“Lazy”, was all that one of her teachers wrote. “Not working to capacity”, reported another. “More effort required”, “could do better” and “very poor indeed” were the typical comments of the rest.
If Miss Hardbroom had written a school report about Mildred Hubble, it might have read a little like this. For these are the damning words of the schoolteacher nuns who inspired the late author and illustrator Jill Murphy to create The Worst Witch.
In one of the last interviews she gave before she died of cancer in August 2021, she told the Observer she had “bumped along at the bottom” of a strict Catholic grammar school: “The whole ghastly experience gave me the Worst Witch, because I was Mildred, one of the worst students at the school.”
Now, to mark the publication of a new 50th anniversary edition of the 1974 children’s classic, Murphy’s excruciating, never-before-seen school reports – complete with the pithy comments, song lyrics and illustrations she doodled on them – have been unearthed by her family and shared with the Observer.
The reports were mostly written when Murphy was 15, about the time she was crafting the first draft of the beloved novel that would make her a household name and sell more than five million copies around the world.
Despite the teachers’ unflattering assessments of her, Murphy treasured the reports, according to her son, Charlie Murphy. “She was aware of their importance to her work,” he said. “There were specific teachers who Mum mentioned formed the basis of Miss Hardbroom and Miss Cackle.”
The reports demonstrate that Murphy, much like Mildred, struggled to get good marks at school and her teachers failed to recognise she was a talented pupil, while simultaneously berating her for her poor grades. “Jill will have to be much more serious in applying herself,” her form tutor at Ursuline Convent School in Wimbledon wrote.
“When will Jill settle down to consistently good work?” was her headteacher’s angry rebuke, with “will” underlined. A few months later, when Murphy received D minuses in her mathematics, history and Latin exams, the headteacher described her lack of progress as “distressing”.
There is a dramatic change in Murphy’s grades the following term when, unusually, the teachers did not initial their comments.
On this report card, which contains a spelling mistake, Murphy is awarded nothing but As and Bs in every subject – particularly in art and English, where she stacks up mostly A pluses, a stark contrast to the B minuses she previously received. She also attracts numerous compliments from her teachers, characterising her as “amazing”, “very imaginative”, “wonderful”, “brilliant” and very demurely, in religious knowledge, as “deeply sincere”.
It is not an entirely flawless report, however. In mathematics, her work is pithily described as “varied” and in biology, the only comment is: “Dislikes dissecting unfortunately.”
Charlie recently began to suspect this particular report card may have been forged by a rather famous author. Each comment was written in the same hand with a black ballpoint pen, instead of the blue fountain pens the teachers normally used.
“I can’t be certain, but I’m pretty sure that’s Mum’s handwriting and it definitely sounds like her voice,” he said. “There is that sense of fun about it.”
On the front and back pages of the report, a black ballpoint pen was also used to doodle lyrics and drawings, including a woman’s face that immediately reminded Charlie of his mother’s illustrations of Miss Hardbroom.
Handwritten lyrics of the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, and The First Cut is the Deepest, originally released by PP Arnold, date the doodles to the summer of 1967, after Murphy had left the school, suggesting she may have created her fantasy report card – or kept it to hand – as she worked on the final draft of The Worst Witch.
In the report, Murphy’s formerly strict and critical form tutor supposedly wrote: “Jill has made extremely pleasing progress this term. She is a pleasant lively girl and never fails to please the class with her witty comments.”
Below this, in the same handwriting, the previously despairing headteacher exclaimed: “Well done Jill!” – and then failed to sign her name in the right place on the form.
Charlie now finds the whole document “really funny”. “I don’t think she’d have described herself as rebellious, but she was, in her own way.”
In 2007, Murphy told the Times: “No matter how bad I was at all the academic subjects, I always knew I could write and draw. If you’re a bit of an individual, you have to find your own path.”
Writing her own school report and giving herself top grades – particularly in art and English – may have offered a way for Murphy to “find her own path”, just as Mildred repeatedly did in The Worst Witch. “Now that I see it [as a forgery], it does resonate with Mildred’s character. There was a huge amount of Mildred in Mum’s character, for sure,” said Charlie.
