We need more state schools where the motto is ‘no excuses’
They’re tearing up every last cliché about kids from the wrong side of the tracks
‘Every lesson shapes a life.” That was the campaign launched by the Department for Education last October to recruit teachers. The short, affecting film documenting the educational “journey” of a girl from the ages of four to 18 was nicely done, there were no knives or drugs and, aside from a short detention, very little jeopardy.
The teachers were played by actual teachers, and they were a supportive lot. The aim was to convey the emotional rewards of changing children’s lives.
If the DFE is looking for a follow-up, they need look no further than Brampton Manor, the state school in east London where 41 students have secured an offer to study at either Oxford or Cambridge.
In fact, the story of these teenagers is so lump-in-the-throat uplifting, it ought to be made into a film. Brampton is located in Newham, one of the poorest boroughs in London. Figures from the End Child Poverty coalition from February 2018 revealed it to have more children living in poverty – 36,780 – than anywhere else in the city.
The school roll bears this out; half of these Oxbridge-bound pupils receive free meals. Two thirds will be the first in their family to attend university. Nearly all are from ethnic minority backgrounds.
Bespectacled, hijab-wearing Lydia Khechine arrived in this country from Algeria aged 12, as an unaccompanied minor, not speaking a word of English.
Now 18, and smiling shyly for the BBC cameras, she told how she happily travels up to two hours a day to school. Is it worth it? She now has an offer to study politics and history at Oxford.
Dorcas Shodeinde, 17, has been in care since she was 14. She has been offered a place at Oxford to study law.
There are many more names, many more stories of teenagers defying life’s odds, striving to fulfil their potential – and joyfully tearing up every last cliché about refugees and immigrants and low-aspiration kids from the wrong side of the tracks being destined for lives of drudgery and petty crime.
“I’ve defied the odds,” said Jeffery Maya, 17, who joined Brampton Manor from a local comprehensive and is determined to get the grades needed to read natural sciences at Pembroke College, Cambridge.
“You don’t see a lot of people around Newham going to college. A lot of people get into illegal stuff.”
Look beyond the compelling narrative of fiercely bright kids from sink estates and crumbling tower blocks cramming for their A-levels on London buses, and there is a supporting cast of teachers who are arguably the real stars.
Brampton Manor only opened its sixth form in 2012. Its ambitious aim was to transform the progression rates of disadvantaged students to the UK’S top universities.
In 2014, a single student received an offer from Oxbridge. By 2018, that had risen to 25. This year’s 41 places are a cause for jubilation, but every student goes to university; nothing less is expected. Nothing less is accepted.
According to Sam Dobin, the director of the sixth form: “We have a very traditional approach, with no gimmicks or shortcuts.”
Any extra money Brampton Manor receives by way of a pupil premium – the extra government money given to help boost attainment in disadvantaged communities – goes on funding a study centre that is open and staffed from 6am to 7.30pm.
Mr Dobin denies there is any “secret formula” at work. But that’s not true. I can only assume he takes it for granted because it’s staring him in the face.
“The key is to keep telling your students that they’re capable, that they’re good enough,” he says. Tadah! That act of instilling self-belief in students may not seem like a big deal at Brampton Manor, but it is a life lesson worth its weight in extra tuition.
Oxbridge offers are an empirical measure of success for any sixth form. But sending 300 motivated, confident young people into higher education is surely the real achievement.
Today, the spotlight is on Brampton Manor, but elsewhere in London’s east end, change has been happening. In my own borough of Hackney, which has the dubious distinction of being only very slightly better than Newham in terms of deprivation, the schools have undergone a transformation.
To be honest, I would have had to move house and probably leave not just the borough but the city if they hadn’t. But thanks to the introduction of city academies in the early 2000s, standards have shot up.
Mossbourne Community Academy was and remains the flagship; its discipline is legendary but so is its pupils’ academic excellence. There is pastoral support, but the unofficial motto is: “No excuses”.
That’s why I cringed this week at the story of Jenny Kearns, the Birmingham mother who pulled her 15-year-old son, Regan Coates, from Ninestiles Academy after she learnt his school had imposed a “no-talking” policy in the corridors when walking between lessons.
It would, she said, cause “irreversible damage”. Never mind that it is a policy at Mossbourne and sundry other city academies, designed to ensure classes start on time and impose discipline on kids who lead otherwise chaotic lives.
Mother-of-four Kearns is currently homeschooling her son with the aid of tutors – not exactly conducive to chatting, either, but a principle is a principle. What message will it send him? Lord only knows.
Somehow, I doubt he will emerge from his cotton wool brimming with can-do vigour. The kids back in his form will gain a lot more resilience.
And if they are lucky and their teachers are like those at Brampton Manor, who have unshakeable faith in their students’ abilities, and who tell them that, just because they have less, it does not mean they deserve less, that inspiration will last a lifetime.