‘I opened school 48hrs after the blaze because pupils wanted to learn’
THE headteacher of the school at the base of the Grenfell Tower has revealed it was reopened 48 hours after the tragedy because “education is too important to be put on hold”.
David Benson, head of Kensington Aldridge Academy, spoke out about the days following the devastating fire, saying students wanted to return to school and keep having lessons.
Speaking at a social mobility summit organised by Teach First, Mr Benson said the school was closed for two days after the fire so he could try to find out what had happened to students, parents and staff who lived in the tower.
He also rewrote the school timetable in 48 hours and organised for lessons to be taught in two local schools.
He said: “On the first day we held a series of assemblies to talk about how difficult we were all finding it but about how we had to get back to school — education was too important to be put on hold — and detailed all the support that was available. We then resumed lessons and, as strange as it may sound, the students’ actual education was remarkably undisrupted. They wanted to learn. They wanted to come to school and see their friends and focus on their exams and the normal school business of the summer term.”
Four pupils and a fifth who had recently left the school are believed to have died as a result of the fire. On the morning after the blaze, dozens of KAA students turned up to sit their AS level maths exams in a hastily rearranged exam hall. Students spent the last weeks of the summer term having lessons in neighbouring schools. Now the 960 pupils are in a new home in neighbouring Hammersmith and Fulham.
Mr Benson said: “The atmosphere around Grenfell in the weeks and months after the fire was not good. Instinctively, this was why we knew we had to reopen. We knew we had to bring the students together so we could address how they were feeling, explain what support was there, and begin to offer guidance and reassurance.”