Taster days

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This week a party of Year 10s take an aspirational visit to St. John's College, Cambridge. There's a guided tour, and a chance to sample life at one of the university's richest colleges.Meanwhile it's a taster day too for next September's Year 7s who are visiting the school for a series of sample lessons, and literacy and numeracy tests, to gauge their current achievement levels. In the past the new intake has included a large number of children with very low reading ages, but not so this year. Is it evidence of the improvement in local primary schools, or the rising popularity of Lilian Baylis amongst middle class parents? Headteacher Gary Phillips reflects on the unfairness of the current system, recalling Ivan Illych's 1971 description of education as a fruit machine, where the jackpot is advertised with no reference to the odds.