Documentary goes beyond the school gates at Ian Mikardo high school, where boys deemed unteachable are making a fresh start.
Ian Mikardo High School, in London’s east end, is the end of the line, a special school for boys aged 11-16, who have been deemed unteachable.
The boys, who have severe social, emotional and behavioural difficulties, are among the most troubled and troubling children in the country and have been excluded from their previous, mainstream schools. They are also about to appear on television, as the subjects of the latest documentary tracing the everyday ups and downs of school-life, following the hugely popular Educating Yorkshire, Essex and now the East End.
The boys’ stories feature poverty and bereavement; they may have witnessed domestic violence or murder. Their homes are unstable, their accomodation is crowded and temporary. This week a new boy kicked in a window at school. It turned out his family were to be evicted the next morning and he didn’t know where he was going to live.
By the end of the two part documentary, which starts next week, it is hard not to appreciate the boys’ good fortune at having found themselves in the care of such an unorthodox institution, in one of the capital’s poorest boroughs, Tower Hamlets.
Here there are no uniforms, no rules, no physical restraint, no bars, no isolation rooms, no detentions, no punishment. Everyone is on first name terms – staff and students. If you swear (the boys do, a lot), you will be challenged (“Language please!”) but there are no sanctions; if you walk out of class no one will force you back in, if you get in to a fight, a member of staff will intervene if it looks like someone is going to get hurt, but you won’t get excluded.
The Guardian visits on the day Sir Michael Wilshaw publishes his Ofsted report on the damaging impact of low-level disruption in classrooms, in which he complains about unruly pupils humming and fidgeting. Headteacher Claire Lillis is scathing. “I can’t believe this is a national report. It’s a national disgrace.”
What, in turn, would Sir Michael make of the local authority funded Ian Mikardo?
In the first episode of the documentary, new boy Matthew, 13, is causing ructions. Cries of “Shut the fuck up,” ring out, boys throw paper at each other, one spits in the other’s face. In a Design Technology lesson someone holds a drill up at another child’s face; Matthew puts someone in a headlock and the community police officer is called in to talk to him.
A school trip to the local ice rink ends in near chaos with children running out of control. “This is a disaster,” admits one member of staff. “I’m phoning the police,” says another.
In the second episode, James, 12, another new boy, refuses to talk to staff, refuses to go to class. He taunts and picks on another boy, and to everyone’s alarm climbs the banister high above the staircase putting himself in danger. Humming and fidgeting don’t seem to be the problem.
“If a teacher spent their time picking up on all low level incidents, students would learn very quickly how to distract the teacher from the lesson,” says Lillis. “The skill of the teacher is to pick up on low level incidents that if ignored may escalate to a serious incident.”
She is contemptuous of Sir Michael’s criticism about heads “blurring the lines between friendliness and familiarity”.
“This is incredibly superficial and a simplistic view of teaching and what matters. It is not what a teacher wears, or their name, that makes a good teacher or gains student respect, it is the quality of their teaching and the relationship that they have with their students and colleagues.
“If all of the profession suddenly wore suits would this lead to a better educated Britain?” (Lillis is wearing a smart black shirt, jeans, red shoes, and has a few discreet piercings and tattoos.)
“One can be a professional without being in a suit.”
Lillis is speaking from a position of authority. She has been head at Ian Mikardo for 13 years and in that time has received three outstanding Ofsted reports. The school’s motto is “Come with a past, leave with a future”, and the boys overwhelmingly do.
When she took over the school, it was in special measures and all the boys who walked through its doors ended up in prison. By contrast, in the past three years, 97% have gone on to further education, employment or training and no one has found their way into custody in the past seven years. They make “outstanding” educational progress and leave with a range of vocational and academic qualifications.
The school’s guiding principles are empathy, respect, being non-judgemental and listening. This is, Lillis points out, a special school – there are only 40 boys, a maximum of eight to a class and in-house psychotherapists, one dedicated to children, the other to staff. Not every school can be like this, but she clearly believes that much of what goes on here could be applied elsewhere.
The building is colourful and inviting. There’s a rescue dog called McFlurry that the boys (and staff) dote on; the dining room has a juke box which seems to play all the time and there’s a flat where the boys can relax at lunchtime and where they have lessons in how to cook, wash and iron.
Elsewhere there’s a salon, where they can get haircuts, manicures and facials. It creates an easy, intimate atmosphere where even the most aggressive boys soften and have their spots squeezed and eyebrows shaped. They also learn about personal hygiene.
The atmosphere is calm and good-humoured, but the staff are constantly on alert, watching for signs of tension and intervening before anything erupts.
During the course of photographs being taken one of the boys pockets the photographer’s phone. “He always gives stuff back,” says Lillis, and he does, holding it way above the photographer’s head so she can’t reach it before finally handing it over. The head’s keys go missing; they quickly turn up. James, so closed and angry in the second episode, is there fresh-faced and laughing with the other boys.
Lillis is anxious about the documentary going out – extra support will be provided for the boys and their families – but she felt it was worth doing to encourage the public to empathise with the boys in her care and the difficulties their families face. “The current government has taken a real punitive stance in education and against families who have difficulties. Some parts of the media have run with that and glorified it.
“I wanted to give a voice to those who have been under attack and also challenge what it is that we are trying to do with education. We’ve lost sight of what education means.”
The world has changed dramatically in the past few decades, she says, “yet we are trying to have an education system that has not progressed and has not moved with society.”
Talking about the perils of idle chatting, she says: “Why are we trying to silence our children? They are locked into screens a lot of time. We need to encourage more oracy at school.”
Reacting to Pisa international league tables and the current obsession around learning from education systems in Singapore and elsewhere, she says: “We need to stop comparing ourselves to global markets and Asia. Where’s the innovation and creativity gone in Britain?
“We need to play again. We need to be creative. We need to get enjoyment again into our schools and our classrooms.”
She also warns against restrictions. “The more we try and suppress our youth, [the more likely it is] we will end with another form of riots and it will be far worse than it was a few years ago.”
Too Tough to Teach? Channel 5 9pm Monday 29 September and 6 October
The Ian Mikardo school rules
1 There are no rules
2 No detentions
3 No punishments
4 No rewards
5 No uniform (for staff or students)
6 No physical restraint
7 Instead, children are encouraged to empathise
8 Listen to each other
9 Be non-judgemental
10 And respect one another
