An open letter to the Secretary of State for Education and Employment Dear Mrs Shephard, I usually delight in celebrating the successes of schools. In the wake of the shocking death of a fellow headteacher, I feel duty bound to share with you the full extent of the concerns which daily confront my colleagues and myself in so many other city schools. As attention is focused on ways to prevent more grievous assaults on pupils and staff and the ultimate crime of murder, I believe you should consider the whole context.
Do you know how disastrous the school designs of the Seventies are for personal and property safety?
Not only are the multiple entrances and exits impossible to monitor, even a locked quick-fit CLASP door frame can be removed wholesale with the aid of a chain and a van. Ceiling lights on all-too- accessible flat roofs are childs’ play to lift off, so that an intruder can literally drop in. It takes little to disengage the catches on sliding windows and remove a video camera or two from “secure storage”. Many ageing security systems cannot be activated while the building is occupied and so one section of the school is vulnerable even as the caretaker is locking up in another. The damage is then discovered first thing in the morning. That this damage is only to property is not reassuring: the same routes would be available to intruders intent on harming the occupants. Turning schools into prisons would be anathema to me, but having visited New York in 1992 I admit to feeling that its school communities were less vulnerable with their single entrances and security passes.
Do you know what a misnomer the term “playing fields” is in vulnerable areas?
Local residents walk their dogs, at best fouling the pitches as they go, at worst allowing the dogs to attack and bite children on their way to PE lessons. We hesitate to challenge the owners of vicious dogs, for obvious reasons. Other “visitors” on an open site include known burglars unashamedly casing the building or vandalising parked cars in broad daylight, while the drivers of stolen cars race through the one open gate throwing stolen goods from the windows or abandon vehicles on the field after setting fire to them. PE teachers and classes have been the victims of verbal abuse and assault and even been shot at. In summer, young motorcyclists speed around the field weaving in and out of classes. Even the most prompt of police responses cannot stop them.
Do you know what a daily battering from social problems does, not only to the victims, but to those in schools with the prime role of teaching and promoting learning?
From family and custody disputes - via drink, drugs or racist attacks - to psychiatric problems, child abuse or rape, some pupils’ access to learning literally depends on us making sure they are alive and well. And, of course, problems are not neatly timetabled and crises may be multiple, stretching our much reduced major resource (staff) to the limit. Other local service providers are also under pressure and can only respond to crises rather than engage in preventive work. Anecdotal evidence might make even a tough politician weep. Staff here can hardly imagine being able to cope with some of the problems our children face at home. An increasing number of parents feel unable to control their own children and are near to despair.
Needless to say, schools like ours have “spare” places and may not refuse to take an excluded child from elsewhere on the basis of their previous behaviour record. Hours of consultation and planning may follow for children unlikely to survive in mainstream education, who may be in custody before arrangements are complete, so the process will be repeated before any financial resources accrue to the school.
Do you know how many headteachers’ desk drawers store an increasingly ugly range of potentially lethal weapons?
Our school is still a haven of relative calm and most children recognise and try to adhere to the values we clearly convey. For some this is confusing, as aggressive “prevention” or retaliation is preached at home. It is hardly surprising that some young Asian boys feel justified in carrying knives, having witnessed group attacks on their friends. One morning, caretakers here struggled to remove Ku Klux Klan posters pasted over all the courtyard windows.
Finally, do you not agree that life skills (personal and social education) need as much time and resources as other areas of the national curriculum? Schools cannot cure the nation’s ills, but they are the last bastion of social morality. Let not survival be the name of the game.
Pat Collings is head of Sinfin Community School, Derby.
