Christopher Loft

Over Our Heads Christopher Loft

After spending over twenty-five years working in mainstream education, and reflecting on the many changes he has seen during that time, Christopher Loft created the fictional Silver Lake Academy, first as a series of short stories on his website and now as a novel charting a year in the life of what may well be the worst school in the country. Over Our Heads is full of tales of grotesque school managers, suffering staff, and pupils who are routinely tortured, made to disappear or simply forgotten about. Anyone who has worked in mainstream education in the last couple of decades will recognise features of these stories, from the Classroom Arrangement Ticklist to the school inspection, from the ridiculous conclusions drawn from data analysis to the stifling of creativity through a dull curriculum and robotic teaching styles. You will laugh, cry, nod your head in agreement and shake it from side to side in bewilderment. Over Our Heads, 'an absurd, brilliant, ridiculous satire of our times', exposes much of what is wrong with the education system today, but also points the way forward to a brighter future.