I don't now present the Bournemouth of decades past as some golden model of a golden age. It was just one good, cohesive secondary modern. There were many like it - but there were, equally, many perfunctory schools which never lifted their eyes. The system, as a whole, wasted too much potential, based too many expectations on the frail hinge of intelligence testing. An impossible political sell.
Schools get results.
Individual teachers, working to any number of prescriptions, following any number of stars, get results. They all make a contribution. They all have something to teach us. The mixed-ability disillusion of Mr Blunkett and Mr Blair today reflects only the glum truth that there aren't enough Mollys to go round. Examine, then, a few of that Bournemouth school's modest virtues.