There is no education system in the world that does not require some sort of scrutiny, whether that comes down to self-policing or the beady eyes of an external organisation.
Scotland has HMIE (as we still call it, even if you don’t see it used officially), England has Ofsted, the US has the Office of Inspector General and France has the Inspection Générale. Which got me thinking during a summer of travelling in the car and being forced to listen to endless (and occasionally entertaining) Harry Potter books on Audible: who exactly is responsible for monitoring Hogwarts?
As a critical professional, I have become increasingly concerned about the way the school is run. And at the risk of annoying roughly 85 per cent of the population of the world - have you ever tried denying the excellence of JK Rowling’s creation? - I do feel it is my duty to bring these concerns to the attention of a wider audience.
A wise headteacher once told me “get recruitment right and everything else is relatively easy”. Frankly, this Covid world has proven him wrong - but it is still a hugely important part of the job, and one that seems particularly haphazard in the wizarding world. With no regulatory body, it appears that anyone can become a teacher (rather like in England). Bloke with the most evil dark lord of all time grafted onto the back of his head - check. Overbearing self-publicist and notorious liar - check. Fraudulent psychic - check. And that’s just three Hogwarts staff who’d never make it past the steely glare of the General Teaching Council for Scotland.
Against this background of unqualified malcontents, the employment of a failed ex-student (expelled from the school and presumably lacking in any sort of formal qualification) as the resident teacher for the care of magical creatures comes as no surprise. It may be that Rubeus Hagrid has the experience in his subject area to present some kind of education to his pupils, but there are serious questions to be asked about his mastery of literacy and - as is displayed on a number of occasions - his blasé attitude toward safeguarding and child protection.
The school’s recruitment procedure seems irredeemably flawed. Perhaps filling books with detailed analysis of interview procedures for new teachers would detract from the excitement of spell-casting and quidditch (and may not appeal to younger readers), but the only teacher who goes through anything close to a formal process is Slughorn. Even then, the headteacher offers him a job with no thought of advertising for other potential candidates or consulting with the board of governors before appointment. Where is the accountability here?
Staffing ratios are particularly bizarre. Using a rough estimate of around 280 pupils, we would probably expect between 25 and 30 teachers, but there never seem to be more than 10 employed at any one time. Numbers are limited, after all, to how many you can fit on one long supper table where they can sit around drinking and staring malevolently at pupils. Timetabling is often referred to as an arcane art, but surely there is only so much that magic can do with such pitiful numbers of staff.
Lucky appointees at Hogwarts are instantly given a professorship without the hassle of spending years building up an academic research portfolio or the inconvenience of actually gaining a degree. I daresay, in certain circumstances, the appointment is justified - Dumbledore, for instance, seems to know a fair bit about magic (although I am less convinced of his ability to run a school in line with any standard for headship). But some of the others seem promoted far beyond their abilities. Many lack even the most basic concept of pedagogy and, more importantly, safeguarding procedures (of which more later).
Pedagogy is not particularly high on the agenda at Hogwarts. The overall standard of teaching in the school is questionable and possibly related to the lack of teaching qualifications among the staff. Lessons do, at least, follow a standard format that may have been determined by some kind of collegiate input, and run as follows:
The textbooks themselves are somewhat dated - many harking back at least several centuries - and there appears to be no quality control in the book lists. In one spectacular example, pupils in potion classes routinely use menu lists from a particular potions book that are all wrong. Harry excels in the classes because his book has cheat notes handwritten in the text.
Why, over previous centuries, has nobody questioned the use of a book that routinely has incorrect instructions? There is surely money to be made here writing a decent text (don’t even mention resources available on the internet). Instead of keeping up frankly exhausting-looking levels of villainy, Snape could have sat back and made a reasonable amount of money by publishing a decent update - royalties will, after all, accumulate handsomely over the long life of a wizard.
Perhaps my biggest concern is around safeguarding. Nobody in the history of a lesson at Hogwarts has ever taken a registration. Is there no wizarding equivalent of SEEMiS (our beloved online information management system in Scotland) to ensure everyone is present and correct, and that no truanting is going on?
It is perhaps indicative of the incredibly lax, Hogwartsian attitude to pupil welfare in general. Harry’s years at the school are a catalogue of injuries and potential disasters that could have been avoided with more robust risk assessment. There are no pastoral staff and the heads of house do not inspire confidence with their sharing of secrets.
Sorry to pick on one “teacher” in particular, but it is hard to see how Hagrid could have avoided disciplinary action for his part in pupil injury. Letting a pupil approach a dangerous Hippogriff with no precautions is unforgiveable and he is incredibly lucky the result was a mere broken arm. How he keeps his job, let alone escapes criminal proceedings, is beyond me. It would not happen in the Scottish education system.
But, then again, it is perhaps no surprise that such accidents can happen given the attitude of both staff and pupils to the casual bullying that takes place on a daily basis. Snape in particular seems to get away (almost) with murder. His relentless bullying of some pupils is never considered by senior management as a disciplinary offence and his blatant favouritism for pupils in his own house should have been stamped upon much earlier in his career.
It is difficult to see how a house system that perpetuates such bullying could survive in such a format in any other school. The system of rewards and penalties seems unduly complicated and so arbitrary it must be a nightmare for pupils to know what is expected of them.
House points are deducted for infractions that could not possibly be foreseen and, in some cases, merely because a teacher dislikes a certain pupil. Meanwhile, if your name is Hermione Granger, you can gain points for virtually anything. There is no reward for effort, merely for being clever - so many pupils have little incentive to try their best.
By book five, the system completely falls apart when individual pupils are given the authority to award house points and the culture of bullying in the school completely takes over.
So where do the authorities stand in all this? It is obvious the school is long overdue an inspection from a regulatory body that would come to the aid of pupils and help install an environment conducive to learning.
The only example of this taking place is when Professor Umbridge turns up and, at last, some kind of monitoring of teaching and learning is instigated. Unfortunately, the opportunity to make a real difference is squandered by an inspector who operates very much to her own agenda. Her attitude to pupil voice is particularly disquieting and her lack of collaboration with the staff body as a whole leads to her downfall.
What are we to make from this? The pupils at Hogwarts do seem generally happy despite all of the above. It has to be said that they are extraordinarily well-fed, yet obesity does not appear to be a major problem. This is difficult to understand when the only opportunity for physical fitness - apart from running around to escape the numerous dangers in the castle - is limited to elite athletes in the extremely confusing and nonsensical game of quidditch.
It may just be that the benefits of a proper wizarding education count for so much that parents allow the various indignities and lack of child-protection procedures to continue - I’m just not sure it’s a school where I would want to send my own children.
John Rutter is headteacher at Inverness High School
This article originally appeared in the 9 October 2020 issue under the headline “The Harry Potter inspection report, Hogwarts and all”
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