A door creaked open. Deep inside its yawning mouth there was a soft, eerie fluttering. Old copies of The Morning Star tumbled to the floor, as Gabriel Shelley brushed past them and into the gloom. A narrow wooden shelf ran around the limits of the room and cardboard boxes full of leaflets announcing a rally in support of a Free Palestine littered the floor so that crossing it became a game of chequers where the winner was always Red. There was a soft click as Gabriel's guide eased the door behind them shut.
Without a word he raised his hand and beckoned through to the back of the office.
He knocked on a concealed door and Shelley wondered, for the first time, if he had made the right decision accompanying him to tonight's meeting. He had heard the rumours. The Enemies of Promise met in complete secrecy, and that no outsider had ever been admitted to their meetings, but there were always rumours: some said that they kept a dungeon full of children who had not been told their level since 2003. Others spoke of an unspeakable ritual involving group discussion, musical plenaries and differentiation by (Shelley remembered how his informant had shuddered) outcome. It was said their leader had trained in the Seventies, that she had once eaten an OFSTED inspector's right arm and Required Improvement in all areas except for Having Something on the Head, it was said...
"Enter."
The voice boomed from the inside the door, and Gabriel Shelley, a young Inspector freshly plucked from the classroom (which he had loved, honest, and he still had lots of friends who he kept in touch with still "hard at it") wandered blinking like a young lamb into the gloom. Would his superiors be pleased that he had penetrated the secret heart of the determined conspiracy to deny the Education Secretary a better job and thousands of children a brighter future through testing? He could not say.
His first impression was one of the massiveness. As he stepped into the Temple of Failure his eyes adjusted and he made out a sixty-foot high ceiling on which was painted - well, he couldn't tell but it looked like it had been done with finger paints. He made out what he thought might be a house, and noticed that nobody had marked it.
Around the room was rack upon rack of "groovy" textbooks. Some he recognised as notorious texts with Ethnic protagonists and lefty morals...there were also sets of games for teaching maths through social construction and a complete set of Vygotsky. The stench of Failure hung in the air, and there were no Standards anywhere.
In the centre of the room a round table was laid out with some Pritt Sticks, a pot of board markers and some sugar paper in the middle. Around it sat four people, five with his guide joining them. He saw an empty seat and wondered for the first time why he had been brought here.
"Greetings" said a hooded figure, "I am Period 1. We have heard much about you"
Another spoke up. This was a cheerful looking man with a tweed jacket who looked like he had never in his life been near a randomised control trial. He bent back his knuckles until they cracked and peered down his nose at Shelley.
"We have heard that you deplore modernity and have expressed the belief that Entrepreneurship should not necessarily be taught at five. Good show, good show. Are you by any chance a Trotskyist?"
A woman with brightly coloured beads, a hemp skirt and zero professionalism Smiled broadly from the right hand side of the table,
"They call me Period 4: feel free to use this time to just emote about your experience of coming here today: and don't mind Period 3, he never wakes up unless it's to agitate for unnecessary strike action which will cost the economy millions, or do the crossword."
A large man with a Che Guevara badge and no drive to raise attainment whatsoever snored beside her.
Suddenly the one they called Period 1 banged a metre rule loudly on the table (though he made no move to enter the incident on SIMS).
"SILENCE! In the name of Piaget, Marx, The Miners' Strike and Billy Bragg are you prepared to make a solemn oath this night to join The Enemies of Promise?"
Shelley gulped. "You mean..."
"I do. Are you prepared to become Period Five?"
