(Photograph) - Pat Collings, like many other heads, has an office drawer full of knives confiscated from pupils.
Virtually every day she logs at least one incident at Sinfin community school in Derby. “We become involved in child protection cases. We have to cope with disturbed children whose parents are in prison, are on drugs or are prostitutes. The community’s problems spill into school. We do all we can to respond and provide a safe and disciplined environment, but it is a difficult task.”
Last week a car came on to the site and a stolen handbag was flung from the window. In the past, cars have been abandoned and set alight in the field. Five young men (not pupils) were taken into custody after being seen stealing from the premises, parked cars have been pushed down an embankment, excluded pupils once returned to cause trouble, and children on their way to PE were attacked by a dog whose owner was taking a short cut through the school.
Mrs Collings has had to deal with a report of an alleged sexual assault on the school field, exclude a first-form pupil for hitting a child and then cope with the child’s father - who threatened to call the police - as well as the father of the excluded boy.
In a single hour she had to cope with two boys who arrived at school drunk - one had to be sent to hospital - a spate of fire alarms, a small fire in the girls’ lavatories, a fight between pupils and a report of a boy who had stolen his father’s car and run away from home.
“And that is on top of everything else I have to do,” she said. “The problem is that we are having to deal with the horrific social problems that affect the lives of children who come here.”
Sinfin community school is an open site built in the 1970s. It has several entrances, faces a road on one side with its fields on the other. Vandalism has cost Pounds 25,000 in less than a year. Erecting a perimeter fence would cost Pounds 50,000 which the school does not have.
John Dunford, president of the Secondary Heads Association and head of Durham Johnston school, Durham, said Sinfin was not unusual. Many of the heads he talks to tell similar tales: “Heads hearing about the tragic incident have said, ‘There but for the grace of God . . .’. ”
