact, a state boarding school, fully funded by the Ministry of Magic.
What does she know? Bah. She’s only the author. I am here to tell you that I have incontrovertible evidence that Hogwarts cannot possibly, by any stretch of the imagination, be a state school. And here is why: the Room of Requirement.
The Room of Requirement is a space in Hogwarts Castle that appears when someone is in great need of it, and contains the very thing they need at that time. The rest of the time, presumably, it’s just somewhere to keep aged overhead projectors and broken broomsticks.
If Hogwarts were a state school, however, there’d be none of this appearing-sporadically malarkey. Of course not: the Room of Requirement would be in permanent use, as a staffroom, or a library, or a replacement classroom when the Year 4 ceiling starts leaking again. Great need? That’s a permanent state of being in most state schools.
So teachers at schools that are not Hogwarts reacted with incredulity when the children’s commissioner, Rachel de Souza, suggested that schools might in future put “significantly underused” spaces to use for early education and childcare. A rough précis of the profession’s response? “What underused space??? We haven’t had a staffroom since 1993.”
As it happens, Souza’s argument is more nuanced than the punctuation-heavy comments give her credit for. In a report published this week, she points out that primary-school rolls will fall by a fifth over the next decade, because of declining birth rates. This will free up space in schools, which could then be used to provide childcare and early education for preschool children.
Anyone wondering if this doesn’t sound just the slightest bit familiar – yes, they were called Sure Start centres. And, yes, the current government shut most of them down. If you go to the Room of Requirement at half past 10 on a Tuesday morning, you’ll see a group of shoeless parents singing The Wheels on the Bus to their babies, at least until it starts raining and Year 4 comes to kick them out.
Still, Year 4 might take comfort from the knowledge that a handy fund – the Condition Improvement Fund – exists for precisely such situations as theirs. The CIF provides annual loans to smaller academy trusts, as well as some voluntary-aided schools and sixth-form colleges, to help address urgent issues such as roof repairs or boiler replacements.
But it’s just been revealed that a 10-year CIF loan will incur an interest rate of 5.37 per cent – up from 1.49 per cent last year. This means that it will cost schools tens of thousands of pounds more to repay the loans than it did previously. Sorry, Year 4: no new roof for you this year, so we’ve just bought you 30 umbrellas instead.
Still, perhaps it matters less than it might – give it a couple of years and there may not be anyone to deliver lessons in the leaky classrooms, anyway. Research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank reveals that around 50,000 education jobs will have to be cut by 2024, if the government’s spending plans remain. Again, sorry, Year 4. As Bill Clinton – whom you’ll never learn about now, because history teachers will surely be among the first to go – said, it’s the economy, stupid.
But perhaps the lack of staff doesn’t really matter, either, because it turns out that the programmes they were using to deliver learning weren’t up to much. A study by the Education Endowment Foundation has shown that Read Write Inc, one of the country’s leading phonics schemes, delivers only a small boost in reading skills, when children using the scheme are compared with their peers, and almost no progress in writing.
Year 4 are starting to look somewhat despondent now. Some of the boys are pushing one another under the dripping ceiling; two of the girls have ripped pages out of their exercise books so they can sail paper boats on the puddle by their desk. In the corner, one girl is sitting with her hand up, which seems a bit redundant given that her school has had to restrict teachers to the years that really matter.
Still, let’s take pity on her. Yes, Harper, what would you like to say?
“Are we still getting lunch, Miss?”
Well, yes and no. Research from the organisation that represents school caterers has found that 91 per cent are experiencing food shortages and substitutions. The survey of organisations providing lunch services for almost 10,000 schools also found that food costs have risen by 30 per cent since May.
As a result, 30 per cent of caterers have reduced the choices available to pupils. And – perhaps reflecting Jamie Oliver’s new status as ringleader of the anti-growth coalition – more than half say that they have increased or are considering increasing their use of processed foods.
Harper says nothing for a moment. Then, without another word, she stands up and leaves the room; there is no teacher there to stop her. She marches down the corridor, up a staircase and then another staircase, past the sputtering boiler, past Moaning Myrtle and the portrait of Godric Gryffindor, until she reaches the Room of Requirement. Then she walks in, slams the door behind her and bolts it from the inside.
Click here to read Adi Bloom’s This Week In Education column every week.
