I suppose that fury kick-starts the week as well as anything. A journalist asked me for a comment on Sajid Javid’s ‘consultation to assess whether there is a public health duty to report concerns over children at risk of involvement in violent crime’. I told her it was shameful. Why?
 
Objection 1, m’lud
WE ALREADY DO IT. Schools collect evidence, act on hunches, assess the weather and ring anyone, everyone who we think might help our children. There’s no-one with the capacity to do it. The police, the hospitals and social services have financial problems as bad as ours. We already report it but they can’t resolve it.
 
Objection 2
Reporting knife crime as a public health duty is based on Scotland’s success with inter-agency work. They invest heavily in their public services in the land of the haggis and the reporting duty rests on the secure foundations of well-funded public service. Yes, teachers and nurses have a duty to report, but the reporting is then picked up by dedicated specialist teams in the police, the hospitals and the local authorities. If you ring it in, they pick it up.  Here, if we pick up the phone no one picks up the case. There’s no one left to do it.
 
Objection 3
Consequently, far from being early identification for early help, our thresholds in England have risen to make intervention manageable for the few staff left to do it. A child has to be well-steeped in violence, danger and risk before anyone outside school will pick it up. Police and social care just don’t have the capacity. You’ve got a reasonable hunch and a bit of evidence that a child is in danger? Sort it out in school.  
 
Objection 4
“It is hard to see how it would be either workable or reasonable to make teachers accountable for preventing knife crime. What sort of behaviour would they be expected to report and who would they report to? How would they be held accountable, for what, and what would the consequences be? How would the government prevent the likelihood of over-reporting caused by the fear of these consequences? Aside from the practical considerations, we have to ask whether it is fair to put the onus on teachers for what is essentially a government failure to put enough police on the streets.”

Thank you Mr Barton of ASCL. Other teaching unions are available. They all say the same.  
 
Objection 5
We have a large and expensive pastoral and inclusion set-up at Tallis. We include everyone we can without endangering others. We manage a curfew at 1600 way out of sight of our school and last week – not unusually – we worked with the police to clear hundreds of people gathering for blood at a local green space. We haven’t had a permanent Safer Schools Officer for two years because of staffing problems in the Met. All the good work we once did to build bridges between the police and these 2000 young people has been wasted away by austerity. 

Partnership needs funding.
 
Objection 6
Knife crime is an adult problem. The deaths in London last weekend were adults, killed by adults. Its adults who run the gangs and the drugs, and its adults who send out children to die for them on the streets. Our young are a human shield for the drugs gangs, and they can only be saved by policing. Teachers are irrelevant to adult criminals.
 
Objection 7
The PM said ‘We can’t arrest our way out of this problem’. Who says? How does she know?  Has anyone tried? Durham County Council transformed itself into a model of effective policing by focusing relentlessly and remorselessly on 400 criminals. Has anyone tried that in London? No, because it would cost. How does arresting teachers and nurses for not-reporting make any sense at all?
 
Objection 8
If we cared about children, we’d spend money on this. If we cared about children, we’d spend money on schools. If we cared. The best thing we can say about Brexit at this point is that we’ve wasted a billion pounds on nothing. That would have made a start on responsive policing and social care. ASCL knows that it’ll take another 4.5 billion to offer an acceptable standard of education. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
 
At the end of the day I was on College Green being interviewed by Ben Brown for the BBC. I made my point, but here’s what I didn’t say.

The Home Secretary’s remark was shamefully misinformed. The Prime Minister’s soundbite was disingenuous. Politicians thrash around for someone to blame while children die in the streets at the hand of the unscrupulous.    They’ve lost control of the government but we haven’t lost control of our schools. Stop wasting money and listen to us
 
CR
1.4.19

I'd been in town pestering the great and the good and pottered back from the station at break time. Children often imagine that the road elevation of the grassy knoll to the east of the site is invisible, despite the see-through fence, and can be startled by a known person apparating in front of them.  

Not so the cheery year 7 boys I chanced upon, sitting in a row, phones in hand, chortling and shoving each other hilariously. I asked if they were spying on the road and they leapt up and gestured through the bars at me, explaining enthusiastically that they were 'playing a very intense game'. Parents fear that phones mean the loss of all social skills but not with these chaps. While it did involve phones, the intense game also seemed to require raucous laughter, throwing themselves about on the grass in the way of 11-year-olds, and much rolling around. The old and the new. 
 
Last night was Open Night and we had upwards of 1500 visitors through the doors. Head of Year 7 and I did 6 hall-fulls (with extra chairs). We also combine the old and the new as she's a lot younger than me. Our hall is pretty nice, being newish, and with a film of year 7 at work running on the back wall, flowers on the Tallis turquoise cloths, the stage lights and Freddie on the old Joanna, it's a stylish venue. We don't do the PowerPoint thing, so we talk about what parents worry about: transition to a big school, pastoral care, curriculum choice, break and lunch, form groups. Of course we cover the other things, but we talk about the whole child before we break him into constituent parts.  We'll take care of your little one and try to give her a memorable, happy education.  

This neatly leads me to tell the people about our new school plan's 3 parts: curriculum, inclusion and community. Curriculum: we want to preserve the broadest offer, it's a struggle predicting the future, this is what we do at KS3. Teaching's good, staff are stable (no reflection on their mental state, I mean that we don't have a high turnover). A level and BTEC results are very good, young people come from miles around to study with us in the sixth form. GCSEs need to improve but who knows what this year's results actually mean. So many re-marks, so much alteration. Inclusion's nex, in four parts: provision for learning for everyone and the wonderful work of our Deaf Support and Speech and Language centres. Wellbeing and our concern for mental health. Safeguarding and the time we put into it, and behaviour. We're relaxed but not sloppy. We're fussy about relationships and their development and maintenance. Finally, Community: we want to serve. Join in with us, please.  

I don't know if that's what parents expect to hear but it seemed to go down well. Behind the scenes, we're tussling this week with the progress accountability score. Context is everything here: we have room to improve but we took a principled stand with the year group when the new measures came in and didn't force them to change options so the school would score better. Oh for a national accountability system that's risk-assessed for its impact on children's experience of school. 

(The adults' experience can be mixed, mind you. There was huge excitement - everything's relative - about the Tidy Staff Room competition. You may be interested to know that Visual and Media Arts won the silver Desk Tidy for Most Improved, but Design Technology took gold for Best in Show.  

But reflecting on the week, it's the tensions that stick. We'd been waiting for the progress information so that we could get stuck into the metrics. We're committed to our support services but there's no money to fund them. We'd like to represent our community better.  

When parents come to see us, what do they want to see? How much information helps them choose? We talk a good game, but we're not complacent. We don't stop picking over results in good years or bad until October. We plan for the short and the long term. Do they want to look under the bonnet?  

A young inmate with an eccentric gait came to see me because his trousers had split 'picking up a pen in Geography'. Keeping him at a distance I said it wasn't obvious and he should carry on regardless. He thanked me kindly and rushed off. I think parents expect much the same: they need to trust us to make sensible judgements and carry on. The old and the new combine here too I suppose: we worry about our service to children not less than all of the time, and we deal with each new challenge as it comes along. It's an intense game, and we laugh when we can, but only the young ones roll on the grass. 
 
CR 28.9.17 
 ​

Pardon me for mentioning it but I was in the loo of the Wig and Mitre in Lincoln on All Saints Day when I saw the Ask for Angela poster and thought that’s a damn good idea. If you've missed this – and I’m not often up with the zeitgeist – this is a dating safety genius from Lincolnshire County Council. The little posters say something like if your date’s not going well and you're worried about your safety, if you think there’s something a bit weird, go to bar and ask for Angela. The staff will know what you mean and will quietly get you out and whisked off to a safe place of your choosing. Angela the guardian angel, obviously.

Angela replicates for adults the safety nets we know are vital for children. From Childline to the NSPCC, from the trusted Form Tutor to the kindly dinner lady, we expect a worried child to be comforted and protected. We do it all the time. I was on the gate this week and a small person presented himself. It was Tuesday, moved house on Monday and he couldn't remember how to get home. That's a pretty panicky place to be for an 11 year old so we rushed to Reception where Miss even extracted a smile from the sobbing lost soul as she made the necessary calls. Everyone needs an angel when they're in trouble, someone who'll reach out into the hostile world and map you to safety.

We've entertained another Civil Servant from the DfE this week as part of our mission to change the world for the better. He did three days, glued first to a friendly child and then a range of impossible jobs so he could see what we do to protect our communities from political whim. He admitted on arrival (it was a good job l warmed to him) to expecting a big city comprehensive to be a bit chaotic but was bowled over by our calm and happy vibe. He saw English, maths, art, geography, break and lunch duty, staff room life,timetable, data, inclusion, deaf support, the dreaded IER and even did some speed networking for the Year 10 careers gig. He liked the warmth and safety that he felt, and the care he saw in action. He also saw the budget. And what the future looks like.

But we talked about teacher retention and what to do to restock the classroom for the longer term, and stop teachers bailing out. I went off on one as per about intelligent accountability, assessment expectations and unscrupulous school leaders wringing the life out of young teachers but we also talked about the effect of the myriad routes into teaching and the ethical underpinnings of the profession. Except I called it a service, because I think that helps. Decentralised recruitment and training needs really tight principles and explicit expectations if we're to preserve something that was once taken for granted. Kindness, optimism, scholarship (let alone tea and queuing) don’t survive accidentally. Old git, moi?

Which seamlessly segues into part one of a limited series entitled Reasons We Might Miss Michael Willshaw. Himself talked eloquently this week about schools being the glue of a cohesive society which any selection interference will wreck. Go to it, Sir! All power to your irritating elbow! Unfortunately he also blamed local colleagues for not preventing a nasty fight out of hours recently. A tad unjust: these things are the devil to manage and he just wasn't there. Still, one out of two ain’t bad.

We had Year 11 maths and English night on this week and Year 10 careers speed networking with 40 volunteers. Wednesday night was the wonderful Shakespeare Schools Festival at the Greenwich Theatre, complete with an authentically Shakespearean audience, where our young people were slick and witty, Puck on a skateboard, top marks for Bottom. The Dream lives on.

Life should be better than it is for a lot of people. Women ought not to fear for their safety when they're on a date. Everyone should look out for one another and any of us should feel able to ask for help. Our Tallis community isn't perfect, but it’s characterised by genuine warmth not based on a spurious grit ‘n' resilience tick list. Our children have the right to expect kindness and a helping hand when they leave us, and throughout their lives. I'd be proud to think one of them thought up Ask for Angela. #NO MORE.

CR
4.11.16

It takes time to argue modern inclusive and life-affirming principles from the writings of people struggling to stay alive. For all we know, they were the best thinkers of their time. The much-criticised Prevent training materials covers this journey quite nicely with case studies. A young person is distressed by an aspect of his life, searches for a simple answer, adopts an immaturely rigid religious or quasi-political position, finds affirmation within that group, starts to be a danger to himself and others and needs to be rescued. Schools should keep an eye out for distress, sudden change or unexpected behaviour. Use the safeguarding systems, don’t be afraid to report things, follow up, support the child. We know how to do this and the best of us have strong and sophisticated systems to protect children from themselves and others. Some of the training is a bit crass and patronising, but we got used to that with the National Strategies, didn’t we just?

I described Prevent to a cleric who became terrifically aeriated about supervising Friday prayer. An outrage! So I told him a about a school with a Christian Union annually staffed by posh and shiny gap year volunteers with full DBS clearance from a local church. Sensible sixth formers kept an eye on things in the room, right up to the day they planned a prayer walk in the yard to hand out sweets with texts against homosexuality. After that, always a teacher in the room. Of course we supervise prayer, in the same way that we supervise play or crossing the road on a school trip.  Some things can be dangerous and children don’t always see it. Adults can be misleading, harmful or just plain wrong.   Schools are designed for supervision. It’s what we do for society, looking after the young.

Good liberal folk, secular or religious, are queasy about Prevent because discussing religion is embarrassing. Most Brits aren’t religious and find it rather inexplicable. Church schools, however, are quite popular and we’ve happily let them chug along since 1944 because their religion is pretty mild. Imagine our horror when deregulated schooling and unreconstructed religion met and brought us Trojan Horse, whatever that turns out to be. OMG, literally. What were we thinking?

Like a child who’s forgotten her Spanish homework, we don’t have the vocabulary for the lesson. We once had checks and balances to prevent religion harming civil society but we didn’t look after them and now we’re confused. So now we’re using the law and the strange concept of fundamental British values (we could just call them human rights) to give us a language to distinguish between good and bad religion. We have to do this because, nationally, we don’t trust ourselves to articulate an argument that falls between ‘all religion is wicked’ and ‘believe what you like’.

However, optimism is part of Tallis character. In the new RE GCSE from 2016 every child should study the two largest religions and every one of them could leave school equipped to make a judgment about faith. That might lay the foundation for better national conversation about the role of religion in a secular democracy and help children experiment more safely, a bit like teaching them to swim.  
 
The training isn’t perfect but it might help people who haven’t known how to think about tricky issues before. Preventing what, exactly? At the very least theological illiteracy, bad religion and the abuse of young people’s search for meaning.
 
CR
1.10.15