Next Gen News

The headteacher, Michael Murphy, glows with pride at the new set-up. The son of Irish immigrants who was rejected by a secondary modern before being educated at a mixed comprehensive in Brixton, he is keen to point out all the ways in which standards have been driven up. When he took over the school, it was in special measures, and was "losing out" to grammar schools in Bexley and the selective comprehensive schools in Bromley. Now Murphy says the school is over subscribed for the first time, and is enjoying a more balanced intake of social classes and abilities. The reason, he says, is the streaming.

The school 's students are all positive about the new building and are proud to send in their uniforms. Some tell me they like the small school model, because they feel safer there than in a playground full of making thousands of students who can not name them left. Some of them are not so keen on the open-streaming model.

A girl aged 15, visited the Sherwood School, says that the student \ in the upper school "look" on the students ability in other schools like them. She says, arguments and fighting, between the various schools, broken, which she says began when the students learned that they block 'd go.

"If you were friends with someone in Delamere, you are kind of enemies now, because you 't want to talk to them. If you talk a bit with them you feel like you' don \ re betrayed (your school). "

"It was an argument at school the other day and the girls were arguing between the fences ... it just feels like we 've been cut off from them."

"They say if you 're gifted and talented, you' ll in Delamere, but there are other people in Sherwood and Ashdown, who are talented as well."