Why inclusivity is for life - not just for Christmas

How one school’s ‘evangelical’ approach has proved popular with parents
23rd December 2016, 12:00am
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Why inclusivity is for life - not just for Christmas

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archived/why-inclusivity-life-not-just-christmas

A boy steps forward. He is dressed in a white, full-length jubbah with white wings pinned to his back. “Welcome to our Christmas play,” he says. “Every year, children from Christian countries celebrate the birth of Jesus.”

Next to him is a boy in a white T-shirt and gold-tinsel garland, clutching a white handbag. “Don’t forget that each country has their own way of celebrating,” he says.

“Isn’t it wonderful that we’re all so different?” says the boy in the jubbah.

At the back of the stage, a girl sucks on a giant cardboard star. Next to her, a shepherd is balancing silver stars on the eyelids of one of the kings.

“Yes,” says the boy with the handbag. “And we’re all the same.”

It is the annual nativity play at Redfield Educate Together Primary Academy in Bristol. The Year 2 pupils starring in the play are the primary’s first pupils: they were the inaugural Reception year when Redfield opened two years ago.

Redfield is the first school set up by Educate Together in England. The trust already runs 81 primaries and nine secondaries in Ireland. It was established to provide schools where Catholic and Protestant children - as well as those from other religions and none - had equal access. This commitment to equality is one of the founding principles of all Educate Together schools and it runs throughout the curriculum.

“In lots of schools, you’d spend a month getting ready for Christmas,” says Michelle McCarthy, Redfield family support worker. “Whereas, here, we do one week for Christmas, one week for Eid.

“Last year, we didn’t do Easter - we didn’t have time. We’re doing it this year.”

Redfield pupils are drawn from a range of backgrounds. There are middle-class pupils at the school, as well as refugees and asylum seekers; two of the three wards that feed into the school are among the most deprived in Bristol. Sixty per cent of pupils speak English as an additional language; the welcoming angel is not the only one wearing a jubbah.

Parents who send their children to Redfield all sign up to the school’s commitment to equality. All children eat school dinners (prepared by a chef who formerly worked at a Michelin-starred restaurant, but had wanted a job with more child-friendly hours). Children call teachers by their first names and do not wear uniform.

All children also celebrate Eid, Chanukah and the Chinese New Year, just as all children perform in the nativity play.

Interrogating ‘British’ values

Earlier this month, government adviser Louise Casey published a report in which she said that teaching British values of tolerance, democracy and respect in schools would help to reduce racism and ethnic segregation.

While Redfield headteacher Ros Farrell agrees with this in theory, she questions the definition of British values.

“Peace, kindness, the rule of law - I don’t think there are many countries that don’t agree with those values,” she says. “Isn’t it pompous saying that these are British values, rather saying that these are the values of 99 per cent of children who come to this school?

“At the nativity, we’re not saying, ‘This is the one true God’. We’re saying, ‘This is how Christmas is celebrated’. We’re saying, ‘All children are equal and we should make life as equitable as possible for them’.”

Farrell rejects the word “tolerance”, saying, “That’s awful: it means we’ll put up with something”. But the emphasis on respect for other people’s views at Redfield extends to potentially controversial viewpoints.

For example, several children - chosen because they were most likely to object - were co-opted into clearing up after lunch one day, to prompt a discussion about child labour. During this talk, several Reception pupils insisted that children should be allowed to work. “They said, ‘What if the family can’t afford things?’” says Farrell. “That’s perhaps their culture, just as they’re allowed to say that women shouldn’t work. We respect their culture. I’m not going to take away women’s rights to work, just because your culture believes women shouldn’t work. But I can understand that you believe differently and I can still play with you.”

Staff regularly model this mutual respect for pupils. In fact, they occasionally walk into one another’s classrooms merely to disagree with the class teacher.

“A lot of children at this age are very keen to impress their teacher,” says Farrell, who has previously led a Church of England faith school. “So you need a teacher to come in and have a different view.”

On one occasion, a teacher was asked to demonstrate why respect was so important by modelling its opposite. She spent the duration of a school assembly coughing, shuffling noisily and checking her watch. “The staff hadn’t been primed and they were absolutely shocked,” says Farrell. “And the look of horror on children’s faces.

“We’re teaching children to have their own mind and to have critical thinking.” She pauses. “It’s a bit evangelical, isn’t it? We’re all so convinced we’re doing the right thing.”

Children school their parents

Like the best evangelists, the teachers repeat the lesson until their audience adopts it as its own. “We have mums coming back to us,” says McCarthy. “They say, ‘We’ve been around the dinner table and my children have told me off for not being respectful and responsible’.”

Samira Musse is one of those parents. Her six-year-old son, Mohamed, was playing a Christian boy from Malawi in the nativity play. (Redfield has taken certain creative liberties with the gospels.) “I teach my children they need to respect everyone’s faith,” she says. “They need to know that people have different religions and cultures.”

Last year, she asked Mohamed whether he was comfortable appearing in the nativity play. “He said, ‘I’m scared’,” she says. “But that was because of stage fright, not because of Christmas.”

Descending from the stage, seven-year-old Felix Rinstead-McEwen is still clutching his white handbag. The handbag is only one of several things that distinguish him from Mohamed - and possibly the most important.

“I think Eid and Christmas are sort of the same,” he says. “Because they both celebrate things and in both of them you get presents.

“There’s one difference: Father Christmas is in, you know, Christmas. But in Eid, there’s no Father Christmas.”

Then, he picks up his handbag and runs off to join Mohamed.

@adibloom_tes

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