Melissa Ann Benn (born 1957)[1] is a British journalist and writer. She is known for her support of comprehensive education and criticism of many aspects of government policy on education. Benn setup the Local Schools Network in 2010, a pro-state schools pressure group. She has written two books on the subject; School Wars, a study of the UK's post-war comprehensive education system, and The Truth About Our Schools.
Her first novel, Public Lives, published in 1995, was described by writer Margaret Forster as "remarkably sophisticated for a first".[2] In 1998 Jonathan Cape published Benn's Madonna and Child: towards a modern politics of motherhood which caused some controversy. The reviewers for The Guardian and The Observer criticised the book, while the Literary Review called it "a reflective, rich and rewarding investigation into the ...conditions of mothers' lives". The Guardian featured Benn as one of a number of Britain's leading feminist writers at the time.
Benn co-edited, with Clyde Chitty, A Tribute to Caroline Benn: Education and Democracy (2004), collecting various papers relevant to the campaign for comprehensive education,[2] an issue on which her mother had been a prominent campaigner. In recent years, Benn has become an advocate for comprehensives and a critic of many aspects of government policy on education. In 2006, with Fiona Millar, she wrote a pamphlet entitled A Comprehensive Future: Quality and Equality for All our Children, which was launched at the House of Commons in January 2006 at a meeting addressed by the former leader of the Labour PartyNeil Kinnock and a former Secretary of State for Education Estelle Morris.
Her second novel, One of Us, a story of two families set against the backdrop of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, was published in 2008.[3][4][5]
Benn helped form the Local Schools Network in 2010, a pro-state schools pressure group.[6]School Wars (2011) studies the UK's post-war comprehensive education system.[6]What Should We Tell Our Daughters? was published in 2013.[7]