August. A formal event for school leavers. The pageantry has been magnificent. Speeches have been in turn formal and touching. There’s a feeling that these young people setting out into the world have been commissioned for great things.
And then there’s a thump. A student stands up, makes his way to the front, asks for the microphone.
“This wasn’t planned,” he says. “I’m not a house captain or sports leader or maths genius. I’m not on the programme. I just thought someone should say something, and it should be me.”
What happens next? Does a pastoral leader leap from the wings to rugby tackle him from the stage? Do the students laugh at, rather than with him? Is there a nervous murmur spreading across the room?
Well, if you run a highly academic school that aspires to the comprehensive ideal (as I do), then what happens is that you clutch your knees nervously. You will the speaker to find the right words, because you agree with him that there should be a voice at this event for those members of the community whose triumphs might not be abstractly notable but who have come through adversity.
And you breathe a sigh of relief as the words come and as the community shares its affection in applause.
Being academically selective doesn’t mean a school has to be selective in other ways, but to be comprehensive within such a niche takes effort. Without focus, it’s easy to exclude the economically disadvantaged or those with health problems or students with particular learning needs.
It’s not enough to shrug and tell yourself that the exam room is a neutral adjudicator, because it isn’t. You have to want to be comprehensive, you have to see through the disadvantages and make sure you have provision for those who need it when they come.
And you have to make policy commitments. For example, at Harris Westminster we have enshrined in the admissions policy a priority for disadvantaged students.
This moral responsibility is too often forgotten by the selective sector
It seems to me that this is a moral responsibility that has too often been forgotten by the selective sector, that there are too many grammar schools with expensive uniforms and little SEND provision because the students who end up coming can afford them and don’t need it.
You can’t put statistics ahead of the good of the student and find a way to get rid of those who might get Ds, worrying about the reputation of the school rather than the life chances of the young person.
It’s a moral responsibility, and it’s also a joy, because the success of such a school isn’t just the students who go to Oxford, Cambridge or Harvard. It’s all of those who have had a better two years and are facing a better future than they would otherwise.
Some successes stick in your mind.
There’s the student who spent two years in temporary accommodation with his family and still came into school with a huge smile on his face. Their final grades weren’t as high as they might have been if things were different, but they still too their first step towards being an architect.
There’s the student with an eating disorder who was in and out of class, in and out of hospital struggling with her demons. They took an extra year to complete their A-levels, but they got through in one piece and went off to university.
And there’s the student who might not have been accepted in another community, whose incessant questions might have disrupted lessons in another school, who really did need help to succeed, but who finished their school career with an impromptu speech from the front and a round of applause that took the roof off.
Part of the problem is that you can’t celebrate students who face such challenges in the same way. You can’t put their picture in the paper without an explanation of circumstances that really shouldn’t be used for publicity.
Perhaps all you can do is write an article like this and hope that if one of them reads it then they’ll recognise themselves – or someone like them – and realise how proud you are of them.
