Rich but Destitute: a modern tragedy

"There is no wealth but life." John Ruskin

DISCLAIMER: THIS POST RELATES TO A TEACHING ROLE UNRELATED IN ANY WAY TO CHRISTCHURCH EDUCATION.

This week has been one of unexpected, unanticipated chaos. Shocks and surprises have a tendency to work in that way – catching you off guard, turning your life upside down and then standing back to mark the quality and measure of your character as you manage the atomic fallout. Our education centre has become a place of disquiet and confusion as we work through the tsunami that has just passed through our building.

Last week, my colleague and I were writing a new Scheme of Work for our incoming student cohort in September. Every bespoke lesson, every unit of assessment carefully crafted to facilitate the academic and pastoral needs of our highly vulnerable learners. Establishing synergies with external businesses and contributors, professionals and councillors were keen to come on board and support our students. I was using break times to decorate my classroom and had put up a colourful bunting which I had made with the new year’s GCSE’s assessment objectives. (I think perhaps I enjoy this style of interior décor more than my learners, but the intention was a good one.)

We are riding high on our current cohort having just sat their GCSE’s, young people who have, over the course of one academic year, systematically learned the very foundations of maths and English, developed those skills and applied them at GCSE exam level. Young people for whom life has been deeply challenging, leaving them entrenched in the margins with nowhere else to go. In our centre, exam day is not just the culmination of academic triumph, but a showcase of human endeavour, tenacity, persistence, steadfastness, and grit. I would go far as to say, in our centre, that is every day.

Following a series of external audits for standards and safeguarding, we have, this week, been told our practice here is “exemplary” and that other such specialist centres have much to learn from us. This was a very nice thing to hear.

It was rather overshadowed by the news however, that despite our exemplary, nationally leading practice and pedagogy – we are being shut down due to lack of profitability. The extraordinary riches we hold in our centre are precious, but not it would seem, worth paying for.

Redundancy notices have been handed out like sweets and as the sun sets on the high-stakes showdown, in a counter-offensive our business plan is proposed: how might costs be beaten down lower – less space, less tech, less resources, less, less, less - because the point is our students have nowhere else to go. When they walk through our doors, they feel safe. They feel valued. Their programme of learning is bespoke and they meet their potential, irrespective of their starting point. Young people leave here with exams and a sense of purpose, arriving from other specialist settings with referral documents that inform us they are so impaired, they will never achieve formal qualification. We have some learners with exceptionally high or specific needs, so we facilitate their learning one to one with specialist, highly qualified and experienced subject specialist teachers. Teachers still repaying student loans into mid-life and being paid beneath the minimum salary of a Newly Qualified Teacher. Teachers who work for the love of their learners hinged on a further-reaching optimism.

Learners hospitalised for self - harm, unable to make eye contact due to mental health illness or with elective mutism due to Autism or trauma, who attend consistently, confide in staff, make exceptional progress here and are successful GCSE candidates.

They will have nowhere to go.

Our centre is a very different place at the moment. Whilst we await the results of the counter-plan, pistols drawn at dawn, we await the outcome of a decision that will be assessed on finances alone, we manage learners with measured sentiment, who tell us they cannot wait to return in September. As colleagues we sit side by side as we field phone-calls from recruiters and look after each other the best we can.

This centre of education and pastoral excellence is so incredibly wealthy. Rich beyond measure. In passion, dedication, expertise, commitment, empathy, love, specialism, experience, laughter, compassion, creativity, willingness, intellect and foresight toward progress. But through lack of support and investment, it has been left to decay financially and we are to close; to the tragic detriment of so many young people, and the generations that will follow them.

The irony of this tragic tale of red and black is that we are rich, so very rich indeed. And also, destitute.