1 00:00:10,210 --> 00:00:18,670 Good evening, everybody, and welcome to the Department of Education and to the second in series from the Excluded 2 00:00:18,670 --> 00:00:25,000 Lives set seminar series Richard III tonight to welcome Professor Martin Mills. 3 00:00:25,000 --> 00:00:34,270 Martin is the inaugural director of the Centre to Teach and Teach Research at the Institute of Education University College London, 4 00:00:34,270 --> 00:00:42,700 and is researching an amendment, broadly speaking there of social justice and teacher education, 5 00:00:42,700 --> 00:00:46,540 but also in alternative education, 6 00:00:46,540 --> 00:00:54,340 including some some research they did for the deaf with with Professor Patricia Thomas from the University of Nottingham, 7 00:00:54,340 --> 00:00:58,360 which is looking into alternative provision. 8 00:00:58,360 --> 00:01:08,280 And Martin, as you'll hear from from his at its peak, spent a long time in an Australia, was formerly the head of School of Education, 9 00:01:08,280 --> 00:01:17,110 University of Queensland in Australia and a fellow at the Academic Academy of Social Sciences of Australia. 10 00:01:17,110 --> 00:01:25,060 So without further ado, marseglia talk for about 40 45 minutes and then there'll be plenty of time for questions. 11 00:01:25,060 --> 00:01:29,140 And then we'll go to the common room for a drink afterwards. 12 00:01:29,140 --> 00:01:41,410 Thank you, Michael. Thank you. Thanks for this invitation and and for coming out this this evening. 13 00:01:41,410 --> 00:01:50,080 I have to say I kind of got into alternative provision by mistake really in the UK at the moment. 14 00:01:50,080 --> 00:01:58,480 Like many of the young people in the UK. So what I'll do is give a bit of introduction, say something about the context and alternative provision. 15 00:01:58,480 --> 00:02:01,990 I can't do a presentation without mentioning social justice somewhere along the way, 16 00:02:01,990 --> 00:02:08,260 so I just want to take a little detour and say something about social justice and then give it a sort of 17 00:02:08,260 --> 00:02:16,990 detailed case study of one alternative provision site that I went into and spent quite a bit of time with. 18 00:02:16,990 --> 00:02:26,350 And then make a couple of concluding comments. I've always lived in terror of running out of things to say somewhere early in the lecture. 19 00:02:26,350 --> 00:02:31,010 So I always prepared too much. And as I'm coming up on the train, I'm thinking this. 20 00:02:31,010 --> 00:02:37,660 It'll be 8:00 9:00 o'clock. So at some stage you might suddenly I might suddenly start rushing through. 21 00:02:37,660 --> 00:02:48,010 So let's get started. So I said by mistake, I was doing a special issue of the Journal of Educational Policy with Becky Francis, 22 00:02:48,010 --> 00:02:53,890 and we were posing to lots of people the question What would a socially just school look like? 23 00:02:53,890 --> 00:02:58,420 And people really struggled to answer that. Many people said, Look, we've so far gone. 24 00:02:58,420 --> 00:03:07,000 It'll never happen. And some of the most kind of well known people writing in social justice and education struggled to do this. 25 00:03:07,000 --> 00:03:12,460 And so that point, I thought, that's something I really want to explore going and looking at different schools to try 26 00:03:12,460 --> 00:03:18,220 and get an understanding of what social justice a socially just school might look like. 27 00:03:18,220 --> 00:03:24,910 Secondly, I've been involved in quite a big project in Australia with a colleague, Bob Lingard and other people. 28 00:03:24,910 --> 00:03:35,360 And we'd produced a book and we had about classrooms and schools, and we argue for about three weeks over the words in the in the title. 29 00:03:35,360 --> 00:03:39,310 Did we want schools making a difference or schools making the difference? 30 00:03:39,310 --> 00:03:46,420 And we came down on a difference because take into account all the other external factors that impact upon young people in schools. 31 00:03:46,420 --> 00:03:52,900 They young people, teachers and and the schools themselves couldn't make the difference. 32 00:03:52,900 --> 00:03:57,400 But I started to think, Well, what would a school look like that did make the difference? 33 00:03:57,400 --> 00:04:00,700 And could it be possible that schools could make the difference? 34 00:04:00,700 --> 00:04:06,310 So I then was also inspired by Michael Fielding and Peter Moss's work, where they said, 35 00:04:06,310 --> 00:04:09,880 We want this, you know, to challenge this dictatorship of no alternative. 36 00:04:09,880 --> 00:04:15,700 To say that, you know, it is a play on Margaret Thatcher's comment in the in the 80s, 37 00:04:15,700 --> 00:04:23,380 there is no alternative and trying to find different schools that were, I thought, in some ways, making a difference. 38 00:04:23,380 --> 00:04:31,270 At the time I was in Australia and I'd come across schools that had been set up for young people who were homeless, 39 00:04:31,270 --> 00:04:35,440 young women who were pregnant, indigenous students, a whole range of things, 40 00:04:35,440 --> 00:04:38,470 some that began in parks, some that began in houses, 41 00:04:38,470 --> 00:04:44,830 and many of those kids ended up young people ended up in those schools by virtue of them finding the school and choosing to go. 42 00:04:44,830 --> 00:04:47,680 They're quite different from something like alternative provision, 43 00:04:47,680 --> 00:04:53,520 but they were an alternative sector dealing with really highly marginalised young people. 44 00:04:53,520 --> 00:05:00,750 So that that book that I did, but Glenda MacGregor, engaging young people in education went and looked all sorts of kind of alternative schools, 45 00:05:00,750 --> 00:05:04,470 including some alternative provision in England trying to say, Well, 46 00:05:04,470 --> 00:05:10,950 what can we learn from these schools for the mainstream if we're finding some of these alternative provision 47 00:05:10,950 --> 00:05:17,970 type schools in in Australia and here where young people are actually engaged in school and schoolwork? 48 00:05:17,970 --> 00:05:24,120 Young people who had hated the mainstream school and saying, Well, these schools are working with them, what are they doing? 49 00:05:24,120 --> 00:05:32,370 That's different that we might be able to look at the in the transform mainstream education system. 50 00:05:32,370 --> 00:05:36,750 So it was also getting into utopia politics at that time as well. 51 00:05:36,750 --> 00:05:46,020 I then was involved in a in a book with Gillian McCluskey, who's part of the project located here from Edinburgh University. 52 00:05:46,020 --> 00:05:51,190 And we'd been invited to to Korea to talk about. 53 00:05:51,190 --> 00:05:55,350 So South Korea was getting into alternative education there for some of the same 54 00:05:55,350 --> 00:06:01,170 reasons that we that I'd been seeing it both in Australia and in and in England. 55 00:06:01,170 --> 00:06:05,010 And it was tied up a bit with kind of the current policy moment. 56 00:06:05,010 --> 00:06:10,710 If you think about South Korea, they do really, really well on all those kind of Pisa tests and things. 57 00:06:10,710 --> 00:06:17,010 But what you had is you had really unhappy kids and many parents were actually looking to create kind of alternative schools. 58 00:06:17,010 --> 00:06:25,380 Right. But you also had a similar thing that was happening here is kids who were actually looking like damaging the reputation of the schools. 59 00:06:25,380 --> 00:06:29,220 Maybe some a bit better for you. Maybe you might want the alternative school down the road. 60 00:06:29,220 --> 00:06:35,080 So there were similar dynamics going on in in South Korea. 61 00:06:35,080 --> 00:06:41,650 I love the work of the Zygmunt Bauman, and in his book Wasted Lives, 62 00:06:41,650 --> 00:06:49,210 and I was thinking about this notion of a beautiful education system, and it's kind of the dream of many policy makers. 63 00:06:49,210 --> 00:06:56,050 Let's create this system. That's wonderful. And the analogy seemed to me to be really fit with this. 64 00:06:56,050 --> 00:07:02,950 This description from Michelangelo in Bauman's book. He was asked How you make this really beautiful sculptures so easy? 65 00:07:02,950 --> 00:07:07,090 Just get a marble and cut all the superfluous bits, the unnecessary bits out. 66 00:07:07,090 --> 00:07:09,880 And that's a bit like happened to the education system, I think. 67 00:07:09,880 --> 00:07:16,270 You know, we get these schools, and if we want them to be really functioning fantastic place cut away the kind of the waste, the rubbish school. 68 00:07:16,270 --> 00:07:22,640 And that's how many and many of the kids I've talked about that's talked to and teachers to some extent have said on the school, 69 00:07:22,640 --> 00:07:26,680 just a dumping ground. It's a rubbish tip. You know, it's that sense of this is what they're for. 70 00:07:26,680 --> 00:07:34,470 So the analogy seemed to me real to really fit. And, you know. 71 00:07:34,470 --> 00:07:38,070 This kind of thing happens every time, you know, pays or whatever, you know, 72 00:07:38,070 --> 00:07:44,460 like we actually do see kids being thrown out of school because of that trying to create a beautiful school. 73 00:07:44,460 --> 00:07:51,880 This is in quite contrast to my notion of the the, um, socially just school. 74 00:07:51,880 --> 00:07:56,530 I had been so, so so that's part of this. 75 00:07:56,530 --> 00:08:02,470 I had a really nice fellowship from the Australian Research Council, which allowed me to come to England regularly from Australia. 76 00:08:02,470 --> 00:08:09,910 And when I was asking about where might I see a really interesting kind of alternative school and I was sent to this one in West London, 77 00:08:09,910 --> 00:08:15,670 which I'm going to do later as a case study. And I'd been there and we've been talking about knife crime. 78 00:08:15,670 --> 00:08:19,330 We've been talking about so many of the issues that face these young people in their lives. 79 00:08:19,330 --> 00:08:23,770 And I was walking away from this on one day and picked up, you know, those free newspapers, 80 00:08:23,770 --> 00:08:30,250 you get to catch the tube and this double page spread wasted lives, you know, waste of young lives faces. 81 00:08:30,250 --> 00:08:34,120 One hundred and twenty four teens in London killed since twenty seven. 82 00:08:34,120 --> 00:08:38,140 This was a seven year period. And it's going to be a look at the faces and you think like these, you know, 83 00:08:38,140 --> 00:08:44,140 these are very similar to the kids I've just been talking to and interviewing. And you can kind of see that this is more than just that. 84 00:08:44,140 --> 00:08:49,090 The consequences of many of the issues around exclusion go beyond education. 85 00:08:49,090 --> 00:08:58,050 And many of these young people who have got nowhere to go are on the streets and are getting into all sorts of trouble inside that. 86 00:08:58,050 --> 00:09:06,280 The editorial in this paper, and you probably can't read it, but there was there was an editorial talking about this double page spread. 87 00:09:06,280 --> 00:09:12,670 And they said the solution is quite simple to raise the academic standards of the schools that these young people attend. 88 00:09:12,670 --> 00:09:19,460 So the idea was to get a really good, rigorous school, and these kids will then be simple so simple. 89 00:09:19,460 --> 00:09:24,910 They somebody once said to every complex problem, there's a simple solution just that it's always wrong, you know? 90 00:09:24,910 --> 00:09:26,320 And to some extent, 91 00:09:26,320 --> 00:09:37,900 this is kind of this this argument here and against the good school that was kind of implicit in here is the kind of beautiful schools that you know. 92 00:09:37,900 --> 00:09:44,680 So this kind of irony there in some ways, and it wouldn't have fitted the school that I was I was visiting. 93 00:09:44,680 --> 00:09:50,170 So that's some of my context. Now I'm going to talk about the report in a moment. 94 00:09:50,170 --> 00:09:54,550 I just pulled out a couple of quotes from headteachers that we interviewed for that report. 95 00:09:54,550 --> 00:09:58,270 And the points, you know, it's exactly what we all think. Right? 96 00:09:58,270 --> 00:10:04,390 And no, to some extent, you know, one headteacher says Ofsted judgements are influenced by the outcomes for pupils, 97 00:10:04,390 --> 00:10:11,110 so getting academic results up adds a lot of pressure on us. Now, if I have a large number of pupils where the curriculum does not meet their needs, 98 00:10:11,110 --> 00:10:14,650 that will affect my progress eight scores and the number of students who want to come. 99 00:10:14,650 --> 00:10:18,550 This is a justification for sending kids to alternative provision. 100 00:10:18,550 --> 00:10:23,290 We're all in the chase for best schools and this means we have to juggle the needs of students with the needs of the school. 101 00:10:23,290 --> 00:10:28,090 I really think the needs of the students and the needs of the schools, they're a bit different. 102 00:10:28,090 --> 00:10:32,050 It seems to me a very bizarre kind of comment anyway. So you get you get the picture. 103 00:10:32,050 --> 00:10:36,650 This is kind of wasted lives. And so that's how I got into alternative provision. 104 00:10:36,650 --> 00:10:40,120 Then I came to Australia and I've been working with Pat Thomson, 105 00:10:40,120 --> 00:10:47,110 and then we did this report with a research company that contacted us and asked us to work with them. 106 00:10:47,110 --> 00:10:51,400 But you can see the policy context is really into alternative provision at the moment. 107 00:10:51,400 --> 00:10:59,350 So the Timson review talks about it. dFe has creating opportunity for all our vision for alternative provision. 108 00:10:59,350 --> 00:11:05,320 When we did our report in conjunction with that, this ethos was doing a mark. 109 00:11:05,320 --> 00:11:09,460 I don't know alternative provision, market analysis outcome. That's a bizarre on the concept to me. 110 00:11:09,460 --> 00:11:16,330 But anyway, so they were doing their market analysis. House of Commons Education Committee's report Forgotten Children Alternative Provision So, 111 00:11:16,330 --> 00:11:21,490 so alternative provision is on the agenda about three weeks ago. 112 00:11:21,490 --> 00:11:26,290 Or maybe it's before Christmas. It seems like three weeks ago, but I was invited to a meeting at the DfT, 113 00:11:26,290 --> 00:11:30,910 where we had a conversation with a whole range of different kind of people in the alternative provision 114 00:11:30,910 --> 00:11:36,730 sector discussing what kind of qualities should we be looking for in an alternative provision teacher? 115 00:11:36,730 --> 00:11:40,210 So clearly, there's a sense in which this is ongoing. There's not there's not. 116 00:11:40,210 --> 00:11:44,740 This alternative provision is kind of what we're trying to phase it out or it's problematic. 117 00:11:44,740 --> 00:11:49,270 It's something that's here to stay. So I'll give it. 118 00:11:49,270 --> 00:11:56,740 What I thought I'd do is give you a quick overview of our report and then then get to what I think is the really nice parts, 119 00:11:56,740 --> 00:12:03,160 which are the um, the case study, the case study, one of the things I always try to do. 120 00:12:03,160 --> 00:12:09,310 And I never know whether it's good or not is to provide a lot of interview data because what I find with data, 121 00:12:09,310 --> 00:12:15,220 as I'm learning to say now is is because I think the voices of young people in those schools 122 00:12:15,220 --> 00:12:18,970 are often marginalised and we don't get to hear them often the teachers in those schools. 123 00:12:18,970 --> 00:12:24,880 And I think we have to understand that. I think some of the teachers in those places are really trying to do the best they can and sometimes 124 00:12:24,880 --> 00:12:30,130 really difficult environments and to try and give you an opportunity to hear some of their voices, 125 00:12:30,130 --> 00:12:39,010 which I think are really important. So in terms of this study, it was a big study, quite bit like anything for the DFA really in a rush. 126 00:12:39,010 --> 00:12:43,270 And can you do this, you know, like we wanted this, you will fund you now. 127 00:12:43,270 --> 00:12:48,070 Can we get the report in a two weeks time and it takes forever to try and explain that 128 00:12:48,070 --> 00:12:51,550 the detail that goes into doing case studies and telephone interviews and so on. 129 00:12:51,550 --> 00:12:57,900 So a lot of people we spoke to and a great group of case studies. 130 00:12:57,900 --> 00:13:03,870 It's like, I I think, look, you know, they said I was from England, 131 00:13:03,870 --> 00:13:09,840 but I spent a long time in Australia and and I always used to think the Australian schooling system was a bit complex. 132 00:13:09,840 --> 00:13:15,390 Oh God, here now, I can't, you know, like trying to understand that the schooling system is really fraught. 133 00:13:15,390 --> 00:13:20,850 But then you try and understand the alternative provision sector. That's kind of a whole range of other complexities there. 134 00:13:20,850 --> 00:13:25,500 Some are free school, some are academies, some are philanthropic and run by charities. 135 00:13:25,500 --> 00:13:30,390 Some are run by the local education like it is quite complex. 136 00:13:30,390 --> 00:13:38,940 And then it's, you know, if students go to them, sometimes full time, part time, some, you know, some are even on the site of the school. 137 00:13:38,940 --> 00:13:45,270 Most, most of the offsite provision seems to be set up with the idea that they'll return to the mainstream. 138 00:13:45,270 --> 00:13:53,940 The reality is that many of the teachers say to us, not likely, you know, some of our schools, some aren't schools. 139 00:13:53,940 --> 00:14:01,080 One of the things that I found, and I was quite shocked by what I have to say when the first time I heard about it and this was that one of my 140 00:14:01,080 --> 00:14:07,170 case studies schools when I was coming back was in full screen here and Australia is that I was told that. 141 00:14:07,170 --> 00:14:14,910 And I said, How do you get your funding? And I said all schools in the local area by places at the beginning of the year. 142 00:14:14,910 --> 00:14:18,900 So school by 10 places and other schools by 10. 143 00:14:18,900 --> 00:14:24,240 What does that mean when you're about three, four or five months into the year and you've only used to think, 144 00:14:24,240 --> 00:14:30,270 Oh, I've wasted my money, I better get some. But you know the economics of it, you know, you start to think that if you're a rational person thing, 145 00:14:30,270 --> 00:14:34,860 I don't want to waste my money such and such as a bit of a pay, you know, such, you know, like maybe could. 146 00:14:34,860 --> 00:14:38,790 It seems a bizarre situation. It's like insurance. You buy insurance. 147 00:14:38,790 --> 00:14:43,890 But you know, I suppose you buy it, hoping you never have to use it. But but there's something very peculiar. 148 00:14:43,890 --> 00:14:48,270 I think about buying places before you. You need them. 149 00:14:48,270 --> 00:14:53,040 They're all non fee paying. Most of them seem to have to be referred. 150 00:14:53,040 --> 00:14:58,200 Students have to be referred. But the students I've spoken to, some of them haven't been in school for several years. 151 00:14:58,200 --> 00:15:03,150 Some of them have been to schools, all in the local area. And and and again, I can't. 152 00:15:03,150 --> 00:15:10,380 I still can't understand how this can happen and students being told, No, there is no place for you here and they go. 153 00:15:10,380 --> 00:15:14,340 It's like the go round trying to find a school that nobody wants them. 154 00:15:14,340 --> 00:15:24,240 I just again, very, very difficult. Our findings were in that report when we asked schools why they used AP. 155 00:15:24,240 --> 00:15:28,110 It was persistent. Disruptive behaviour is what they said all the time. 156 00:15:28,110 --> 00:15:33,600 Interestingly, it wasn't the it was that seemed to be. 157 00:15:33,600 --> 00:15:37,710 And I think people were genuine, and I think that was what the picture we were getting in schools. 158 00:15:37,710 --> 00:15:39,750 It was in the in the alternative provision. 159 00:15:39,750 --> 00:15:46,950 It wasn't some kind of major event where somebody one day threatened to beat somebody up or, you know, done something quite dramatic. 160 00:15:46,950 --> 00:15:54,000 It is the kind of persistent disruption that you get in classrooms. And my. 161 00:15:54,000 --> 00:15:59,250 My daughter's a teacher, and she hates it when I say I really thought about changing your pedagogy, 162 00:15:59,250 --> 00:16:03,390 you know, like, you know, maybe it's too simplistic to say it's just pedagogy and curriculum. 163 00:16:03,390 --> 00:16:06,240 That's the problem that there are issues that make you know. 164 00:16:06,240 --> 00:16:11,700 And I was a high school teacher, and I know there's some days when kids weren't in school. You know, you think, Oh, goodness, not here today. 165 00:16:11,700 --> 00:16:17,250 So I understand the difficulties that sometimes come with constant, consistent, disruptive behaviour. 166 00:16:17,250 --> 00:16:23,220 But it seems to me an overreaction to cut people out of the education system. 167 00:16:23,220 --> 00:16:30,030 The app's interestingly complained about that, like trying to have a conference once the once the young people were sent from the school, 168 00:16:30,030 --> 00:16:34,140 from the from the school to the app, having a conversation with the school was really difficult. 169 00:16:34,140 --> 00:16:39,240 It's like they no longer wanted to know about them. They'd gone. And now they're your problem. 170 00:16:39,240 --> 00:16:42,060 Parents and pupils talked about how they were told, you know, 171 00:16:42,060 --> 00:16:47,940 like some of the kids were terrified that you're going to the school that they thought was going to be, you know, going through metal. 172 00:16:47,940 --> 00:16:52,380 They thought they'd be going through metal detectors if they thought they were going to kind of like a prison environment. 173 00:16:52,380 --> 00:16:56,040 Parents were anxious, really scared for the kids and what the future might be. 174 00:16:56,040 --> 00:17:04,740 Again, lack of communication about what this this might mean. And the other thing was attainment levels of the young people who arrive, 175 00:17:04,740 --> 00:17:10,990 this alternate provision is so varied, like some of the kids who get there would be doing very, very well. 176 00:17:10,990 --> 00:17:18,790 And, you know, if they were able to have did their work in a mainstream school would be doing quite well. 177 00:17:18,790 --> 00:17:25,150 And some kids are really is reading ages were well below what they age, their age level. 178 00:17:25,150 --> 00:17:28,360 So. So you also then had these, you know, 179 00:17:28,360 --> 00:17:37,510 situations where the teachers in these schools were having to deal with a wide range of kind of hate the term that attainment levels ability level. 180 00:17:37,510 --> 00:17:47,520 So levels of attainment. Also, many of the people in the in the alternative provision had said to me multiple times. 181 00:17:47,520 --> 00:17:54,150 I can't believe such and such as here. Why are they here? Look, you know, that kind of actually amazingly engaged in doing their work? 182 00:17:54,150 --> 00:18:01,230 Why are they here? And there were and again, issues around anxiety for some of these young people, 183 00:18:01,230 --> 00:18:06,090 and autism came up over and over again as an issue as to why they were being sent there. 184 00:18:06,090 --> 00:18:13,590 And it seemed to me again, an inappropriate response to issues that were kind of needed to be addressed in other ways rather than through. 185 00:18:13,590 --> 00:18:20,430 And and you can say it's not punitive, but everybody in those schools feels it's punitive is the reason they're there. 186 00:18:20,430 --> 00:18:26,190 Now, I don't know. I think some of the schools that we've been to try to create a government where it doesn't feel punitive, 187 00:18:26,190 --> 00:18:33,490 but they in the back of their minds, that's why they've been sent there for punitive reasons. 188 00:18:33,490 --> 00:18:34,990 Two issues I'll pick up here. 189 00:18:34,990 --> 00:18:44,080 The small class, like I don't know, I hate the research that gets trundle out every so often that says class size doesn't matter, you know, to me, 190 00:18:44,080 --> 00:18:51,970 like any, you know, anybody that's ever stood in a classroom and worked with young people knows that a smaller group is much easier to work with. 191 00:18:51,970 --> 00:18:56,890 I don't care what the kind of, you know, class size affects or whatever, all those kinds of things. 192 00:18:56,890 --> 00:19:02,200 It's if you know, you know, when you work with a small group of people, you can actually achieve much more. 193 00:19:02,200 --> 00:19:06,430 And the students pupils talked about how much they liked the small classes. 194 00:19:06,430 --> 00:19:10,460 The teachers talked about how much they liked the small classes. 195 00:19:10,460 --> 00:19:17,420 There is an issue, and we're trying to explore this pattern, I've been talking about this for ages, really got around to doing it at any depth. 196 00:19:17,420 --> 00:19:22,340 But teacher recruitment and retention issues in AP and that and. 197 00:19:22,340 --> 00:19:28,280 What the teacher, what the head, teachers and equivalent in many, it says, look, we can find teachers, 198 00:19:28,280 --> 00:19:36,620 but we actually trouble trouble enough to actually retain them and sometimes find suitable people, people who actually understand. 199 00:19:36,620 --> 00:19:43,310 So you've got to you kind of need two things. One is you have to be a very good teacher, you know, to work with with young people like this. 200 00:19:43,310 --> 00:19:50,720 You also so you need to be young, but you also need to have some kind of understanding of young people and understanding of young people's lives. 201 00:19:50,720 --> 00:19:55,220 You can't go into a happy, loving, you know, ancient history or, you know, or mass. 202 00:19:55,220 --> 00:19:59,870 But you can't. But equally, you can't go into AP just because you really like young people. 203 00:19:59,870 --> 00:20:03,260 You need to have some pedagogical skills and understanding a curriculum. 204 00:20:03,260 --> 00:20:11,810 So the real issues in terms of teacher recruitment and recruitment in this in this sector. 205 00:20:11,810 --> 00:20:17,800 Interestingly. Whilst. 206 00:20:17,800 --> 00:20:25,490 Whilst many of the parents or carers and many of the young people were actually bit negative sometimes about their into sometimes really, 207 00:20:25,490 --> 00:20:31,150 really positive. Very few actually said I really want to go back to the mainstream if they'd been to a mainstream, 208 00:20:31,150 --> 00:20:35,500 many of them were actually quite happy now, you know, working within the small groups and so on. 209 00:20:35,500 --> 00:20:46,360 So. There's a range of kind of findings in that report, and I think it raises real issues about the nature of AP, 210 00:20:46,360 --> 00:20:55,890 raises issues about the ways in which young people end up in AP, and I think those have to be interrogated. 211 00:20:55,890 --> 00:21:01,110 Now, skip that. So I want to come on to a case study now. 212 00:21:01,110 --> 00:21:05,760 But to frame it up, I want to just say something about social justice. 213 00:21:05,760 --> 00:21:17,100 And for me, the whole. How kind of creation of a kind of alternative provision sector is a social justice issue for me. 214 00:21:17,100 --> 00:21:21,690 And I think you think about who the students are. You think about their backgrounds. 215 00:21:21,690 --> 00:21:30,840 You think about the consequences for their life chances. You think about how it's kind of creating a stratified system. 216 00:21:30,840 --> 00:21:39,460 Really, really social justice issues. I am very fond of Nancy Fraser and whenever I can, I use her work. 217 00:21:39,460 --> 00:21:45,180 And so for her, in terms of social justice, what it means. 218 00:21:45,180 --> 00:21:51,810 She argues that social justice requires social arrangements that permit all to participate as peers in social life. 219 00:21:51,810 --> 00:21:57,060 Overcoming injustice means dismantling institutional obstacles that prevent some people 220 00:21:57,060 --> 00:22:01,920 from participating on a par with others as full partners in social interaction. 221 00:22:01,920 --> 00:22:09,360 So what are the institutional obstacles? That alternative provision may be sets up for these young people, and to some extent, 222 00:22:09,360 --> 00:22:17,380 it's kind of like for many of the young people, it's a pathway to nowhere. It's they get in here like doing kind of busy work, right? 223 00:22:17,380 --> 00:22:23,260 And, you know, sometimes worksheets and things. And sometimes it's actually becoming a bigger obstacle for them getting on the net. 224 00:22:23,260 --> 00:22:31,410 They tried to find some way of keeping them in the mainstream. But what we have found in both schools in Australia, 225 00:22:31,410 --> 00:22:40,230 in this kind of selective and here that many of them actually try to address some of those institutional obstacles. 226 00:22:40,230 --> 00:22:45,000 So Nancy Fraser talks about three kind of dimensions of social justice economic, 227 00:22:45,000 --> 00:22:49,830 cultural, political, economic, financial, material, resources and so on. 228 00:22:49,830 --> 00:22:56,310 Many of the young people that we've spoken to can't get to school or don't go to school for a whole range of financial reasons. 229 00:22:56,310 --> 00:23:05,220 There's issues around food, transport, having the right clothes, all sorts of things that are economically make it different, difficult. 230 00:23:05,220 --> 00:23:13,930 We many of the schools we've been to actually try to address that with transport cards, with food meals, 231 00:23:13,930 --> 00:23:19,560 three three meals a day, you get there for breakfast, lunch, you have something to go into the day this Sunday. 232 00:23:19,560 --> 00:23:24,270 If you're homeless, you know, go to school because if you go to school, 233 00:23:24,270 --> 00:23:29,220 they will put you in touch with some kind of housing association or crisis housing. 234 00:23:29,220 --> 00:23:33,930 Many of the young people that we've spoken to, I've spoken to in the case studies, 235 00:23:33,930 --> 00:23:38,640 school and other schools, account surfing don't have anywhere to live. 236 00:23:38,640 --> 00:23:41,160 The schools that I've come across with crises. Right. 237 00:23:41,160 --> 00:23:48,930 So there's one fantastic school in that book that talked about the Glenda McGregor that we write about where and it's primarily indigenous girls, 238 00:23:48,930 --> 00:23:57,000 but not just indigenous girls, but young women with babies. And they've kind of got this great crash at a fantastic price system so that, 239 00:23:57,000 --> 00:24:00,570 you know, there's no reason why you can't go to school because of the baby. 240 00:24:00,570 --> 00:24:06,840 And they've got fantastic kind of caring support. They've got nurses that come in and work with the the young women. 241 00:24:06,840 --> 00:24:14,660 And so there's kind of an educated parental look at education as well as ensuring they get an education. 242 00:24:14,660 --> 00:24:21,620 What is interesting here and this comes back to and I know it happens here and it happens in Australia, illegal exclusions. 243 00:24:21,620 --> 00:24:27,680 You can, you know, you cannot tell a young woman she can't come to school because she's pregnant. 244 00:24:27,680 --> 00:24:32,840 But how many women I've spoken to, young women I've spoken to have told me, Yeah, right? 245 00:24:32,840 --> 00:24:40,490 You know, to pull the other one, you know, who felt that they've been excluded because of their being pregnant. 246 00:24:40,490 --> 00:24:47,560 I won't be safe. You know what, if you get bumped, you know, like, you know, and again, a lot of it's around that the image of the school. 247 00:24:47,560 --> 00:24:52,840 So that's economics, ensuring that people can come because of financial reasons. 248 00:24:52,840 --> 00:24:58,390 Then this cultural kind of discrimination and many of you know and I've spoken to young people 249 00:24:58,390 --> 00:25:04,660 who have have talked about how they felt discriminated because they they're a bit that, 250 00:25:04,660 --> 00:25:05,560 in their words, 251 00:25:05,560 --> 00:25:12,550 campy or a bit different or a bit alternative and of a sense of where they don't feel valued in the school and have been teased and bullied. 252 00:25:12,550 --> 00:25:16,990 And so the other thing about alternative provision is you find lots of young people who have actually been victim, you know, 253 00:25:16,990 --> 00:25:25,240 victims in a horrible term, but victims in a school environment, they're not the people who necessarily been really dangerous in a school. 254 00:25:25,240 --> 00:25:33,070 They've actually received it. So again, creating an environment where people all feel welcomed, political representation, 255 00:25:33,070 --> 00:25:41,230 political justice she talks about is a kind of having a voice and having a say in decisions that affect you. 256 00:25:41,230 --> 00:25:45,370 One girl I spoke to in Australia in a in one of these schools, 257 00:25:45,370 --> 00:25:54,640 she talked about how she'd been at her previous school, and she said that a teacher had called her a [INAUDIBLE]. 258 00:25:54,640 --> 00:25:58,840 She'd gone to the deputy to complain, and the deputy said, I don't believe you. 259 00:25:58,840 --> 00:26:02,590 So she tried to burn his office down. So she set fire to his rubbish bin. 260 00:26:02,590 --> 00:26:09,820 Well, and to some extent, another action. Maybe. But you can understand that sense of a lack of voice and a sense of frustration 261 00:26:09,820 --> 00:26:13,690 that nobody's believing you or giving you an opportunity to be heard again. 262 00:26:13,690 --> 00:26:18,280 The better kind of alternative schools. I went into alternative provision and. 263 00:26:18,280 --> 00:26:26,290 And in Australia, we tended to call them flexi schools that they're very flexible in terms of the um, the regimes within them. 264 00:26:26,290 --> 00:26:30,460 They provide opportunities for young people to have a say in it, to say what they want to study, 265 00:26:30,460 --> 00:26:37,100 what they what they feel and are critical about in terms of the school. 266 00:26:37,100 --> 00:26:42,230 I also think there's other issues around brand justice beyond Nancy Phrases. 267 00:26:42,230 --> 00:26:46,520 Kathleen Lynch in Ireland talks about effective justice care relationships. 268 00:26:46,520 --> 00:26:53,900 She talks about love, care and solidarity, that there all justice relationships, how we, you know, how we care for one another, who does the caring. 269 00:26:53,900 --> 00:27:02,350 And I think that's part part of the the environment. We have to think about the others poor combat notion of contributing justice. 270 00:27:02,350 --> 00:27:09,200 And so again, we've done the paper and critical studies of education on this, and it's about having meaningful work. 271 00:27:09,200 --> 00:27:12,690 And I think why we wanted to really. 272 00:27:12,690 --> 00:27:19,080 Emphasised this in the school context in alternative provision is you've got to give young people meaningful work, right? 273 00:27:19,080 --> 00:27:21,210 Work that actually means something to them. 274 00:27:21,210 --> 00:27:29,970 And what the definition, I guess that Paul Gomberg uses is the difference between conceiving of a project and actually executing it, 275 00:27:29,970 --> 00:27:33,120 undertaking it and doing it. And in many times, what happens in schools. 276 00:27:33,120 --> 00:27:39,960 And you can see why kids might actually not think this is worth doing because they have not been involved in the conceiving of the problem, 277 00:27:39,960 --> 00:27:44,010 conceiving of the issue, conceiving of the topic. But they're expected to do it right. 278 00:27:44,010 --> 00:27:50,010 And what we've seen in many of these sites where they do engage young people is involving them right from the beginning 279 00:27:50,010 --> 00:27:55,530 in the curriculum and having a discussion with them about what matters to them and dealing with topics that matter. 280 00:27:55,530 --> 00:28:04,740 And in many cases, I've seen. I've seen this done really well with something you think kids wouldn't get into World War One poetry, 281 00:28:04,740 --> 00:28:11,240 right, where they actually link it to what's happening in the news. So people are soldiers are going off to Afghanistan or Iraq. 282 00:28:11,240 --> 00:28:15,680 People know somebody that's doing that, you know, then they have a conversation about what's it like? 283 00:28:15,680 --> 00:28:19,520 Well, you know, let's have a look at what some of the poetry that was written. 284 00:28:19,520 --> 00:28:20,930 So actually, 285 00:28:20,930 --> 00:28:30,200 this is why I think you need skilled pedagogue in these intone to probation people who can think and understand how to get young people engaged. 286 00:28:30,200 --> 00:28:37,760 So that's my kind of social justice kind of rant, and I think those are things that we have to think about in relation to schooling. 287 00:28:37,760 --> 00:28:41,420 We have kind of seen them in the alternative provision side by saying, 288 00:28:41,420 --> 00:28:49,070 this is what we need in a mainstream school so we don't get to, you know, have to have alternative provision. 289 00:28:49,070 --> 00:29:00,730 So this is the case study, not. Beazley Street in West London, but the three sites it was set up in response to a set of London riots and you can see, 290 00:29:00,730 --> 00:29:04,270 you know how you might think, Oh, going, OK, let's just fix up those boys again, right? 291 00:29:04,270 --> 00:29:08,980 But the person who was involved, it was somebody from the local community. He was. 292 00:29:08,980 --> 00:29:18,040 He was. His background was from from North Africa. He could relate to many of the, he said many of the black boys in the school. 293 00:29:18,040 --> 00:29:25,540 His life had been much the same. He'd come to England when he was 12. So we had a life story very similar to these kids. 294 00:29:25,540 --> 00:29:32,230 They tried to do a whole range of things in relation to curriculum, but they really focussed on student focussed pedagogy. 295 00:29:32,230 --> 00:29:39,400 A couple of things that were interesting, I think, would be to discuss it like they had this notion of crisis intervention and therapy. 296 00:29:39,400 --> 00:29:41,740 So a bit of fixing up the kids, my my concern. 297 00:29:41,740 --> 00:29:48,100 But these places, sometimes it's that fixing up the kids rather than fixing up the system because you try and do this fix up the kids, 298 00:29:48,100 --> 00:29:52,100 then if they go back to the system they came from, the system is not necessarily fixed. 299 00:29:52,100 --> 00:29:55,660 Before you know it, they're back again, and that seems to be a recurring cycle. 300 00:29:55,660 --> 00:30:04,870 But they did this therapy work with them, and they built really strong connexions with with families. 301 00:30:04,870 --> 00:30:10,720 Yeah. So the worker roles are interesting so that the regular ones, but the family workers are mentors. 302 00:30:10,720 --> 00:30:15,800 This is the kind of the take into account more than education. We it it. 303 00:30:15,800 --> 00:30:19,450 A recent, well, last year, I think the book we did. I did. 304 00:30:19,450 --> 00:30:25,280 But again, Glenda MacGregor, Deb Hayes and Katie to Real and Asper brutes as we. 305 00:30:25,280 --> 00:30:30,740 Drew, and one term that was used in one of these schools that was called clearing the path for learning. 306 00:30:30,740 --> 00:30:35,930 What if you clear the path for learning they can learn? Many of the problems for these young people is the learning path is blocked. 307 00:30:35,930 --> 00:30:40,700 So how can we clear that that path? And the had family work as a mentors in this school, right? 308 00:30:40,700 --> 00:30:44,510 So the family workers would go to the to the homes of these young people. 309 00:30:44,510 --> 00:30:46,490 They would talk about the young people, 310 00:30:46,490 --> 00:30:52,760 but they would also help if people needed help with filling in forms or they needed help with anything to do with the housing. 311 00:30:52,760 --> 00:30:56,960 There was a problem with the housing, but let's say well, so they actually weren't just about education. 312 00:30:56,960 --> 00:31:03,530 They were supporting recognise that supporting the young person meant supporting that the broader family as well. 313 00:31:03,530 --> 00:31:10,070 Mentors were kind of like youth workers. But the young people always had a mentor on speed dial. 314 00:31:10,070 --> 00:31:15,290 And you know, and you could just if you got arrested one night or you were stuck somewhere, you could bring your mentor. 315 00:31:15,290 --> 00:31:21,560 And so, um, so they had this other kind of support network in place. 316 00:31:21,560 --> 00:31:25,340 But sometimes the family work as mentors didn't go to go to court with the young people. 317 00:31:25,340 --> 00:31:30,030 So the young people, you know, had to go away from school for the day to go to court. They would go with them and support them. 318 00:31:30,030 --> 00:31:36,020 So I sat in different meetings with about young people and you'd hear all the amazing stuff that these people were, 319 00:31:36,020 --> 00:31:40,910 were doing with the young people and the tragic lives that many of them. 320 00:31:40,910 --> 00:31:47,870 So here's some students in this school that Imran or pseudonyms, of course, was excluded because of fighting. 321 00:31:47,870 --> 00:31:51,920 He was sent to. He was sent to a centre until the new school could be found. 322 00:31:51,920 --> 00:31:58,700 He'd been there a long time. Well, they were really still struggling to find him a school, and he'd said he'd rather stay in the mainstream. 323 00:31:58,700 --> 00:32:02,960 I want to be in. I was meant to go to mainstream, but I don't know. They didn't accept me in mainstream. 324 00:32:02,960 --> 00:32:08,000 I was meant to go to another mainstream, but I had three interviews at three schools and they all said no. 325 00:32:08,000 --> 00:32:14,390 You can imagine that kind of, you know, Well, should we go to a fourth or to the point where you actually do anything? 326 00:32:14,390 --> 00:32:21,540 Oh, no, I'm just staying. And many of the teachers, they said, he's dying, you know, he really is unlikely to go somewhere else. 327 00:32:21,540 --> 00:32:30,090 Siddiq, you're gone. This young boy's so he came to England after his father disappeared, and I think the Taliban had taken his father right. 328 00:32:30,090 --> 00:32:36,600 He comes to England. He goes to this school and experienced all kinds of bullying, gets in conflict with a group of, 329 00:32:36,600 --> 00:32:41,640 he says, black boys and is told to leave the school if they didn't feel safe. 330 00:32:41,640 --> 00:32:46,140 They said, This fight with you, there's 25 of them. We can switch five of you, but there's 25 of them. 331 00:32:46,140 --> 00:32:49,500 We can't switch 25 of them because five of you say you had better go. 332 00:32:49,500 --> 00:32:53,880 So they said, you better go find another school for yourself, and if you feel safe, stay there. 333 00:32:53,880 --> 00:32:58,580 So that's why I'm here for temporarily. I'm going to move from this school to mainstream again. 334 00:32:58,580 --> 00:33:03,420 They said, No, it's not, you know, highly unlikely [INAUDIBLE] be leaving. And again, it's his. 335 00:33:03,420 --> 00:33:08,850 So they said they admitted that he'd been experience like said racist abuse at his school, 336 00:33:08,850 --> 00:33:16,830 but also that he was so far behind in work that the school didn't want him there. You know, again, to go back to the wasted lives I tried to. 337 00:33:16,830 --> 00:33:21,600 This is a sort of lengthy interview transcript, but it's quite nice to hear the kind of dialogue sometimes. 338 00:33:21,600 --> 00:33:25,500 So I'll just go through it and then trying to talk to them. 339 00:33:25,500 --> 00:33:27,990 Could you tell me a little bit about how you ended up at the school, 340 00:33:27,990 --> 00:33:32,280 got getting kicked out of school, bad behaviour, other things fights just all led to up here, 341 00:33:32,280 --> 00:33:39,840 went to school, mainstream school at see mainstream and faith went to Peru around the corner twice and then I didn't attend school for two years. 342 00:33:39,840 --> 00:33:43,860 But two years this is about 15 is about 15. 343 00:33:43,860 --> 00:33:49,200 Where was he for two years? And then I'm thinking back to that theory that the knife crime, you know, 344 00:33:49,200 --> 00:33:53,850 like and I'm not saying everybody who's not in school is engaged in kind of criminal activity and stuff, 345 00:33:53,850 --> 00:34:00,030 but I think that you have to think about these issues if they're not not in school. 346 00:34:00,030 --> 00:34:06,540 What were you doing for two years? Nothing. But then he talks about how it's nice, how they treat you as a person. 347 00:34:06,540 --> 00:34:12,130 And he was very critical about his previous school. And. 348 00:34:12,130 --> 00:34:18,730 And all of them say they'd rather stay in mainstream school, but we have no choice, but they're going to be sent out. 349 00:34:18,730 --> 00:34:20,800 And he wanted to go to a different this is all. 350 00:34:20,800 --> 00:34:26,560 No, I wasn't allowed to go to any mainstream school that he goes that I know that's how students become corrupt. 351 00:34:26,560 --> 00:34:33,430 If the mainstream is like that sort of put in a different scene, the interview transcript later on, I wish I could go back to him. 352 00:34:33,430 --> 00:34:37,900 Really, you know, explore this word. Corrupt. I did ask him what it means. 353 00:34:37,900 --> 00:34:42,160 That's how they change people's lives. Isn't it like they're giving us worse education? 354 00:34:42,160 --> 00:34:44,800 Now, the irony is he's actually quite liked this place, right? 355 00:34:44,800 --> 00:34:49,870 But he saw it as worse education because they have their own image of being in the school. 356 00:34:49,870 --> 00:34:56,380 And and again, our experiences in Australia, as well as hear people saying they're embarrassed to tell people where I go about, 357 00:34:56,380 --> 00:35:03,590 you know, I like it here, but I don't really want to tell people where I go because I have an image of my. 358 00:35:03,590 --> 00:35:10,850 Life outside of school, this is the thing that these places really this place really tried to do now and again when I was coming up on the train, 359 00:35:10,850 --> 00:35:14,300 I'm thinking, I'm kind of burglarising one side right now. 360 00:35:14,300 --> 00:35:18,320 I know that not all alternative provision is like this, but I think and I. 361 00:35:18,320 --> 00:35:22,130 But I think that some of the messages from it are really important. 362 00:35:22,130 --> 00:35:28,220 And so they were really understanding and trying to get their head around this issue of gangs right now. 363 00:35:28,220 --> 00:35:36,410 And one of the people told me one of the head teachers or one of the senior teachers about how many of the kids were in gangs, 364 00:35:36,410 --> 00:35:38,750 and many of them had responsibilities to the gangs. 365 00:35:38,750 --> 00:35:42,860 And many of them were kind of senior older people that if they didn't live up to their expectation, 366 00:35:42,860 --> 00:35:49,720 especially the younger ones 13 14, could actually be physically dangerous for them. 367 00:35:49,720 --> 00:35:52,450 The reason I put this in because I quite was flattered by it. 368 00:35:52,450 --> 00:35:56,770 So when you say you can make money from it, how much money and what would you have to do? This is a kid. 369 00:35:56,770 --> 00:36:01,540 It's like all the gang, all the people. And there's the kids and they all sell the stuff to the older people and make some money. 370 00:36:01,540 --> 00:36:06,020 So I say so. The older people would be my age. Yeah, 20 years to thirty five. 371 00:36:06,020 --> 00:36:11,140 Well, thank you very much. And it's like you said you can make hundreds not, you know. 372 00:36:11,140 --> 00:36:20,050 But then he goes, you can make thousands of pounds. So this is kind of romanticising of the amount of money that they can make from from gangs. 373 00:36:20,050 --> 00:36:24,310 And the head of campus literally tells me, you know, you'd be made to work for an elder or older, 374 00:36:24,310 --> 00:36:29,830 as they say, and they pay you maybe 20 50 pounds to be in a spot. They give you a plot, so you need to be in that area. 375 00:36:29,830 --> 00:36:32,770 So we've had experiences with kids who won't come to school because they won't. 376 00:36:32,770 --> 00:36:37,330 Would they have been forced to be on the plot, selling drugs or whatever else? And then it's quite dangerous. 377 00:36:37,330 --> 00:36:41,860 Right? So my time on the spot is nine o'clock, right? 378 00:36:41,860 --> 00:36:45,760 Am I going to get to school on time or am I going to be those kids who's regularly light? 379 00:36:45,760 --> 00:36:51,670 Right now, if I'm regularly late because it's the safest thing for me to do and then I get sent to alternative provision, 380 00:36:51,670 --> 00:36:57,250 that seems to be an issue that has to be addressed here. There's issues beyond the school that have to be taken into account. 381 00:36:57,250 --> 00:37:00,850 And again, the alternative provision sites, not all of them. 382 00:37:00,850 --> 00:37:04,240 This one in particular, was very flexible around that. 383 00:37:04,240 --> 00:37:10,390 And again, it's hence why the term in Australia term flexi schools, because they try to be flexible around these things. 384 00:37:10,390 --> 00:37:14,830 And look, this teacher talks about kid bringing out all this money in. 385 00:37:14,830 --> 00:37:18,370 So to some extent, they are making making money and looking at time. 386 00:37:18,370 --> 00:37:21,880 And so I'm just going to speed on. This is an important point. 387 00:37:21,880 --> 00:37:26,980 I think from one of the young person is Imran, who was talking because hang on a minute with the gang thing talking about it. 388 00:37:26,980 --> 00:37:32,560 Go back. We've been talking about ages ago and go back to it. Just realised you'd be chilling with all your boys meant to you. 389 00:37:32,560 --> 00:37:35,830 That is your boys. But in someone else's eyes, that is a gang. 390 00:37:35,830 --> 00:37:40,660 So I don't really see yourself as a gang, but that's what you're known as fine with 10 of my friends on the block. 391 00:37:40,660 --> 00:37:43,990 That's a gang. Basically what people will call the police straight away. 392 00:37:43,990 --> 00:37:50,230 And again, it's this kind of terrible attitude we have to young people, groups of people and especially a group of young black boys, 393 00:37:50,230 --> 00:37:57,220 you know, like in terms of seeing them as a gang and as as dangerous, which wasn't as part of the school. 394 00:37:57,220 --> 00:38:02,050 I think there are issues around curriculum pedagogy that these schools were. The school was particular trying to address. 395 00:38:02,050 --> 00:38:06,970 I'm going to I'll do this long transcript and I'll skip some other stuff. 396 00:38:06,970 --> 00:38:18,580 So I'd sat in the classroom and then I was discussing this classroom with this boy who'd been in the classroom and basically. 397 00:38:18,580 --> 00:38:22,750 They were supposed to do a presentation, most of them are saying, Oh, I'm not doing the presentation, 398 00:38:22,750 --> 00:38:27,760 and then at the end they all did the presentation, so I'm having a discussion with this. 399 00:38:27,760 --> 00:38:31,420 You it, you can't get kicked out of here that no exclusion policy. 400 00:38:31,420 --> 00:38:35,270 So if you get kicked out, you get kicked out a couple of days and it just waste your time. So no one does. 401 00:38:35,270 --> 00:38:39,100 It's a good school and you come to school. There's more freedom. Now I'd watch the class. 402 00:38:39,100 --> 00:38:43,840 And the teacher had said she was a she did psychology, and I was talking about how she did psychology. 403 00:38:43,840 --> 00:38:47,950 And you said, Oh, is that where they teach you how to [INAUDIBLE] with people's heads? Yeah. 404 00:38:47,950 --> 00:38:53,290 Now, in my view, now in a school, they would have told you off for using that. Yeah, where she engaged with like the teacher. 405 00:38:53,290 --> 00:38:56,650 Just kind of let it go. You know, it's part of their language. Just, you know, 406 00:38:56,650 --> 00:39:02,770 and you can imagine sometimes that those kind of the triggers that actually end up to kind of big fights between teachers and students. 407 00:39:02,770 --> 00:39:08,960 You can't say that call, you know, like, you know, yes, I can. You know, so you kind of that that tension. 408 00:39:08,960 --> 00:39:13,750 They don't tell us off. They help us not tell us what we already know like we are here. 409 00:39:13,750 --> 00:39:17,500 We are behind. It's not like we are being an interrupted. Right. 410 00:39:17,500 --> 00:39:21,820 So so there's that sense of the teachers understanding them today in the classroom. 411 00:39:21,820 --> 00:39:26,170 I thought it was a bit funny. Everybody said they were going to. This is me to do a presentation. 412 00:39:26,170 --> 00:39:32,770 And then eventually you all kind of agree. Like why? Because when I was like a good teacher, she makes you think like, it's for your own benefit. 413 00:39:32,770 --> 00:39:37,990 She just like compromises and stuff. In other schools, you do what they say or you get kicked out here. 414 00:39:37,990 --> 00:39:44,050 It's like compromises you meet in between that kind of political justice I was talking about before that sense of having a discussion and a voice. 415 00:39:44,050 --> 00:39:47,330 Right? So we do compromises with the teacher. 416 00:39:47,330 --> 00:39:53,510 Are those lessons like that, yeah, so did you want to present or did you feel you should present because she had asked you? 417 00:39:53,510 --> 00:39:58,790 I didn't want to, but then she showed me the marking how you get good grades and that and you have to practise get good grades. 418 00:39:58,790 --> 00:40:03,560 So if you don't do it, you basically don't know where you're at. So the kind of like, you know, you know, there's that sense. 419 00:40:03,560 --> 00:40:13,980 And again, it's that kind of relationship with the with the teacher. I'm going to skip things because I realise the time now. 420 00:40:13,980 --> 00:40:22,680 One of the things about the school, and this is this this teacher saying it is there is no exclusion and no, no real punishment's at the school. 421 00:40:22,680 --> 00:40:23,670 I was there one day. 422 00:40:23,670 --> 00:40:31,260 Some kids clearly came and they'd been smoking or were drunk, and the teacher said, Hello, look, you're not really for learning today. 423 00:40:31,260 --> 00:40:36,240 Go home, come back tomorrow and we'll discuss it, you know? So they went home the next day. 424 00:40:36,240 --> 00:40:39,240 There they were, and they had it. It wasn't like you just come back in. 425 00:40:39,240 --> 00:40:43,710 So it was a kind of discussion about what that meant, but it wasn't like, Well, now you're suspended, right? 426 00:40:43,710 --> 00:40:48,690 I didn't want to know what they've been taking. They didn't want to know what they'd been drinking. Just this is not ready for learning today. 427 00:40:48,690 --> 00:40:53,190 Tomorrow, come back and again. Kids understood it. So they've taken away the punishment. 428 00:40:53,190 --> 00:40:57,570 There's no detentions. It's not really that much to fight against. It's kind of like choices. 429 00:40:57,570 --> 00:41:02,630 Well, if you want to walk out and have a cigarette and throw your paper on the floor, then I do it and we will talk about it. 430 00:41:02,630 --> 00:41:06,600 Right. So it's not like we're not going to. We're going to ignore it. We'll talk about it more. 431 00:41:06,600 --> 00:41:11,160 You've done it, but I'm not going to shout at you. I'm not going to make you stay behind for two hours and write lines. 432 00:41:11,160 --> 00:41:14,670 So with that all removed, a lot of the behaviour disappears again. 433 00:41:14,670 --> 00:41:22,530 You kind of like, So look, I had this image of the school when I first went there, but that image that people sometimes have of places like this. 434 00:41:22,530 --> 00:41:26,010 And it was the most friendly, relaxed place like, you know, and and I'd heard, 435 00:41:26,010 --> 00:41:30,210 you know, from teachers about some kid had died from a knife crime at that school, 436 00:41:30,210 --> 00:41:37,150 but they would never have got that from the young people talking to them in this in this environment. 437 00:41:37,150 --> 00:41:41,810 This is the head of campus, so people say we don't exclude and we don't punish, but we challenge, we challenge their thinking. 438 00:41:41,810 --> 00:41:48,110 So we might not shout, Ah, why did you do that? Blah blah blah. We say, OK, alright, understand you are trying to say something to me right now. 439 00:41:48,110 --> 00:41:51,890 I will come back to that. So I put the sole attention to you. That's what we want right now. 440 00:41:51,890 --> 00:41:59,230 Again, there's no exclusion policy. So these are just some concluding thoughts of mine. 441 00:41:59,230 --> 00:42:04,420 I think there's a whole range of things that we can learn in relation to how we do the mainstream. 442 00:42:04,420 --> 00:42:07,930 And I think it's the things are meaningful curriculum, a curriculum that's linked to life. 443 00:42:07,930 --> 00:42:15,970 That notion of contributing justice, rejecting deficit constructions of young people kind of we understand the context in which they come. 444 00:42:15,970 --> 00:42:20,440 We don't necessarily blame them individually. We think about the context in which they're located. 445 00:42:20,440 --> 00:42:29,890 A kind of cultural justice. And in some states, and I put the quote up and it's I remember I did a project in Australian Capital Territory, 446 00:42:29,890 --> 00:42:36,310 the act near Canberra, and I was talking to this principal and we've been commissioned to do a project on disengagement. 447 00:42:36,310 --> 00:42:40,990 And he sort of got started in that. Not really, but metaphorically poking me in the chest. 448 00:42:40,990 --> 00:42:44,830 And I hate that word disengagement. It's the wrong word. 449 00:42:44,830 --> 00:42:51,700 It's disenfranchised, we've not provided the right education for these young people have not provided them anything they want. 450 00:42:51,700 --> 00:42:59,410 We've denied them with an education. So I think it's about how we shift our constructions of young people and young people in need. 451 00:42:59,410 --> 00:43:04,690 The whole thing about clearing the path for learning, I think, is is really essential thinking about their lives, 452 00:43:04,690 --> 00:43:13,350 thinking about their material needs, thinking about, you know? What happens if we exclude thinking about how we build the again? 453 00:43:13,350 --> 00:43:18,810 I've been doing some work and we're doing some work in in in Blackpool, we just got some funding. 454 00:43:18,810 --> 00:43:27,930 Blackpool's got seven times the national average of exclusions. One of the highest exclusion rates in the country around what? 455 00:43:27,930 --> 00:43:33,360 How can a community respond to this issue? Not just the schools, not the kids, but as a community? 456 00:43:33,360 --> 00:43:41,250 What do we need to do better to support young people to keep keep them in schools, listening to student voice and building social capital? 457 00:43:41,250 --> 00:43:49,650 Now I've kind of pulled all those from the this the kind of schools that we've been inviting and visiting. 458 00:43:49,650 --> 00:43:57,130 Some of them will turn to provision some flexi schools, some of other kinds of alternative schools and. 459 00:43:57,130 --> 00:44:00,710 One of the young people often say about how they love these schools, 460 00:44:00,710 --> 00:44:06,700 and one young person said to Glenda, nine, a paper we read, I wish there were more schools like this. 461 00:44:06,700 --> 00:44:14,230 And it's kind of. Well, we don't, you know, we love the school, you know, and the things we've been seeing in some of these schools. 462 00:44:14,230 --> 00:44:17,680 But the problem is once you've done that, you know, start to too. 463 00:44:17,680 --> 00:44:21,490 And I'm not saying we want alternative provision that are so scary and terrible, you know, 464 00:44:21,490 --> 00:44:26,800 but that once you have places actually working with these young people really work well, 465 00:44:26,800 --> 00:44:32,050 then it kind of lets the mainstream off the hook and it kind of says, Well, you know, what about the school down the road? 466 00:44:32,050 --> 00:44:38,410 Maybe you might want to try that. Maybe that's better suited to you if we want a beautiful education system. 467 00:44:38,410 --> 00:44:45,190 Two things about the young people I want to finish with. And I think that it's about the part part of the issue, 468 00:44:45,190 --> 00:44:49,420 and I think that's that's missing in our understanding of exclusions in schools is 469 00:44:49,420 --> 00:44:54,100 really getting an understanding of the young people and how they are what they are. 470 00:44:54,100 --> 00:45:02,110 Two quotes one. First, one is from a head teacher at that or the campus head at that Beasley Street. 471 00:45:02,110 --> 00:45:04,270 Now out there in the streets, it's a bit different. 472 00:45:04,270 --> 00:45:08,740 But here with these other young people, they're quite young minded when they get them into the school environment. 473 00:45:08,740 --> 00:45:13,840 Now on the streets, they're like big men because that's what they've been taught to, to be able to survive out there. 474 00:45:13,840 --> 00:45:16,120 You have to act like it's like a cobra. 475 00:45:16,120 --> 00:45:22,000 Even though the Cobra is scared shitless, but it swells up, it's trying to show you that it's not to be messed with. 476 00:45:22,000 --> 00:45:28,000 So like a lot of kids, but when you get deep down in it now, Bury are kids and these these 13 14 year olds, 477 00:45:28,000 --> 00:45:33,700 you know, involved in all sorts of things out in the street. But when you get to know them on a personal level, they're really just kids, 478 00:45:33,700 --> 00:45:40,240 you know, in a sense, but they've been constructed as this dangerous entity. 479 00:45:40,240 --> 00:45:49,120 The last quote is one of the schools I went to in Australia had this great mentoring system bringing community people in and a lot of them retired. 480 00:45:49,120 --> 00:45:56,560 And and it was a lovely kind of network in that community of support for this, this school. 481 00:45:56,560 --> 00:46:03,580 And it was linked to it, to a mainstream school. And this person is a retired magistrate. 482 00:46:03,580 --> 00:46:09,460 So this is what he says when he when he decides when he's retired, it says, Do you know, what am I going to do? 483 00:46:09,460 --> 00:46:13,510 She goes on, When you go to work, then he goes, Oh, I'll go and have a look. 484 00:46:13,510 --> 00:46:18,640 I walked up the front stairs and I saw in those days there was a couple of boys that were in raggedy clothes. 485 00:46:18,640 --> 00:46:23,650 The dirty, smelly hair. One of them a bits of steel metal hanging out all out of his face. 486 00:46:23,650 --> 00:46:27,140 I was thinking to myself, Why the [INAUDIBLE]? What am I doing here? 487 00:46:27,140 --> 00:46:34,090 It's only a couple of years I was sentencing kids like that. And then I come in and it took a session, probably an hour of talking to these kids, 488 00:46:34,090 --> 00:46:38,620 and then I started to realise, Hey, wait a minute, I've prejudged these kids. 489 00:46:38,620 --> 00:46:44,470 I've been prejudging them wrongly, of course, and prejudging literally sending them to detention. 490 00:46:44,470 --> 00:46:50,260 So now I've totally changed the way I think as I tell the people when they asked me to talk about various places. 491 00:46:50,260 --> 00:46:55,150 It's really education, not legislation will fix the problem with the youth. And I don't mean formal education. 492 00:46:55,150 --> 00:47:02,980 I mean education and all sorts of things. And I think the last two quotes and why I wanted to finish with those is that we have to think about 493 00:47:02,980 --> 00:47:08,560 the human cost of exclusion and the fact that these are young people that we're talking about. 494 00:47:08,560 --> 00:47:11,200 They're not know some of the images they're kind of in, 495 00:47:11,200 --> 00:47:15,850 and I'm not sure you want to create hardened criminals like it anyway, but they're not hardened criminals. 496 00:47:15,850 --> 00:47:19,180 What's the most common reason for being there? 497 00:47:19,180 --> 00:47:28,420 Persistent disruptive behaviour and this is what we do, is put them in a place which kind of channels them into a particular direction. 498 00:47:28,420 --> 00:47:37,450 Thank you.