The Government had a hankering
An urge to measure schools.
“It’s too complex”, the teachers said,
“There simply aren’t the tools.”

Then,
In a gloomy basement,
One dark and dismal day
A dull and dreary grey man
Found
A way to measure grey.

MPs were delighted!
At last, they’d got the thing
To measure all the schools against.

Data would be king!

Money from school budgets
Got given to inspectors
The grey man took it greedily
And built more grey detectors.

Grey detectors
are effective
At measuring black
and white

But, sadly, not at all reflective
Of rainbow shades
in light.

So…

The grey man listed all the schools,
Neatly,
In order of grey
And shared his school grey tables
To see what the people would say.

Some people knew,
Tried to argue:
“This system isn’t right.”
But it was there
Beyond compare
Written in black and in white.

The pressure’s on, in every school,
To make their scores the best.
And, so, they increase shades of grey
By making a much harder test.

The stress from trying to be more grey
Up and down the land
Has a consequence, for kids,
We don’t yet understand.

Kids are getting sick of grey:
Sick and a little bit sad.
The drive to make them greyer each year
Is more than a little bit mad.

Let’s give kids their childhood back
Try hard to find a way
To value teachers’ rainbow lights
And not just keep measuring grey.