OUR APPROACH CAN CHANGE LIVES

LAST week, after spending 20 years as a structured finance lawyer in London and New York, I joined The Difference, a new charity working to reduce unnecessary exclusions and improve outcomes for children educated outside the mainstream.

It’s a radical change inspired by my experience as an independent monitor in a London prison. There are many reasons to be shocked by our prison system, but I was struck by the fact that half the men in prison have experienced exclusion.

Talking to prisoners, it’s clear that the experience of exclusion is profoundly impactful. It can result in a lifetime of believing you are bad or stupid, that you can’t trust authority or that you don’t belong and inevitably this becomes self-fulfilling.

I am also a school governor at a genuinely inclusive comprehensive. I’ve seen how excellent teachers, armed with skills to engage vulnerable students, can alter the course of a child’s life. It could be a child experiencing abuse, a child with undiagnosed special educational needs or with poor mental health.

It could be a child struggling to deal with their parents’ divorce or having a difficult time as a teenager. It could be my child. By the time someone is sitting in a prison cell it’s hard to change the story. For some, exclusion can be the first step on the journey that leads to that cell. I joined The Difference because I believe we can do better for children at a time in their lives when their future is not yet written.