Ask any 11-year-old from South Leeds high school and they will be able to tell you about Islam or Martin Luther King. In fact, they will be able to show you a film they made using extracts from Dr King’s “dream” speech and reconstructions of his assassination.
The Year 7s also do projects on anger: understanding what it is, how to deal with it and how it sometimes turns into racism.
One popular exercise asks them to imagine how Earth might seem to visitors from space. A white boy dresses as a newscaster by strapping a photocopy of Trevor McDonald’s face across his own. He then interviews a fellow pupil, dressed as an alien.
The would-be Sir Trevor, Jack, from Belle Isle, is enthusiastic about the creativity the pupils are allowed to express in lessons. “Here, everything you say and everything you write, every second you’re learning. Every second.”
He said: “This school is probably the best thing I ever got in my life.”
