George Spencer school in Nottingham is used to being made a fuss of. As one of the first grant-maintained schools, then a technology college and now a beacon school, it is accustomed to putting on a show for the great and good. But head Tom Clark admits that, even at this showpiece, things do not always go to plan.
“This group of grey suits came down from the Department for Education and Skills and Leeds university and I was showing them around when they spotted some fresh graffiti. One of our, er, more difficult pupils had assaulted another student but been let off by a lenient magistrate. She had come to school and painted a one to two-foot-high obscenity-filled message to her victim that she had been let off,” recalls Mr Clark.
But the smooth head quickly made the best of the situation. Was the school’s literacy programme working? You bet! Look at the graffiti. Not a single word misspelt and, for a bonus, even an apostrophe in “it’s” correctly used!
