Have you ever considered how the education system is affecting our children and their families? This episode presents a thought-provoking discussion around this with our special guest, Ellie Costello, author of 'Square Pegs: Inclusivity, Compassion and Fitting In - A Guide for Schools'. As a writer deeply immersed in the education sector, Ellie provides rich insights into the challenges our system has been dealing with, and how her book can guide educators to improve the status quo. We also take a moment to champion those who ceaselessly work towards making a difference in young people's lives.
Our conversation dives deep into several challenging topics, including the thought-provoking 'shield of shame' concept, the role of austerity in the education sector, and the importance of engaging families and stakeholders in shaping the future of education. We dare to question the 'tyranny of meritocracy' and the uniformity it demands, emphasising the need for diversity and inclusion. Be prepared to face some hard truths about an education system that often fails to meet its own objectives.
Finally, we reflect on the often-overlooked power of youth voices in our society. We discuss the critical role adults play in preparing the ground for resilience, especially during these trying pandemic times. Our dialogue also delves into the tension between controlling behaviour and entrusting children with responsibility. By the end of this episode, we hope to have sparked some fresh perspectives on our education sector's challenges, the importance of inclusivity, and the potential for transformation through personal growth and collaboration.
Follow us on Twitter
@UoWFEHW
@DIIverseHub
@VascoAdam
Have you ever considered how the education system is affecting our children and their families? This episode presents a thought-provoking discussion around this with our special guest, Ellie Costello, author of 'Square Pegs: Inclusivity, Compassion and Fitting In - A Guide for Schools'. As a writer deeply immersed in the education sector, Ellie provides rich insights into the challenges our system has been dealing with, and how her book can guide educators to improve the status quo. We also take a moment to champion those who ceaselessly work towards making a difference in young people's lives.
Our conversation dives deep into several challenging topics, including the thought-provoking 'shield of shame' concept, the role of austerity in the education sector, and the importance of engaging families and stakeholders in shaping the future of education. We dare to question the 'tyranny of meritocracy' and the uniformity it demands, emphasising the need for diversity and inclusion. Be prepared to face some hard truths about an education system that often fails to meet its own objectives.
Finally, we reflect on the often-overlooked power of youth voices in our society. We discuss the critical role adults play in preparing the ground for resilience, especially during these trying pandemic times. Our dialogue also delves into the tension between controlling behaviour and entrusting children with responsibility. By the end of this episode, we hope to have sparked some fresh perspectives on our education sector's challenges, the importance of inclusivity, and the potential for transformation through personal growth and collaboration.
Follow us on Twitter
@UoWFEHW
@DIIverseHub
@VascoAdam
We are recording this podcast at the home of Wolverhampton University's multimedia journalism degree in the Alan Turing building on City Campus. The radio studio we are sitting in is kitted out to the same standards as places like BBC Radio 4 and 5 Live. It was installed alongside two studios as part of the new Wolverhampton Screen School. If you want to pop in for a guided tour, to discuss booking the studios or to chat about the journalism undergraduate degree, just email the course leader, gareth Owen. His address is gowin3.wlvacuk.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to a new series of the diverse podcast. New in the sense that we're in a new academic year and we're kicking off in style with a very special guest today. So, ellie Costello, author of Square Pegs, I'm delighted you've joined us today. When I say new series, everything's the same, so I always start off by asking our guests to introduce themselves. You do a far better job at telling our listeners who you are and all the amazing things that you do, and you do a many, ellie. So over to you and thank you for being our first guest of the new academic year.
Speaker 3:Yay, I'm so delighted to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me. So I'm Ellie. I'm director of a community interest company called Square Pegg and we work in the area of effecting change, raising awareness, informing conversations, catalyzing new directions of travel. We hope On behalf of children and families who struggle to access, attend or remain in education for whatever reason.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, it's a big landscape. It is a big landscape and I think it's a really timely opportunity for you to talk about this. There's a book that's been released around this movement that's happening, so tell us the title of your book.
Speaker 3:Thank you. So it's called Square Pegg's Inclusivity, compassion and Fitting in a Guide for Schools, and it was conceived in lockdown one. So Square Pegg as an organization was set up as a social enterprise in 2019. And we set up I joined at the front end of 2020 when Wuhan and COVID was just a sort of twinkle in the eye and we, the founder of Square Pegg, invited me to join and with view to expanding the work and the reach and raising profiles.
Speaker 3:And one of the things that took place within the first few months of Square Pegg registering as a kick was a couple of conversations with our editor in Gilbert, who runs an organization called Independent Thinking. They are education consultants and they also do lots and lots of brilliant work with a fantastic speakers program with schools. Ian is an absolute legend, really, and we ran a couple of conversations with him under an idea that we were just developing called School Differently, and School Differently really was in 2020, there are a lot of people going what's the purpose of education, what's it all for? And doing some really brilliant, actually blue sky thinking. So we were all sort of coming together and imagining brave new worlds and things like that. So School Differently was a series of conversations and it was an absolutely brilliant and uplifting couple of conversations that we had. But Fran and I would repeatedly sort of come out of these conversations because we had children who had been broken and spat out or pushed out of education and we knew of increasing numbers that this was happening to. In fact, mushrooming numbers and Persistent Absence in 2018 was running at three-quarters of a million and was nudging a million in 2019. So we knew what was going on, and so our question really back to everyone was what can we do now? Because when schools reopen, professionals really are going to be stuck now, and we knew that we needed to really change things and start a new direction of travel, because everything that schools and systems and professionals were trying to deliver and buy into actually was making things worse and we were casualties of that. So Square Peaks was born.
Speaker 3:We got the commission in 2020, at the back end of 2020, and spent just over two years speaking to well, the first year speaking to more than 100 contributors. Not everyone could do it and we came back with 75 odd submissions and then we had to whittle it down and go through the hardest edits. I was told to, you know, back out of the edit because I was just too wedded to it. I found it so difficult to let go of content, but what we came out with was something, I think, which really does do what we set out to achieve, which was to write a resource that was challenging, inspiring, informative and would be a compendium for stretched leaders, but also and a resource for everyone on the ground as well, working with the kids that were struggling, but also, hopefully, would inspire policy and practice in ways that was innovative and appropriate, because I think some of the solutions that are coming out are perhaps, well we know increased harm and adversity and exacerbate vulnerability.
Speaker 3:So that was the purpose of the book. We were imagining a really tired, stretched leader who either wanted to read the book as a whole or wanted to share it with leadership, or just pull it off the shelf, grab a chapter, get some inspiration and some information that's fully referenced and evidenced and kind of think, okay, well, this isn't working with these kids or that particular child. How can we do things differently?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's. I mean so much to pick up on there. I think, to start off with, I think it's important to say that we recognize and say we, as I'm talking about as a sector, as the two of us in the room now the education system and sector is the challenges. That has been for an exceptionally long time. We have colleagues who are at the chalk face of that, who are literally struggling in some cases, flourishing in others.
Speaker 2:That's it's not one picture, one picture, but we recognize there are lots of people who work exceptionally hard for the betterment of young people. Let's put that out there. However, there does have to be some type of acknowledgement that by every conceivable metric you talked about persistent absenteeism, whether we talked about actual outcomes- whether we talked about exclusion rates, the picture isn't as good as it could be.
Speaker 2:Let's just put it like that. So there are people working exceptionally hard and in some cases that hard work isn't resulting in what their intentions are. So those people who've gone to train to be teachers and have committed their entire lives to it, maybe so far, and so there's no criticism of that. But there does have to be a suggestion that there needs to be some type of rethinking. Some of those ideas I know from my time in school when we'd look at and I know that things haven't changed hugely. So schools will look at their attendance data and so they are challenged to improve attendance data. And I think that often what happens in school and I think from talking to my friends who are still colleagues in school we don't always look at the underlying issue, do we? So we want to fix attendance, so we might run prizes, we might run a whole host of different incentives to incentivize those things rather than actually looking at what is going on.
Speaker 2:And ultimately it's the band aid thing, isn't it? You're applying a plaster or sticking a finger in the dam. It's not going to hold, and then we wonder why it doesn't have the impact, particularly and again. So this is about going back to. It's going to be uncomfortable because we are going to and there will be times, I'm sure, in our conversation, this podcast and listeners might find it uncomfortable, because there is always a fragility, I would suggest, when we talk about things. It's easy to get defensive, and I'm still guilty of that sometimes if someone.
Speaker 2:I'm working really hard on that, so please don't criticize it.
Speaker 2:But, ultimately the sector which many of us love and are working hard at, and have differences of opinions of how we achieve those outcomes, but we need to have facilitate those conversations. Now, one of the things that I love most about the book and I was saying to you before I've read the book is that it's the changes, I think of the fact that so you edited down eventually to 53 different contributors, 53 different voices, lived experiences, and they are all very different. In fact, the commonality is only the fact that there is an issue. I guess the way that and I think that that's that for me is one of the powers of the book of that, this idea that one size fits all, which I assume comes down to the term square pegs. So that's part of the problem and, don't get me wrong, we also recognize that, the fact that in school we have limited resource in terms of adults and everything else.
Speaker 2:But there's no point just continuing on a trajectory, just to carry on doing the same old thing, and so this book is one way of beginning to make a change. And, as you say, I really like when I think of lots of different books that I've read that have had the biggest impact me in thinking of the working class or diverse ed to manifest. Though I love the fact that we've got different contributors coming at it from different points of view, I really do think that that is one of our greatest problems in the education sector at the moment is that ideology and I know people will think that I'm talking about ideology here. Maybe that to some extent that is true, but we all have to get into a room together and be able to facilitate grown-up conversations and difficult conversations to see where our differences of opinion can steer away to find some type of a solution, because what is happening at the moment, quite frankly, isn't working for too many young people.
Speaker 3:Increasing numbers and I think we had a conversation with Ian. So I'm not an educator.
Speaker 1:I don't come from a family of educators and I'm really sorry.
Speaker 3:So all of this is a relatively new landscape for me. So I suffer with a lot of imposter syndrome and I suffer with trying to hold on to the fact that my voice and family voice and people who are coming through the system from different angles have relevance and purpose and place. That's all really important. And so education is fascinating because we've all been through it. So there's a common lived experience from childhood, from infancy, for increasing numbers as well. So there's a shared common ground there. But there is. I can't think of any other sector that has such a huge defense mechanism built in and that to me speaks of stress in the sector.
Speaker 3:Yeah so when we're seeing and hearing so much defense, you know it speaks to a huge amount of shame and blame. So one in my, in my journey, I because my children, my eldest became such high needs, you end up going to the highest level of support, and so we went from sort of standard parenting to therapeutic parenting. And therapeutic parenting literally just means the highest, most clinically informed, research based, evidence based version of trying to support and contain a distressed child.
Speaker 3:So it's drawing on lots and lots of modalities that are really well researched. And one of the things that I talked about because parents are really defensive as well, right? So we've got the tension in the sector of the defense there and we've got defensive parents, and then we've got defensive politicians and defensive local government officers.
Speaker 3:You know, everyone stressed- and tense, but in order to formulate that and make sense of that, you have to notice your own defense, and one of the things that that invites is some curiosity with yourself to think why am I responding this way? Yes.
Speaker 3:Why am I? What's going on in me? And often that then means facing your own shame. So, famously, brené Brown is one of the most mainstream people that talks about vulnerability and shame and all the rest of it. But in systems, if we're thinking about reactions and relational reactions, we're talking about the shield of shame. So there's an absolutely brilliant professional called Dr Kim Golding has written lots of work about children who are care, experienced, looked after and traumatized and how to reach them. Yeah.
Speaker 3:She has devised something called the shield of shame and the shield of shame. You know when you're dealing with someone who is holding the shield of shame. So it's a defensive measure because they dismiss, deny, deflect. Yes. Against you. Yes, so it's. You know it wasn't that bad. It wasn't my fault, I didn't do it. Yes, yes.
Speaker 3:And so when you know, when you are facing any conversation at any level, from any person, that they are in a shame state, because they are feeling guilty or blamed yes. And what we need to try to do when we're there is. That's a clear sign to me of a sector or a person or a professional or a parent who needs scaffolding and support. Yeah. It's really important as well to hold in mind that education is the only sector that doesn't actually access any sort of supervision. No.
Speaker 3:So what we've got is professionals who are working at the coal face, who are doing all of the first responder work. Yeah. As well as trying to deliver the curriculum, care for and raise children in local priorities. Yeah, it's a massive job, it is.
Speaker 3:So how do we scaffold our professionals? How do we invite that professional curiosity to remain in flow? Now, the first, last 13 years, of course, under austerity, we've seen all of those support services decimated, school budgets decimated. Lots of what was in place has been taken away, as well as cost of living, all sorts. We've got the influence.
Speaker 2:As need is increased, support is increased.
Speaker 3:We know that we've got, exactly we've got young people who are now, you know, filming incidents of bullying and sharing it online. We've got that there is so much risk, yes, and so everybody is massively stressed and stretched. But what can we do to come together and have these conversations together, because it is a shared endeavor? We do need to bring families on board. All of those families are going to be from different baselines. Yes. Professionals in the sector are going to be at different stages of their career and their experience.
Speaker 3:Plus, there's all of the measures and metrics around local government funding, national political drives, everything else and core beliefs that are rooted in the system, and what's fascinating to me in education is there are some really fixed core beliefs that are really fixed that are held in such a way that actually when you take it to a platform such as Twitter, it becomes a spat, it becomes very polarized and that kind of gets fed in and perpetuated by reporting in the media, because it does become politically driven. So it becomes, you know, is the how we respond to children. Is that a left issue or a right issue? Yeah.
Speaker 3:And actually it's just human level. Yeah, so it's about coming back to human centers and, of course, while everyone is chasing data and everyone's performance is measured on that data, everybody the child, the professional, the leader, the politician do they get voted in again?
Speaker 1:The local authority, everybody.
Speaker 3:So we're all in this tight mess, but how do we bring it back to supporting the needs of the child? Yeah. And that, for me, is what so easily gets missed, but actually it's why I think people went into education.
Speaker 2:I agree. So I think that I always, when I'm talking about culture and that's one of the roles within the university that look at and looked at previously as leaders in schools and everything else. But you go back to that sort of NASA analogy and I know people you know when the documentary of when they were trying to put and it wasn't man on the moon at this particular point, so I use the gender a person on the moon and then asking everyone what you do in here, and every single person saying I am sending a man to the moon, whether it's a cleaner, whether it's someone working on statistics, whatever it is.
Speaker 3:Right shared ownership.
Speaker 2:Shared ownership and I think when I was in school we had someone come in, dr Joanne Reese, who's an amazing, good Welshman, talking about how do you create high performance culture, and you know, one of the things is having what are, what's what we all aim in towards, because at the moment it I'm not even sure we've all we can all say. I asked this question, I do train, and what's the purpose of education and a room full of educators? You will get a host of different answers.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it sort of feels like we need to nail that down at some point as well. But I read something you'll see me on my phone a second ago. But the reason why I did that was I was reading something this morning and I forgot who shared it, so I apologize. The main thing there they know the author. So Dr Naomi Fisher had written an article.
Speaker 2:The winner takes it all, and her quote was this Sometimes I imagine a world where we were honest with parents and children about the function of school. We'd say your children have a once in a lifetime chance to enroll in a 12 year competition. At the end, 30 percent of them will be dealing deemed as failures, 30 percent successes and the rest somewhere in the middle. These percentages are fixed. So no matter how hard you and your children work, some of them will fail. And I can't help but thinking that that's the truth. It doesn't matter what happens we, those numbers don't change. So it's this whole. For me, is the system failing or the system doing exactly as it's set out to achieve? And I have to say that I don't tend to be optimistic and right. But I do think that I think about you know, ken Robinson, that I was again looking at his worker again and thinking 15 years on from his his Ted talk of does great creativity killed in schools, shift and educating educational paradigms? They haven't shifted.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:We're no real further on, and so it needs some type of conversation of what is it we're aiming for and acknowledging that the system just isn't working. And at the point you just made of people working really hard, to do that.
Speaker 2:So what do we need to do? And for me, this book facilitates some of that and it gives a voice to a group of young people children, depending what age they're on whose voices are forgotten about, conveniently forgotten about often, I think, because things are hard. But again, I come back to that the education sector is even yourself saying you know, you're not an education list, I'm not involved in education, but you have a lived experience of something that's really really, really important All people who interact, I was gonna say, with parents, but you know you can be a grandparent and you know I use the term Godparent, but some type of involved in someone's life and you were still involved in that educational journey of the holistic person.
Speaker 3:So yeah, so I reflect it back on sort of healthcare a lot in trying to sort of problematize and formulate sort of comparisons. And we've all got an opinion on the NHS.
Speaker 3:For example, we're all allowed to have an opinion on the NHS because our healthcare, individually and nationally, is important. We all understand that, and so you know anyone having an opinion on the NHS that be preposperous to say you're not a qualified doctor so you can't comment. But that's what happens in education a lot. You know you're not a qualified teacher, so you can't possibly have a comment, and even on Twitter there are conversations where you're only a part-time teacher or you're a retired teacher or you're only a TA, so therefore your voice isn't valid. And this is hugely problematic because it really does choke the community, it stifles innovation, it stops improvement and it sort of creates this strata. So you know, going back to, you know the tyranny of meritocracy, that is what we are all chasing at the moment and we're seeing the impact of that.
Speaker 3:And I, you know this journey for me as an individual parent white, middle-class, able-bodied, university-educated. I had a lot of privilege on my side and a lot of resource and we were totally destroyed. I can't I'll write about it one day but it was horrific. And I came out of that thinking, my God, if it's like this for me, what is it like? And then really sort of having some quite powerful awakening from the matrix moments where really understanding, in a way that I'd never have to face before, the scale of inequality, understanding and coming up close and personal to other families that we were trying to you know, support and hear from, who were living in profoundly challenging circumstances and I thought I had it bad. So, understanding all of that and that lived experience is what led to us drawing from SquarePak, drawing the beyond the sector voices as well as within the sector voices.
Speaker 3:Because it's not just educators that work with children. We have youth work and school nurses and pediatricians and social workers and everybody else, and they all have their view. So I think there is, and because I'm creative, sort of designing the background. You know, in every other sector you look at what's happening beyond and outside in order to learn from and to draw from. It's kind of like you know you can. Then there's something really quite exciting there.
Speaker 2:We know that diversity of voice, opinion, is essential for any type of movement, in any progression, in any sector, and so I think that's a really a huge point.
Speaker 2:I just want to come back to one little point and just make sure that I think I'm probably just doubling down on the point, but to say so, you mentioned there of you talked about them as privileges.
Speaker 2:I agree, and despite that position of still finding yourself fighting a battle that couldn't be won, essentially and I know from doing some work with a colleague, a professor, she's a professor in law and she's again looking at the same issues really I'm going to connect with you to work with, and you know again, she has, she's a professor in law. That speaks for itself, and yet still the challenges that came and continue to come up around some of these issues speaks to the power almost of a I don't want to tar every one of the brush but a sector that is so steadfast and it's belief of something that refuses to acknowledge that in some cases it's not doing what it's set out to do. So again, come back to that. We've got lots of great people working exceptionally hard against sometimes that are young people, and so and I suppose the point one of the points you were making, I assume is that if you struggled with all that privilege for lots of families where maybe that isn't the case, I mean, I had no idea.
Speaker 3:That's the other thing. And of course you don't, because you're in your bubble on your treadmill you know, you're on your wheel.
Speaker 3:And so it's, and most of us don't have time. So it did break me in a way, that becoming aware of the level of structural inequality and institutional harm, and it was frightening and it is overwhelming and it took real work to sort of not be sucked down by it, because you can become very angry or you can become very militant or you can become very despondent or disengaged or just give up, you know. And so I started to understand how removed independence, how I actually became disabled, how we became disabled as a family by the amount of services focused on us, and how that removes autonomy and agency and you stop believing that you can do anything for yourself. And partly it's because of systems, waiting lists, assessments, paperwork, the digital divide, mental capacity, health, you know, there are all these things that get in the way. And that's not even talking about then, whether or not you're female, black, disabled English is the second language fleeing abuse, financially not dependent, there are all of these factors that then start washing over it. So all of that was it did scare me because and it takes work to face your own implicit bias and that's where I sort of come back to that professional curiosity. So you can be curious as a person, but when you're employed to do a job with children and families and colleagues, your professional curiosity should be part of your toolkit, right and remaining in flow.
Speaker 3:To remain professionally curious takes capacity, resource, time and support, and that is what education in particular. We can look at healthcare and other sectors and social work they're all lacking it too, but I think education is really unique because every single day you're having to show up to and teach a bloated, weighted down curriculum to 30 struggling individuals of different ages, different circumstances, different baselines, and if you're at secondary, it's 30 different individuals, six periods a day. I mean it's just an extraordinary ask and that is unsustainable. Even if we started pouring money into it on a professional level in mainstream state run education, that is unsustainable. So it's not just even about funding. It's about culture, ethos, values, community, and I think we've lost so much of that personally, particularly in the last 15 years, and I do sort of tack on the sort of final two years of the last Labour government. So I don't think we can be doughy-eyed. If we're gonna be political, I think we need to be real about whoever is in power, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I think that's really, really important. I never hide from the fact that I have a particular viewpoint. I'm from a region where we tend to have quite a staunch viewpoint on things, but the education system is not a mess because of one particular government. I do believe that lots of our sectors actually have been a mess because of the short termism of government, so that in a five year term, how are you going to? You've got to show that you have began to fix a huge long-term problem. So, whether it's issues through the NHS or perceived issues around immigration, or whether it's the education systems we're talking about today, Ministerial ego has a lot to offer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 2:In terms of governing party, I'm not entirely sure that it's hugely fair, whilst I do think there is some ideology that different parties bring to things.
Speaker 2:However, yeah, I don't think any government, the proofs and the pudding, no government has completely sorted this out and in fact, we know again coming back to what we said at the beginning almost by every metric, things aren't improving, and particularly when it comes to persistent absenteeism, and we are not really looking at the root causes of these things, and so we're not even beginning to address those issues. And again, I come back to all those false arguments that we have in the false dichotomies of different things, and actually, at the midst of all that are young people and children who, let's be really honest, unless you do have some privilege surrounding you, the education I said this and I put a link to it and probably a Twitter post about it the whole A-Liveral results and he isn't alone in this, by the way, but he's the one who does do it the most Jeremy Clarkson coming out of I'm all right and things. And yeah, that's fine, cause I get that to some point Are you lucky?
Speaker 2:Yeah, but aren't you lucky? Yeah, cause for some people they are defining and that decision is made on you. And when it comes to persistent absenteeism or exclusion, those things and all the data and all the research suggests it is defining. And so, again, don't we have a moral obligation to try and address that? And I think that I'm always interested and I'll try and be balanced again in the conversation we have here. And I've read some of the reviews of the books, of which I'd say most of them are glowing the only time you ever see anyone having a different view on that is to say, but it doesn't provide answers, and you think, well, it can't provide the answer, cause if it was just a click of your fingers and you provided the answer, we wouldn't have the problem, cause we just followed the answer. It's not like that.
Speaker 3:No. So the other thing is is that we wouldn't presume to dictate the answer. You know, there's not an answer An answer exactly, but who the heck are we to do that? And also, if and this is part of the problem is that we do have, you know, ministerial drive and policy that is written, rooted in ministerial drive, which purports to, with the support of special advisors, come up with. This is the way and this is the only way, and this is what works.
Speaker 3:You know what works, methodology which is bonkers in itself. So you know, we do have this sort of deceit and conceit that there is this sort of silver bullet and what happens is when you take that out into regions or community, it's not place-based.
Speaker 3:It's not appropriate. It's not actually rooted in a co-created, co-produced, community-based system which does need adjustments. And if we think about the sort of you know, every child is individual, every human is individual and actually you need some nuance and some dynamic, agile responses in place. So the trouble is is that we're still sort of holding onto industrialized models of optimizing.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:So it's all batches and we all just want a system that everyone goes through. Now healthcare is working really hard and has tried really hard to do that. But when you look at, for example, SENA, disabilities services, or if you look at children, I've got a child with several rare conditions for which there is no pediatric pathway. Once it was hugely frightening to kind of wake up and go oh my God, nobody in the NHS, we can't access a pathway, there is nowhere to refer to. So what do you do? And then, of course, well, once you're outside the system, you've got to hustle, but there's a lot of heartache because you have to create something bespoke. For me there's something that is entirely possible in culture practice. I kind of struggle with moral morality and education. I think it is about ethics. So if we're coming back to ethical purpose rather than moral purpose, because if we bring morals into something, everybody's morals can be slightly different and so moral purpose for a Ancient Catholic Red Brick School will be very different to an inner city urban environment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I totally agree.
Speaker 3:So actually I kind of struggle with this cool tomorrow purpose in education. Actually, I think it sort of comes with lots of sort of savior syndrome, patriarchy, there's all sorts of things, that sort of ignite purpose when you see it in morality. If we bring it back to ethics, though values with I mean I think values in education has been completely weaponized as well. But if we bring it back to ethics, to human scale, human centered, that is much more about valuing individual well-being, development, wellness, and I think it does sort of help us to. It's very difficult. So I don't want to sound trite, full of hyperbole, it's all it wishy-washy. But I do think we need to shift.
Speaker 3:And if we look again to the NHS, there's something really interesting in how they have evolved with consent based care, and so there are often conversations where you are treated as an individual. You're not spoken at by a doctor. If you're, hopefully and you certainly don't have anything done to your body against your will hopefully you have to consent. So there's something there isn't there about getting that buy-in rather than this sort of doing to, but you can't get away from it. I think childism and parentism are the two sort of themes that I'm trying to nudge at.
Speaker 3:And it's really hard to face that.
Speaker 2:It is I think there's so much there the interesting thing for me. When I have that conversation with colleagues, sometimes the reply that comes back is just about the practicalities of, to which my response is I understand the individual education, individualism and looking at that's really challenging. But to counteract that what's commonly working isn't working for large ways of people.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, why carry on with something if we it's a definition of insanity we are just going to? If we don't want I've just read out to be exactly the same thing of the numbers just split into those numbers and, in some cases, groups growing in certain areas, then we've got to look at things differently and I think you, you really write about this idea of facilitating conversations, removing ego out of some of those, those conversations and, by the way, that's that again isn't looking at some other other mind yeah, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2:So we are we are all guilty of that. It's. It's very easy to do. We'll all be reminded to do it, but there has to be some type of change in it. This idea that you know it's all very grand and we're talking about it Yep, because until we facilitate some type of conversation around it first, and knowledge in that there's a problem and that we actually, I think we do have a shared goal, or at least once we get to the idea of what that shared vision is for the purpose of education, then we can sift out who doesn't align with that. And then, even when we have differences of opinions, the difference of opinion isn't I disagree with you. It's that we've got shared vision, shared purpose. We just disagree as a how to achieve that.
Speaker 2:And actually that's you know, that's fine, we can talk about that and we can, we can wriggle with it and all those types of things. But yeah, so again coming back to, for me, one of the things that this book does is facilitate some of those conversations, I think, of teachers, of colleagues, of leaders, where picking that up and hearing the lived experiences of, in this case, 53 people is powerful, because in the young people and children we're dealing with, there are hundreds and thousands of, again, individual stories that we're not always listening to or aware of or aware of, a lot of them are so silent and hidden and just disappear into the wallpaper or fall through the cracks.
Speaker 3:And I think, I think we really, really didn't want to shy away from the reality of the voices of our children, because persistent absentees are the most invisible. You know there've been coins, ghost children, which is not a popular term with parents because they often feel ghosted. Yes.
Speaker 3:And they're not waving but drowning for years on end, or they don't feel represented. They don't feel like they're. I'm very aware with my white middle classness, that I can't possibly be the voice of an Eritrean family who are living in Wembley. I just I can't represent that. So we need more representation, absolutely. But I think that there is a. This is why human scale, human centered, is so important and I think you know you can read the stories and the voices of the children's work and letters at the front of the book and it's so easy as an adult to kind of automatically I do it myself all the time just kind of go, oh isn't that sweet, or oh it's not that bad, or go.
Speaker 3:They're writing some, you know from the heart. But you know and I think I do it myself you know the lived experience of children is so difficult to come up on alongside and to really validate and believe it, because we've all been dismissed and denied or diminished at some point, and so our automated response as adults is to try to contain that by going, oh, cheer up, it's not that bad. Or oh, I'm sorry you feel that way, moving on so but. But we wouldn't dare to do that with our colleagues in the sector who are who are reaching burnout.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm so glad that you mentioned that because I have to say that is such a I find it's such a cause of frustration. So I can think of any any school that I've been, any setting that I've been in, and the scenario of a colleague walking in and they're upset and the school will go into right this year. Go into overdrive, go and get yourself a few minutes go everything happens.
Speaker 2:Have a cup of tea. Tea solves everything, I agree, yeah. So go and have a cup of tea, you know, go into the staff room, compose yourself and to hold like swathes of things that I've seen such amazing things happen. Now I've also seen and I'm really fortunate to have been part of teams who do that with young people as well but I also know that that isn't, it's not the norm, no, so the instead it's you've come to the school gates and you will conform to the things that we happen when you have this expectation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I listened to a story on on holiday recently fortunate enough to be on holiday and it was as always people talk about. What you're doing is talking to a person that met on holiday and he was talking about he had been selected to go and play cricket for his school and they'd gone off. So we loved it and we'd gone off to a grammar school really posh grammar school in compared to their school and he said in their school it was just accepted that if you had black trainers on, you'd probably you're doing all right there. It wasn't, wasn't too bad. So he'd gone, he had with his kit and in the evening there was a dinner and he said you know, you walk into this big grand building. You had to wear your uniform. And he said now, in reflection, I probably know what I looked like At the time. I thought I looked smart, walked in and the teacher stops and says you need your school shoes on, of which he says these are my school shoes.
Speaker 1:So he says they are not school shoes.
Speaker 2:You know you're not coming in to sit with us. And I just thought, wow, that's. And this is a 43 year old man. We live in this story talking about how he didn't play cricket after that because he was just disillusioned with the sport, because he felt that it was the latest in every way, and I thought it's a powerful story, you know, of all these various different things, the barriers that we put in place and, by the way, I'm not suddenly saying that we shouldn't have certain rules and all those things, but there are individual stories and reasons for all those things and when we get so, so obsessed with rules and no deviation from that rule whatsoever, and no, looking at that, that we switch off to, that's a.
Speaker 2:you know, in the grand scheme of things, deciding not that you're going to play cricket again is hardly life changing to anything. But if you start to think about our everyday child or coming into school, where every time they walk in there's a barrier, and yet again, when it came to to comes to staff, we would, we would make allowances and we do bend slightly for those or the I think most places do. I'm sure there will be some people listening thinking I don't, but most places we do.
Speaker 3:That's the case, and you know, does it matter? Does it matter? See, I don't agree that uniform is the great leveler. I really don't. I've got friends who go whose children go to school in Europe where they have no uniform. It's just an America, it's just kind of fine.
Speaker 3:It's you know, so you know, but but but does it really matter? And I think that's such an important point that you may have. You know, we're actually spend so much time, resource and capacity in enforcing the rule and and and and and demanding compliance, and you know, the sure fire way to disengage anyone is is is is to create a power imbalance like that. Why, why would you do that? I honestly don't understand. The thing isn't just while you were talking, I have to. I have to go back to the, the parent that I was. Yes.
Speaker 3:And the parent that I was. There was a part of me where, if I I I made damn sure that my children were in smart leather shoes. Yeah. But you know, and, and I was able to do, I realized I was able to do that. Yeah.
Speaker 3:But I made sure of it and so you know, and I I am totally aware now, looking back at myself in primary and seeing little Johnny sort of come in with Jim shoes, canvas, plimp soles, and you know, the reception teacher having to have a quiet word not to offer help but to kind of go.
Speaker 3:She can wear those this week, but you have to, you do have to get her proper shoes and seeing this mum turn around and crumble, yeah, and you know, and I was there was a part of me in my blinkered, awful way that I would go. She obviously hasn't tried as hard as I have, and that's where that tyranny of meritocracy, it's so beguiling.
Speaker 2:It's so powerful of the again some of the things that are saying. I really liked doing it when I'm in higher education, talking to lofty professors, of asking the question do you believe you are you are solely here because you are entirely brilliant? Do you think it's just on merit that you got here? Such a good question and and same question to me Do I think I'm sat here and you're sat here just bit? And the answer is categorically no.
Speaker 2:I have fallen enough times that there's been a support network around me that maybe people listening who know my falls, who've been able to pick me up because there's a privilege to that. Yeah, you know I'm a person of colour. That doesn't mean that we don't have privilege and different types and all those types. There's been a support network that's been able to allow me to make those falls and pick me up from that. And again, you know, I think back to the school that I spent the longest amount of time in. Really, we're excellent at doing that type of thing.
Speaker 2:We're offering that support of looking at what's the actual underlying problem and is it something we can help with? Is it a big issue? Is this particular one thing a huge, big issue? But as a whole sector. I do have to say, and I know people will say well, you said this is ideology, the things that we focus on, I just don't. We constantly talk about being a research informed sector. I think that is demonstrously and anywhere swear word you want into there, but I think it's nonsense. So most of the time it's a bit of quick research. It supports what I think, rather than there's lots of research and lots of different things, some of which contradict some of the things that I believe and, by the way, that's important to say.
Speaker 3:Remaining humble is important, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. But we do spend. And again, when it comes to that, that, when people talk about time and money and all those things and I agree, schools are increasingly run like businesses I totally understand that there and increasingly stretched has to do more with less all of that stuff. But we spend an awful lot of time and, dare I say, money, because people's time is money on things that do not matter, when we could spend it on something else in my opinion, I totally agree, and I think so I.
Speaker 3:Young people, the things that they're really concerned about, you know the environment, their future stability, whether or not they've got the skills that they need to be competent in the world, in the workplace. You know what? We're not listening to them repeatedly and so it. You know as me. So we're putting them in a twelve year competition. That is basically survival of the fittest. If I speak to any of my friends Out of over the years and I say to them you know, did you love school? I would say that there's only a maximum, of ten percent maximum. That said, they loved it.
Speaker 3:Most people felt like they survived it didn't thrive maybe they had a year with a favorite teacher or you know, but but all of us have this, have this, you know, shared experience that we kind of in jordy. Is that what we want? Is that how we want to be spending our money and raising our children? You know it. Honestly, I do think we can do better, but but, but it's, it's such a, it's such a massive grapple.
Speaker 2:We can't fix education unless we are addressing poverty, welfare, transport, housing, all of these things that families touch on, what are fundamentally crumbling and and and I'll break it the moment and that is overwhelming and all part of the same cycle, so that Breaking that cycle of, if it is a cycle of the social, economics, of poverty, then yes, education can be one of the things that breaks it, but we also need the education system, doesn't entirely. You've got a whole host of additional barriers, some of which we just talked about, which face you if you.
Speaker 3:Also, you know that I was thinking about and I've watched the xp school movie yes, yeah so there's a section in there where the children have decided to go out into their community for their project and they've interviewed Lots of different community groups. But don't cast a voted brexit yeah sample and so and but.
Speaker 3:the children have gone out and done these interviews and then the big part of xp is that the parents come in and watch what they're doing. The thing that really struck me was the power of change through what the children are doing, how the parents was sort of through their own children Challenge in a way that was accessible and got them thinking that that is education, right there yeah so so there's something really Hopefully in the power of of of child voice, youth work, youth voice, etc.
Speaker 3:That that that has the power to influence communities and to integrate Communities and through understanding, conversations and and I can't see why that would be something that wasn't embraced and in built in more schools, yeah, why not?
Speaker 2:and Without going to and to embarrass in. Is that a sound bite? But you know the kids are alright. That's, that's. That's be really honest. You've got a group of young people who, whether in utero at the time, whether in early years, with primary or secondary, no that, that Lockdown and the impact of that will be studied in generations to come as the impact of it, whether we think of the a level, as GCSE results, all these, these children, as I say, we've been impacted by it, but it's through lack of socialization or whichever it was. Yeah, they are coming through it. I mean it's, it's incredible.
Speaker 2:I think of, again, the rhetoric and narrative around things that come out. As they know, there's a fall in results or anything. You think, well, bloody hell, it's forget for a minute the fact that we remove some of the, the things to soften the impact of that, and just literally took it away and despite the fact that was hugely impacted by that and as will every generation and group coming through, but they still just just cracking on. And it's, you know, we do have the information is everywhere. Now they you talk before about, you mentioned about the idea of bullying, but essentially you mentioned the matrix we are plugged in all the time is no checking out, is there of things? You close your door and that isn't it. There's algorithm in place which will serve you up Something or other in the way that we all engage with things.
Speaker 2:And yet, despite the fact that we've got an archaic system that was built in a certain way In its needs of its time and things have moved on exponentially, yet the system hasn't. These young people are still managing to navigate it, sometimes because others aren't and others are being failed by the system. But the fact that even there is a large you know, a large group who do are doing that, I think it is a incredible amount of credit for I. It wouldn't be me. I talk to anyone and say imagine I'm a. If I think about my youth in the current world, I would have fallen off a whole lot more times and I wouldn't and I wouldn't have been able to get back up because the would have been captured.
Speaker 3:So brilliant research, that to eps who contributed to the book education psychologist. But they done some voice of young people's voice work During lock downs and one of them, one piece of research that came out, was just the pressure that young people were feeling, based on the catch up generation narrative, the lost generation. These children are not going to grow up to earn the same. You know they're gonna cost us gdp. I mean, for heaven's sake, they would try to get up in during a novel virus, pan global pandemic and go to school and keep learning. And I think a lot of the impact that added to young people's adversity during those times wasn't necessarily the mask wearing and the bubbles and all the rest of it, in fact that our young people were so resilient and adaptive there.
Speaker 3:More what was was impacting them was the uncertainty and the lack of preparedness by the adults and system to them you know we I think there was one mayday bank holiday, will march bank holiday, whenever it was when literally the announcement to close was 7pm Sunday night, you know, and so is that kind of unfair uncertainty that is anxiety provoking that wires in such profound levels of toxic stress. But actually our children was so resilient, they were so incredible. They came in and they sat there mocks they. You know they're picking up results now that you know many of them have been impacted by an unjust algorithm and an adjustment and having to pick themselves up and carry on.
Speaker 3:I think you know that the name fish talks a lot about. You know Our job is to create the right environment. Absolutely you know that that's. That's all we need to do. And we're so frightened to trust children and because we have so much, you know we've got children from so many different baselines. We have such a rich, mounting pop, but somehow we're trying to modernize it all the time rather than embrace and work with it. And so you know that there are so many missed opportunities that we are in our attempt to control Nudge behavior, you know, improve behavior and standardized outcomes and optimize outcomes. We're missing so much and I think there's such a dissonance. You know a real psychological dissonance for everyone in the sector as well, because there's this knowledge that you know we're not all right. The kids might be all right yeah but we're not yeah.
Speaker 3:And this is on us. So, so that that again, is is a big responsibility to face. You know, what can we do about that? And that tension as well? I think is is part of what we're seeing.
Speaker 3:I do some lobbying these days. Who knew that that would be part of my skill set? But I am lobbying and campaigning at national level now and in order to remain in flow, going to west, minister, is an incredible thing. It is. It is A ridiculous place, but it's full of it's got an energy and a history and everything else you know.
Speaker 3:And democracy is a good thing. Yes, parliamentary democracy is a good thing. You know it may be flawed and slow, but you know it's. It is functional up to a point, but but but what's incredible there is that you know, in order to have the conversations with, you know, colleagues, parliamentarians and civil servants and all the rest of it, I had to check myself and come back to the belief that whoever is doing, whatever they are, in whatever seat of power corridor, of power office, they're showing up because they believe they're doing it for the right reason. So, if I, if I've got to bring myself back to sort of speaking to shared common values again, what do we agree on and and how we going to get there? For me, education has to be cross party. We've got to sort of big to not be.
Speaker 2:Absolutely can't be a political football anymore to be to be pushed around as that. Yeah, same with health and open going off in that time. But yeah, absolutely so. The it can't be driven by ideology, and you're right.
Speaker 2:So democracy, and parliamentary democracy is hugely important and there's lots to be proud of and some not to be so proud of around around things, but the, the, the key is that co creation of listening to the various different voices and lived experiences and accepting that we don't know it all, none of us ever will, or, and you know we can't and we can't, can't be the voice for everyone, but we can try and listen to all the voices at some point of the week. It's really hugely challenging but again, I think it comes back to that humility of being able to say you know what, we don't know the answers to this and there isn't an answer. And again, fundamentally, I think that education has got a problem as a sector because we're told there's an answer. You know, to use the Ken Robinson thing, there's one answer. It's in the back of the textbook, but don't look at it because that's cheating.
Speaker 2:And don't talk to your friends, because you know that's cheating as well, though, as he says, it's collaboration in there and it's the same with education we want. Well, what's the answer then? There isn't one.
Speaker 2:There's lots of different answers and lots sorts of nuance to it, lots of grayness. The idea of binaries to be able to fix issues is why I think we end up in an ever perpetuating circle of it doesn't work. So, coming back to the book, I think that's where you know it facilitates some of those conversations. You know, getting it out and reading it as a leader in the school and your staff room, using it as a staff meeting and students to be able to talk from there. And I go back to, you know, I worked in schools and then I worked in initial teacher education. Those students who come to us, who want to be teachers, as we say in the opening day, they don't come into it for the money, so they have a desire to really contribute to the betterment of society and ultimately, our young people, as do, I'm sure, all the people are certainly the huge 99.9% of the people in their profession. So that's great. Let's have those conversations and facilitate some of the more nuanced and difficult conversations about things, because otherwise what are we doing?
Speaker 3:I was really surprised that people had presumed that the book was going to be a how to do it, because it just never was going to. It was meant to spark, inspire, inform. I think there are. You know, we've got a section on the system and legislation and statutory duty.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of policies out there that are consciously or unconsciously in breach of what should be done and what should be happening. So you know, and that's hard to face, kind of go, oh my goodness, we've actually written a policy that's in breach of the Equality Act. What are we going to do about that? So you know, but it was all about sparks. You know, I'm not going to sit here and dictate anything to anyone, but I am going to offer a range of information and I think that you know that there are so many referenced resources in there, you know. So do click on links and use it as a research opportunity to inspire you, because everything in there is recommended, you know, and it may not be complimentary. I would like to think that a lot of it dovetails and that you can actually scaffold and bolt on and you, you know.
Speaker 2:It definitely does do that.
Speaker 2:But yeah it definitely does do that. But I think there is an authenticity to the fact that sometimes there is an odd point of view that you think, oh, they're actually slightly in conflict. That's good, because that's what it's like really out there, but I think that the book is a wonderful resource to go back to. Again, thinking of the if you're thinking about persistent absenteeism, dare I say it you will have a huge, a much bigger impact of reading this with your staff and facilitating those conversations than buying some bikes to give to students who can't get to school for a whole host of reasons and never be able to achieve those things. Yeah, I mean, buy the bikes and buy the books. Yeah, okay, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3:You know, but I think so. Inclusion I've gone on a big inclusion journey. I'm not sure if we've got time to talk about it, but you know I've come full circle in sort of wanting and sit for my kids, wanting and seeking special, you know, highly specialized. You know after we got spat out that's what we need and then coming right you're speaking to disability rights activists and sort of understanding why inclusion matters, why segregation and institutionalizing certain parts of society is problematic and why really great inclusion can actually improve society through children. Absolutely.
Speaker 3:You know all of that has purpose and relevance. I think you know education, without a doubt, in the last 13 years performance metrics and you know data and league tables and all the rest of it schools have been driven to be less inclusive. Yeah, and that's a massive problem for me. I hadn't really got my head around inclusion, as I said, because we came out, we were pushed out and fell out of education and we're so traumatized by it and we're such high needs that that was that was what we needed. We should never have ended up there. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so this idea of community schools. I'm so passionate about that. These are our children in our community. We want them. You belong here. Yeah, you have purpose and place. That's so valuable. Children desperately need and want to be seen, yeah, and valued. You know, part of the reason why attendance became so difficult was because we lost those links. Yes.
Speaker 3:So so I think you know, and inclusion is really hard to get right, just like being, you know, delivering true equality and equity is hard to get right, but for me it's rooted in compassion, curiosity, creativity. Yeah. These are things that we can all deliver individually. Yeah. And it's about being a ripple a ripple for change. We don't have to fix everything ourselves on our own. No. But together, you know, I could sort of think of us as sort of little molecules or atoms pinging around. Yeah. And that's all.
Speaker 2:That's all we can hope for, I think, the one of the. I'm about to come to the point where I'm going to ask you for a takeaway and ask you to leave all this, and this was something to make the boat go faster, but for me, one of the things the takeaways from our conversation is even the empowering of. As you say, you've come full circle in things as in our opinions can change and evolve and as we learn more, we can bolt things on. I think that's hugely important, that there's no, there's no harm in that, and I think, again, one of the things that sort of education does is that rigidive again, there's an answer and don't deviate from that, because you think this way and it just isn't like that. And we can evolve in our and really begin to to understand that.
Speaker 2:I have done the same thing. I have sea sword and ping ponged around from looking at inclusion being brilliant, let's get everyone into mainstream. We should be adaptive to that practice. We should be able to to also thinking actually in some cases that isn't going to work, and backing forward with that and a grapple with it all the time. And a grapple with it Because I don't particularly have a fixed view on it. I think that we have to keep on listening and changing and working. What I do know is that we've got to work as hard as possible for the, the young people, and supporting our colleagues in supporting those young people as well. But having the conversations has got to be a starting point and just sitting on a I am this side of it and there can't be any difference from that is not going to help the progression at all, really.
Speaker 2:Now, on the note of that progression, so our podcast is called the diverse podcast. Will it make the boat go faster? The idea of something moving forward. We ask our guests to come up with just something that the listeners can take away. They think, okay, what could I? A tangible piece of action can they take forward? To go? So it can be anything. There's no right or wrong answer to this.
Speaker 3:I would say I've changed this actually because I, but I think I'm going to go with professional curiosity. That's going to be my theme for this year, because or personal curiosity, being curious with yourself you know and sort of really working to notice and question what's going on with my reaction here.
Speaker 3:You know what do I need? But you know, professional Dan Siegel is a clinical psychologist. I absolutely love his work. He's very accessible. He talks about mind sight, which is our ability to put ourselves in somebody else's shoes and to absolutely understand things. And that's professional curiosity in a nutshell. But it is the grease on the wheels. It really is the grease on the wheels to progress, you know, to remain in flow.
Speaker 3:And if you can be individually curious with yourself and with your colleagues, or with the chart in front of you, or even the nameless official that you're trying to get to approve something at the other end of the phone, you know those relational tools will help foster the conversations, to unblock things. Yeah, Honestly, it sounds so simple, but it really is possible. And another tool he talks about is name, the need, which is, you know, when you see someone who's being really closed with you, you can say I can, I can see this conversation. It's difficult, You're struggling to find an answer. Can you help me to understand what's going on here? And you know. And then you're in flow and I'm picking things. So I think professional curiosity for me this year is going to be my theme for grease on the wheels.
Speaker 2:I think it's such a great takeaway because that is the gift that keeps on giving. So I know that definitely on a weekly, if not a daily basis, I do have to find and challenge myself to thinking about what's my reaction to something.
Speaker 2:No, where where, where, why is it? Why am I reacting like that? And therefore, yeah, I'm curious about what can I do about that, because we're all human, we're all triggered by things, but on picking the the why from that helps to move things forward. That might be my favorite thing to make the boat go faster. Right, ellie? We could talk about all of these things for forever in a day, and I think I'm really hopeful to get you back on and we'll pick up and continue this conversation.
Speaker 2:I'm excited because we'll hopefully we'll do some work together in the future, but at this point, I just wanted to say a massive thank you for coming down, for giving up some time, coming into the studios with us today, for your role with the book as well, and to all the contributors, thank you so much, available from all great independent bookshops and also all the major ones as well. So I really would recommend going out to read it, to buy it, to go to the library and borrow it if you want to. It's a, it's a great book and it does. It does stimulate those conversations and comfortable at times to read, as I think all good things should be when it comes to making change. But, ellie, thank you so much and let's continue this conversation soon.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure.
Speaker 2:Thanks, ellie, thank you.