Nip in the Bud® Podcast - The children's mental health charity

Nip in the Bud with Tier Blundell: The Silent Cost of Exclusion

• Nip in the Bud Children's Mental Charity

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Summary

In this episode of the Nip in the Bud podcast, host Alis Rocca engages with Tier Blundell, who shares his personal journey through the challenges of school exclusion, racial abuse, and ADHD. Tier discusses the alarming rise in school exclusions in the UK, particularly affecting marginalised groups, and emphasises the need for early intervention and a genuine sense of belonging in educational settings. He reflects on his own experiences of feeling alienated and the impact of systemic issues on mental health and self-esteem, advocating for a more compassionate and individualised approach to education.

The conversation delves into the importance of building relationships between educators and students, the necessity of understanding each child's unique background, and the role of clean language in fostering effective communication. Tier highlights the need for schools to shift their focus from punitive measures to supportive interventions that prioritise the well-being of students. He calls for systemic changes that alleviate pressure on teachers and promote a culture of understanding and inclusion, ultimately aiming to reshape the narrative around school exclusion and its long-term effects on young people's lives.

Keywords

school exclusion, ADHD, belonging, early intervention, racial abuse, mental health, education reform, Tier Blundell, Nip in the Bud podcast, clean language

Takeaways

"What does it truly cost a child to be told they don't belong?"

"Belonging needs to be unconditional."

"Education is for the child, not the child for the education."

"If you tell a child they're naughty, they'll become naughty."

"Relationships really are everything."

"We need to look at accurate data and not create drama narratives."

"It's about honesty and accountability."

"The pressure on teachers needs to be alleviated."

"We need to embrace culture in schools to combat racism."

"High expectations can help shape a child's future."

Tier's book recommendations

  • Dr Christopher Arnold – Excluded from School 
  • Wendy Sullivan and Judy Reese - Clean Language 

Disclaimer: The content provided in the Nip in the Bud podcasts is for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended to replace or serve as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or mental health issue.

You can find Tier Blundell here -

https://tierblundell.com/

https://excludedfromschool.com/

Nip in the Bud - Where to get help

https://nipinthebud.org/where-to-get-help/



Script - Tier Blundell

Alis Rocca (00:00)

What does it truly cost a child to be told they don't belong? In the UK, school exclusions are rising at an alarming rate, but the numbers tell only half the story. Behind every statistic is a young person facing a fractured sense of self and a clouded future.

Research shows that children from marginalised groups, particularly those from black Caribbean backgrounds and those with neurodivergent profiles like ADHD or autism, are disproportionately impacted. For many, school isn't a place of safety, it's a place of alienation.

Today on the Nip in the Bud podcast, we're joined by Tier Blundell. Tier doesn't just understand the data, he lived it. From the pain of racial abuse and the isolation of not fitting the mould due to ADHD and adverse childhood experiences, to his current mission of transforming how school leaders approach discipline and behaviour in schools. Tier is at the forefront of changing the shape of exclusion in the

UK. It's a brilliant conversation and we dive deep into the intersection of ethnicity, neurodiversity and mental health. We're asking the hard questions. How do we foster a genuine sense of belonging? And how do we stop the cycle of exclusion before it starts? Early intervention is key.

This conversation about resilience, systemic change and the power of being seen is one that you really don't want to miss.

Alis Rocca (01:44)

Hi, Tier, and welcome to the Nip in the Bud podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Tier Blundell (01:50)

okay it's great great to be here thanks Alice

Alis Rocca (01:53)

You're welcome. Could I ask you to just start off by giving us a brief history of your background?

Tier Blundell (02:02)

Yeah, so ⁓ I was born ⁓ in Northampton in 1990. My mother is English and my father was Pakistani. I was born on a council estate and my parents split up very early, partly for cultural differences and actually racism on both sides is the truth. So I come from a broken home. I had a really challenging childhood and somewhere through that childhood, I developed ADHD or ⁓ hyperactivity as I was diagnosed and it was called then. And I struggled with lots of things at school, particularly focusing, staying on task and so on. And I found myself punished quite a lot for that and found myself being sent out of class and long kind of internal exclusions which were really damaging to me. And this was amidst a background at home which actually did include abuse of various kinds and then obviously in my community at home and then increasingly at school when I moved into secondary school, racist abuse there also. This led to me being permanently excluded when I was going into year seven, when I was around the age of 11 and I went to a pupil referral unit. That pupil referral unit again was very challenging, very difficult, not very well run, ended up being closed by Ofsted. And I left at 16 with no qualifications whatsoever at all, not a single GCSE, and you could leave education then at 16 and I did. I got a full-time job but I was very depressed, unhappy person, lots and lots of struggles and challenges. ⁓

And that only changed when a friend got me into martial arts. And I got into martial arts and then took it up as a kind of vocation and went and competed and competed, ended up competing professionally. And that kind of changed me and got me into learning and so on and so forth. It gave me some confidence. I had no confidence or self-esteem from my experiences at school and in my home life. And then one thing led to another. And later on, I went back to college to do an access course, something I was initially rejected for but managed to talk my way onto.

And then I went to university. I went to the University of Warwick. I studied politics and social studies. I got a first class degree. I then did a master's at St Andrews and then got into Oxford to do a PhD. Amidst all of that, I was doing research into school exclusion because it's something that's been really interesting to me. And I know that there were peers that I had that were far more intelligent than I was that could have gone to university also. But the representation of young people who had been excluded from school and university was pretty much non-sense and I wanted to change that. So after getting to Oxford, I started to really make one and want to make a big difference because I thought people might listen now. And I set up excluded from school, which is what I do now, which started out as a network of people with lived experience of school exclusion, because I think lived experience needs to be at the centre of, you know, all things, but particularly, you know, creating and changing policy and making real change happen in places where outcomes and things are poor. ⁓ And that kind of grew to me, running it to help schools, local authorities, multi-academy trusts think differently about inclusion and reduce suspensions and exclusions. My wider hope is that ⁓ eventually exclusion in this country goes under a reshape so that it doesn't damage young people in the way that it does and has these negative effects for them later on in life as it had for me. And I've had to do a lot of undoing and a lot of healing ⁓ from those effects because

I do see exclusion for me as an adverse childhood experience and that necessarily means there needs to be healing and so I don't want other young people to go through that and have to go through that lengthy process. So that's my background and that's what I do now.

Alis Rocca (06:08)

Wow. Thank you. Thank you for that. And there's lots there that I'd really love to unpick a little bit deeper. So, for example, you said that you were excluded in year seven. So that was the first year of ⁓ secondary school. Why do you think the transition from primary to secondary led to exclusion for you? And how could that have been done differently to give you a little bit more support at that time?

Tier Blundell (06:35)

Yeah, so there were two things there. So in primary school, one of the things that really helped was that somebody taught me to read and that sounds silly, but what happened was that because I was being suspended all the time and sent out of class, I was obviously missing a lot of education. We might call that lost hours now. You know, I just wasn't being educated. And part of the reason that that was happening was... It's actually deficit hyperactivity disorder. But also I was searching for connection because I didn't have these relationships at home and I really wanted teachers and older people to like me. And so, you know, that was partly what I was doing. I was engaging, I was interested. I wasn't trying to subvert the lesson, but I was being disruptive in the lesson.

And so I didn't know how to read. And when somebody did teach me how to read, and this happened in a week, that changed everything for me. And my ADHD meant that I could focus on things and I could hyper focus on things I was interested in. So what that meant was is that suddenly the sanctions stopped because they could put me on a desk in the room and I would be hyper focusing on a topic that I was interested in. So, I mean, it started out for me, I remember it was sort of ancient Egypt, because I'd seen the mummy in 1999 and I absolutely loved that, I was eight years old and I loved that. So I was focusing on that and I wasn't disruptive anymore. And they realised this was a bit of a hack, it was less issues for them and I was happy and I was actually producing good work, even creative stuff.

The problem with that was, there was no warning to me as a child that this was going to stop when I got to secondary school. And so when I got to secondary school, with no preparation, suddenly I had to sit down and do what I couldn't do before and expected to do it again. And actually there hadn't been any help or any intervention for me. They just figured out this kind of hack, if you will, that had worked.

So naturally I found that difficult. I found it difficult to focus in class again. I found it particularly difficult because I was behind because I hadn't been doing the kind of you know conventional classes that they've been doing in primary school.

And there was something for me that if I couldn't do it and if I felt like I was silly or stupid, I felt embarrassed and I would try and not do it. So that was another issue for me. The other thing, aside from not being prepared for that change, the other thing for me was that my peers got significantly more racist, is the truth. Now we were in secondary school, kids were older, you know, kind of, and they were aware of certain slurs that you could use and so on. And that would happen to me because I stood out because I was the only Asian kid in that school. And I used to get racially abused and I would hit out and lash out and then they would obviously throw the book at me for doing that. And there were a lot of incidents like that. And so I became this disruptive figure for that school, for my middle school, I became this disruptive figure that could be disruptive in class and could be involved in a fight where everyone would point their finger at me. And often I'd get the blame for things that I didn't do because I had this reputation, I had a funny name and ⁓ I was an easy target and teachers had built this story around me and who I was and so I was often getting the blame and that was just causing me to retreat more and more into, you know, disaffection with school because I was being blamed for things that I didn't do and this just injustice at home and at school and everywhere. They were the kind of two things that really made that transition difficult.

Alis Rocca (10:09)

Yeah. I hear what you're saying and I think it's really interesting and nip in the bud what we're really all about is early intervention so I'm thinking if those primary school teachers had looked beyond the hack it was almost like a sticky plaster this works for now and we'll get him gone rather than thinking we need to make sure that this child leaves us with all the tools that he needs in order to be able to survive in the next part, not just survive, but thrive in the next part of his education. And I think that that sounds like that was missing, that it was just, as you say, it was a hack. It worked. You had that hyper vigilance, that hyper focus, but actually you left without the tools to be able to transfer any of that into what the next expectations would be. And I think that's a real case for early intervention, actually, making sure that we're working with what the children need. So seeing you as an individual and thinking, okay, what tools has he missed that we need now to teach him so that he can thrive in the next step of education. That sense of ⁓ not belonging as well followed you, it sounds like, from home to community to school and then into middle school as well. That sense of not belonging anywhere.

Tier Blundell (11:24)

Yeah.

Alis Rocca (11:39)

How big a part did that play on your mental health at the time?

Tier Blundell (11:44)

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot there. I want to come back to something you said, but I think it really links. So you talk about early intervention and mean, belonging is about this actually. So with me, one of the things I did was I got hold of my medical records and I looked through my medical records. I've got all of my school records. I've got all of the hard copies. It's fascinating and sometimes really funny. But one of the things that's to be really honest about is that there are times when school is aware that I am being mistreated or there's abuse at home or my mum is not in a good relationship and so on and so forth. All these things and yet and you can correspond them to the school records sometimes where there's knowledge of this but the language is you know, Tier needs to do this, Tier needs to do that, Tier needs to do this and it was like there kind of wasn't any people missed this opportunity to say right this is something he's struggling with this is what's driving his behaviour this is where we need to help and we need to do it now. We're talking as early as 1994. All of this information is there and none of this information is ever active until my exclusion in 2002. And you talk about belonging, I mean, for me, the thing that was true was that I knew I didn't belong with my dad and that family, that Pakistani family, because my mum had told me that they didn't want anything to do with me because I was born out of wedlock and that she was white English and so on and so forth. And also, you know, my mum's family was not, they were also racist. I mean, my stepdad was a racist man. There's no question about it. would be racist to me and so on. And I felt on both sides that neither of them wanted me there so I didn't belong anywhere at home.

Then I went to school and was, you know, often facing these kinds of internal exclusions and so on. So belonging, you know, I talk a lot about belonging being conditional, and I think that's a big problem. I think belonging to truly exist needs to be unconditional. And that is what you get in normal families. In a normal, normal, healthy family, you would get this idea that, you know, you have unconditional love for your children and they unconditionally belong in your family. That's not what I grew up with. There are lots of examples on both sides where people kind of cut each other off and say you're no longer in the family you're ashamed of the family but also that is mirrored at school.

Because the message I was getting was that you kind of belong here if you behave and I just seemed to not be able to. Because I had ADHD, I couldn't sit still and you see that with young people all the time. There's this talk and bluster about belonging, but it's only belonging if you can assimilate and be just like us. So I didn't have those belonging needs there. They were not met. I was reading recently, ⁓ Abraham Maslow was talking about this in his way of looking at things. You need to have those belonging needs actually met before you can kind of move up and start to kind of connect and so on and so forth and social skills and all the rest of it. The things that were actually making me fail at school and making me get sanctions are partly there because I didn't have those belonging needs met and I'm fundamentally operating in a space where I don't think people want me and I don't belong and the oldest feeling I have particularly with family and particularly with people I looked up to like my step grandad is this feeling that they're only putting up with me because they have to rather than I truly belong.

And that led to, you say about mental health, teachers used to say to me, for as long as I can remember, you've got low self-esteem. And it was like, they always used to say it to me like, it's a problem I need to unpick, which is extraordinary, because we can't even do it ourselves on our own as adults. But of course I've got low self-esteem because those belonging needs weren't met. So it is really important. And the low self-esteem contributed to a lot of my negative behaviours, but also particularly just a sense of giving up and thinking education was never for me, something that I had to really battle against later on in life to come back to it. And that lots of young people never, they never, they take that belief, they take it forward, I don't belong in education, and of course they can into counterculture or so on, they just never think education's for them. And it's a great shame.

Alis Rocca (16:07)

It's interesting that you mentioned Maslow's hierarchy of needs because that's actually part of teacher training. You know, I remember it when I was training to be a teacher, that was part one of our lectures that we would go to and understand the individual's needs. So it feels really sad that that was then sort of at some point forgotten by people that were then caring for you and seeing that you had these needs, it's in the records, but actually you deal with it, you get on with it. What would you have needed at the time to have felt more valued, more good enough by those in school? So not thinking about your family. How would a school, how would teachers, so this is really sort of tips really for our educators that are listening, what can you do to make a child feel wanted?

Tier Blundell (16:35)

Yeah, well there's so much. Asking me about what I need is really tricky because I think when I was, for me, when I was seen and heard and a teacher actually took some interest in me.

What quickly built up for me was this sense of loyalty. And so then I would actively want to behave and be quiet and listen and put my hand up and so on. Because it all became for part of me, I really like this person and I want them to like me and I want to do well in their class. So that praise as well that I would get for doing that would be really great. But that was very rare for me. It wasn't something that happened very often because I was just maligned so much. A couple of examples where I could behave in certain teachers' classes and I think this is something that when I've worked with young people has really followed. Relationships really are everything. When you've got that relationship, positive relationship with a teacher, the teacher takes some time to have that relationship with you and that can happen in class, out of class, in all different kind of ways. That changes things because often stories are told about young people, for example in certain subjects, but yet when they have like an inspirational teacher or someone who really cares for them and they build that relationship, and has good expectations for them and wants them to do well and so on, they actually suddenly can focus in that subject and it's got nothing to do with the subject, with everything to do with who's teaching it. And that's often true for lots of young people that they do well in certain subjects because of the teacher. We all kind of talk about how we might have been inspired by one person or people that went into certain careers were inspired by that teacher. So for me, yeah, there's these things that you can do, but the thing that kind of standardises and schools obviously like to standardise but the thing that is I think just standardising universal, unilateral is just having a positive relationship with the child that is getting to know them and speaking to them, giving them voice and kind of you know leaning in and for me they should have known what I didn't have at home, they should have known where I was coming from and I needed some words of encouragement, I needed somebody to say literally the words you belong here, we want you here, we're happy that you are here could have been completely utterly transformational for me but no one in my entire childhood ever said we are happy that you are here …

Alis Rocca (19:19)

Yeah, I agree. I think relationship building is key and there needs to be time for it. you know, I was a teacher, I was a head teacher. It's busy in school. The pace of the day is really fast. And so often you can forget that. You can just think, I've got to get on. The bell's gone. It's maths now. You know, it's now PE. Off we go. And forget that we're dealing with little humans and We need to be making time within the day to just have those touch points where you can check in, where you can build a relationship, where you can actually know what that child likes and dislikes and what their needs are and see them as individuals, definitely. And actually that's such a wonderful part of teaching, getting to know the children.

Tier Blundell (20:06)

Yeah, it absolutely is. And I feel like it's probably why most teachers get into it because they love children. I mean, it's probably not the salaries and stuff, you know, it's probably because of children. I mean, I had this, I mean, I used to coach in martial arts and I got into it because I love training people and seeing them do well. But, now, being burnt out, that changes and having to pay bills and commercial rent and all these other things. And teachers have a lot of things that they have to do and have to meet and have to mark and then life gets in the way and they've got their life happening, which people's lives are difficult. All people have a kind of brokenness and challenge in their lives. And then we have to turn up and, you know, be our best selves for children or our clients every day. And it is really, really hard. And I don't think there is enough support for that. I really don't. So, yeah, it is a big challenge, but it is something that I think if you do engage in having these kinds of positive relationships with people in your kind of whole school culture. I think that it does ease those things. It does ease those things. It eases that stress. It makes your life more enjoyable and it probably would lower stress and so on. But it is difficult to get to, particularly when you start from the bottom of the hill having have this mountain to climb.

Alis Rocca (21:24)

So we talked really about thinking about advice and what could the school have done differently. What about parenting? What advice would you have for parents ⁓ of a child who might be feeling or showing signs that they're feeling disaffected with school, with education, or showing signs that they're being bullied and racially abused? What sort of things would you want to say to parents to help a child? Being proactive rather than reactive, so before they get to that point of exclusion.

Tier Blundell (22:02)

Yeah, well, mean, first things first, I'm not a parent, so I hesitate to give advice, but I am expecting, so I am a parent, but I haven't gone through this yet. But I can speak from my own experience what I didn't have, and I can also speak to lots of young people that I've worked with and mentored as well, what I see missing that kind of, I mean, research says that they should have. So I think the first thing, the first thing is, obviously people need to know that they're loved and they belong and all those kinds of things that we spoke about, that needs to kind of be reiterated. But I think like in the challenge of, expectations are really important. You know, there's research on this that I'm really passionate about, particularly working with young people in alternative provision that have been excluded from school. Now, aspirations in disadvantaged people are not lacking but their futures are limited because of the expectations, the normative expectations of the adults surrounding them. What we expect from young people will often come true. I mean there has been this conversation before. Isn't there about if you tell a child they're naughty they'll become naughty and so on and so forth but the opposite is also true. So having high expectations could help so much with the way that they look at school, approach school and deal with school. So I think that's really important. I did a consultation recently in London with lots of children in AP and there was only one young person that actually said that their parents had high aspirations for them. The rest were just saying look as long as you're happy, as long as you're happy or nothing at all and that might seem like good parenting but I don't but what's actually happening is you've got incredibly bright and I noticed this with young women that were going off to do things like hair and beauty and hairdressing which is fine but when you pick underneath what other aspirations you had they had actually wanted to be things like forensic psychologists, which I didn't even know was a thing, right? And some of them wanted to be lawyers and paramedics and so on. And that had all been abandoned because no one around them had ever had that expectation. And everyone was surprised that they'd come up with that. And now it was like, they're staring down the barrel of post-16 and they've got to choose something. So they're choosing this. Otherwise their needs and all this kind of stuff. And I think that's a real shame. So I feel like parents have got to have high expectations.

If there are behavioural difficulties, if there is ADHD, that doesn't mean that you lower your expectations. Because if young people do want to go off and learn things, even if you think, well, they might not be able to get there realistically, it still breeds excellence that learning that stuff and it's still it's still is good and you should give them the shot and you should have those expectations for them. I think that's really important because obviously I was written off because of my behaviour and then I ended up going to university and doing those things and doing really well. But I was written off because the school didn't think I could do it so they didn't bother teaching me. They wanted to put me on a motor mechanics course which I didn't like. I don't like things like that to be honest. You know and they just made these assumptions about me. So that's really important. That's the thing I'm always a parent to. There's a couple of other things I think like I noticed something working with children because I've worked with children that are at risk in private schools. So which is something not spoken about quite a lot. They still experience exclusion and they have the same challenges. And one of the things I've noticed particularly with ADHD between those and those in the mainstream is often the ones that are in the private school. The thing that's kind of offsetting their behaviour and keeping them there and helping them. They do lots of different things like activities and different clubs and different sports and so on. Whereas I've noticed that sometimes in the state/mainstream that isn't happening and so young people are going to school, might have been on fortnight all night and not necessarily had a quality breakfast and everything else and they're really struggling with their behaviour and they're really struggling to focus on certain lessons. And then what happens is that teachers and parents seem to think that this is some kind of fixed truth that this person just doesn't like maths or this person just doesn't. And we need to be really careful about that if we've not looked at the data and what's going on and what else they're doing in their life and so on leading up to this. So I think be really conscientious about things like that, whether it's diet, what your kid's doing at weekends and in the evenings and so on, because all that stuff will help them to focus at school. I mean, around racism and stuff, it's really challenging because we are in what I believe to be the most racist period of my life.

And I'm not talking about, when I was a kid, people would, it was more overt, but it seems to be, now it's kind of public. It's like, it's on social media, there are politicians out there who are very prominent who do this stuff. It's really, really difficult. It's a really hostile place to live, I think, if you're mixed race or someone of color, particularly in certain parts of the country.

And that is really difficult. And if they're experiencing racism at school, I think there's one thing you've got to be worried about, and that's the kind of internalised racism that they might develop. You're not an expert on this.

Alis Rocca (27:13)

Tell me about that.

What do you mean by that?

Tier Blundell (27:15)

So, you know, when I was young, a couple of things happened where, you know, I've spoken about the stuff that was happening at home and in my community. And I mean, I really, really, really wanted to be as white as I could be. And I, you know, chipped about with an England shirt and a Burberry hat and, you know, and all the rest of it. And I wanted to be, and I really had racism against Asian people. That's the truth. And I'm open and honest about that. When I was a kid, there was, but I'm talking like it was actually a disgust that I had, which tells you.

These aversions in mental health, these aversions are often shadows and so on. And that was definitely a shadow for me. But what was really going on was I really didn't like myself. So we talk about mental health and self-esteem. I hated myself. Is it any surprise when, you know, my mum said she didn't hug me till I was 14. She had postpartum depression. Completely understandable, completely normal thing. If anyone had a reason to feel like that, it was my mum because of how she was treated by my dad and her family. 

But that was my background and everyone else was averse to me. People in my community were saying, know, I said, and I was darker when I was young as well. And I felt like my skin was dirty. I felt my skin in every place I went into. You when I walked into a room or when I went to do things, my stepdad was a gamekeeper. And like, you know, he'd take me to these things where like the farmers are all there. I mean, you couldn't get more English and Tui. And I knew I stood out. I knew I stood out. I knew that people could see that about me. It's like having a big spot on your face and you know everyone's looking at it but they're not talking about it and that was my experience and what that meant was is the self-loathing later on in life that I had for myself that internalized racism manifested in lots of different ways which didn't serve me in relationships I didn't believe I was lovable I didn't believe that I could have long-term relationships and

This is important because what happens in our childhood and what happens at school, which is where we spend a lot of our childhood, affects us later on in life as adults. And often we don't trace it back unless we're privileged enough to do therapies. Do we look at that kind of regression? But everything that happens now is shaping young people. And I would be particularly alive to that. I mean, I'm going to have a daughter. She might be mixed race. She might, I don't know. I mean, my wife's white, but.

If I want to be very sure early on that that's something that she has pride in and that she knows is safe and is beautiful and is fine and that other people being racist is a reflection of them and where they are and nothing to do with you. I think I went to Pakistan this year. Sorry, last year in the early part of last year was a big part of me kind of integrating my identity and I loved it. I was weeping when I had to leave. I didn't want to leave. It was a beautiful experience for me, but I was never taken there had any connection with that community I think it's really important that they have connection with their culture to kind of ground them because where I was I was in a wilderness and everyone around me was was white and although they were being hostile to me I just wanted to be accepted by them but you never you know I never can be I never can be them so was trying to be something that I wasn't.

And that obviously I'm failing every day in that unconscious mind. And so, yeah, so there was a lot there for me around that. I didn't want to have children. I didn't want to get married. And a lot of that was, you know, because of the dislike I had for myself. And that definitely came from that abuse. So it is forward thinking. Obviously, there's all that stuff about you speaking to the school and everything else. But it's in the culture and there is social media and there is all this stuff now. And I think like a parent, I'd be very cautious about what they consume and like really they've got to own and love their identity. They have to own and love their identity because otherwise it will have a negative effect. And my mum, the only advice she ever gave me was if somebody calls you the P word hit them and I did. Now the truth is that kind of meant I wasn't a victim there at that moment. I mean was, but then systemically they threw the book at me. But you know, I didn't want to be called that. It actually really upset me. It made me think of my dad and it made me think of this thing about myself I really hate. So it wasn't the advice I needed. It was that actually...Yeah, you're Pakistani and it's a beautiful country. There's beautiful places in Pakistan. The food is wonderful. You know, the music is fantastic. You know, all this kind of stuff. Here's some pictures of it you know, so what if they call you that? And I didn't get that. was, it was someone who says that you will hit them, you know, because it's an offence. That's the, that's the under, that's the unconscious truth, isn't it? If someone calls me that and I hit them back, I'm taking offence, which I'm not saying you don't take offence at racist abuse, but for me, it was a bit deeper than that. And so it was like, you're bursting the bubble. I want to believe I'm not that and you're bursting my bubble. So I'm hitting you back and yeah, so I think there's a lot there.

Alis Rocca (32:12)

You gave a lot there, a lot of good advice, so thank you for that. I think, you know, in summary, the biggest point you made there is about acknowledging and embracing culture. So whether you're a parent or whether you're the school, taking the time to embrace the culture and the country that somebody is being abused, racially abused against and that's something that we can do in schools. You know, we can put pictures of Pakistan on the walls, we can have Pakistan as part of our geography lesson if we know we've got a child in the classroom who's suffering and hasn't got that at home. We can offer food and music and do all of that in our classrooms as well as at home and I think that, you know, that does help to just shake the stigma.

Tier Blundell (32:51)

Yep.

Alis Rocca (33:02)

And say that there shouldn't be stigma around this. This is a beautiful place, so let's learn about it.

Tier Blundell (33:07)

Yeah, and it's not, I mean, I'm passionate about this. It's not like we're doing EDI here. I mean, modern Britain is built on the Windrush generation. Asians that came over, like my grandparents, they're fundamentally part of the fabric. They fought for us in two world wars. They're fundamentally part of what this country is. It's not a nice to have. It's an essential that they're, that they're included in what we teach and everything else. And they're so often not. And, you know, sometimes when I go to speak to young people at assemblies, I often say, about people like Malcolm X and so on and often people have never heard of him. We're looking at secondary children that are choosing their options for GCSE and you think this is not alright, there's something wrong here. so that's where the education system itself contributes to that problem of internalised racism and that you don't see yourself in it and you don't feel that you're part of it, you feel like you're intruding into it and that you don't really belong as much as others do.

Alis Rocca (34:10)

Yeah, I agree. think, you know, making sure that we have a curriculum which the teachers really understand how to teach that does really, really explain modern Britain and where we came from and, you know, how we are in 2026 and all the different layers that have created modern Britain. I agree there. Thanks for that.

Let's have a little talk now about your ADHD diagnosis. So the other aspects that you talked about earlier about your identity that sort of led to so much of your journey and ending up being excluded. When did you first understand that you had ADHD? When was the diagnosis, when did you go through that diagnosis process?

Tier Blundell (35:02)

Yeah, well, this is an interesting and a kind of odd thing. So I was diagnosed with hyperactivity disorder when I was a child. And my mum would say to me, you've got hyperactive and you've got hyperactive. But I didn't understand that it was a formal diagnosis of a formal neurological disorder. I didn't understand any of that as a child. And everyone was telling me how bad I was and everything. I just thought it was who I was. never know when I kind of sat down and said, well, look, you've got ADHD, so you're finding this difficult. It was always, you're wrong, you've done this, you're disrupted, you've done this. And then my mum would say, you're hyperactive, you're not supposed to have E numbers or orange food colouring or whatever she thought it was. So really, because my mum, for reasons of her own, had an issue that she'd had with my grandmother, they didn't want to give me medication, really, ADHD kind of slipped into the background of my thinking. Schools didn't bring it to my attention even though it was in my records. Nobody kind of talked to me about it and how to help me through this sort of thing. I just self blamed for everything, that I didn't get done and everything else and just self blamed. And this actually continued. So basically it just faded into black. It just faded away and it just left my kind of consciousness. Then when I went to university, that's when it became apparent because I was struggling with this stuff and so on and so forth. And then I was kind of, I spoke to people and was a citizen. Someone said, yeah, have you thought about ADHD? And I was like, well, yeah. They said I was hyperactive as a kid and so on. And then I started that ball rolling ⁓ in 2019 and I was diagnosed by two different university people, but I mean, I won't go into it too much, but the NHS still haven't given me medication even though they've diagnosed me. I'm still waiting. It's been six years. 

It's not good at all. It's a shambles and it's a subject in and of itself. But of course I have it. I've also self-medicated at times and so on and that's actually worked for me. But yeah, my relationship with it is a tricky one because I don't mind that I've got it, I think it really helps me. I think it's part of who I am and I'm really okay with that. But when it comes to having to operate in a world that is kind of not just neurotypical, but particularly like type A around certain things. It's a big challenge. And then what happens is I often get like the shame. The shame comes back. We still shame a lot of people that struggle with certain things around organisation and so on. And that's a replay of what happened at school. So there's not necessarily that much understanding for it as well in adult life. So, yeah, trying to cope in amidst adult life sometimes with things is a little bit like trying to cope at school with certain expectations that are there of me and certain policies. It's very similar, but obviously I'm more able to think about that and do that and put things into place to kind of get myself out of trouble. But it's still a feature of my life. ⁓

Alis Rocca (38:26)

So would you say that, you know, all the work that you're doing with APs, would you say that there's, I know the Timpson review talks about ⁓ vulnerable groups being, you know, the most prevalent, especially BAME. Would you say that ADHD is often found in students that are in ⁓ alternative provision?

Tier Blundell (38:46)

Yeah, definitely, I mean, it's the number one reason for permanent exclusion is persistent disruptive behavior. And that is quite subjective, really, by nature. I think it's quite interesting that, you know, what is it to be disruptive? Someone else’s disruptive might not disrupt me! Me and my wife have said that, someone making noise chewing doesn't really bother me, but it might really bother her. So there's things like that. And yet that's the reason to start people down this route to go to AP and then lose the same educational equality that they would have had in mainstream school. So yeah, I do see that. And then alongside that, I see a judgment. I see a judgment that they're not academic, and so they should work with their hands. And it's absolutely nonsense. It's nonsense. It goes back to what I wa saying about classes and clubs. When I was at university, I did loads of physical things. I boxed for the university, I coached, I was out moving around and then in the evenings or when I went to the seminars I could sit and engage with ideas. My interest was the history of ideas and political theories and philosophy. I loved all that. You couldn't get more heady than that stuff. That's the most academic stuff you can probably do, right? And I did that and I loved it. Then when lockdown hit and I couldn't do all the physical stuff, I struggled to focus. And that was when I was like, this ADHD thing is a serious problem for me. ⁓ So if people have ways to use their hands.

That's great. It doesn't mean their whole life and their whole job needs to be using their hands. But it's an assumption that we make. And that's a big part of the work I do with schools, is there are lot of assumptions that we need to interrogate more. Because we are assuming things about young people that are radically shaping their future. And I don't think it's fair. yeah, I can't remember what the original question was. I apologise.

Alis Rocca (40:38)

No, you answered it beautifully and I'd just like to go into what is the work that you're doing with schools because that will be really helpful. So you talked earlier about your passion to reshape exclusion in Britain. What does that even mean? How can you do that? Where do you start?

Tier Blundell (40:56)

Yeah, it's a good question. I don't know where to start. My work is quite haphazard. I work with lots of different people, local authorities, probation, ⁓ loads of math schools, education boards that are Church of England, Catholic, things like that. It's been really, really fantastic. And each of them have a different kind of approach and problem they're trying to solve around this. I think that when you talk about reshaping, when I talk about reshaping exclusion, what I mean is that I'm actually not somebody who says that a child should never ever be removed or sorry moved from a school setting because it doesn't serve them. guess though that's my primary concern is that it doesn't serve them rather than it doesn't serve the school. But I'm not, but sometimes the other can be true. That's fine. Firstly, the word exclusion, it's not a nice word.

I think it has problems. has negative connotations. It has shaming connotations. The way that it's done, the process of getting there is insufficient. My biggest bugbear is I sometimes do workshops or I'll go to Academy Trust and we'll do Q &A's and people will say, did everything we could to not exclude that child. Now, this is going to rub people up the wrong way, but I'm going to be honest, that's almost certainly never true. And that's almost certainly never true because of the way in which they haven't done so much but I mean often it can be talking to the child they haven't even spoken to the child in an effective way to kind of get information about their behavior and so on but they haven't looked at different interventions they haven't made different allowances or there's so much that they haven't done there's so much that works that they're not aware of and they haven't tried it. and then when you ask them what they have tried, they'll just say things like, did a reduced timetable. Well, that's just exclusion by another means. That's not trying to keep a child in class by taking them out of class more. And again, I'm not saying that there's never a time that isn't appropriate to do a reduced timetable. I've even recommended it sometimes, but it's not everything you can do to keep a child in the school. So I think that there needs to be more education on that, there needs to be more efforts that go into preventing it. And also I think that there's things where it doesn't necessarily need to be this point goes back to belonging, where the door is always shut. It could be something that's done with students and with parents and with agreement and with a door open, it's another connection to that community. It's not that you never come back here, the door is shut. Because these things, I think, you know, from all the lived experiences I've had and I've collected from people in my kind of network.

It really affects people later on in life. They don't feel like they can be part of an institution. They might go into counterculture. It affects them in relationships. They expect to be dumped. They expect all this kind of stuff. And actually, we need to avoid that because we're dealing with young people. We can't just ditch them and chuck them out and be somebody else's problem. So many people in mainstream school, teachers and things like that, that start the ball rolling with sanctions, don't really understand that AP is a lottery in this country. It's a lottery what you get to do there…what education you get if you get to do any GCSEs, not alone enough to continue on and that you might never might be at risk of exploitation and so on and so forth. Many parents report to me that their children get worse when they go to AP and they don't want them in AP. And rightfully so. I wouldn't want my young person in AP. I'm not talking about SCN schools, that's different. And again, some of those can be brilliant as much as some APs can be brilliant. But other countries don't do this. In Italy, it's illegal to exclude, since 1977, no one's calling for it to come back because they have effective, as you say, early intervention, interventions when it happens, a whole suite of people get involved. There's lots of examples out there internationally where people do this and they say, no, you belong in this community. You might have additional needs. And actually, yeah, you might be challenging us here. And actually, we need, we're struggling with this and we can't actually help you here. But there is a whole host of ways in which a school can help a young person, is what it should be about, help a young person, put them in the place they need to be, make it better for everybody without that shaming kind of exile, which is what we really do when we exclude them. And then we start the ball rolling on the school to prison pipeline, which happens so often. And coming back to what you said about ADHD, know, super prevalent, super prevalent in young offenders' institutes and prisons and so on, as well as, you know, 85 % of young offenders haven't been permanently excluded from school and 60-something percent of in the adult estate permanently excluded from school. You know, that's where people are going. That's where we're sending them down towards. and it's not because we're just not having them in our mainstream class. It's because of the way it's done. It's the way it's done, the language with it, and the feeling that young people leave that scenario with.

Alis Rocca (45:52)

Okay.

So what could schools do differently? What could a primary school who is struggling to ⁓ cope, so I'm saying it's the school that's struggling to cope because the child is ⁓ showing additional needs of some sort through their behaviour. What would you say are the first steps?

Tier Blundell (46:20)

The first step. Well, it's hard to say without knowing what's going on with the child because I'm really interested in a really personalised look. I don't like standardised things, a real personalised look.

Alis Rocca (46:32)

So how would you get that personalised look? So what would a school do to personalize their approach? And the problem is, and I know this because I was a school leader, is everything has to be done in policy and systems. So how would you like the systems to look so that schools have that personalized approach?

Tier Blundell (46:54)

Yeah, yeah, that's a good question. So there's a lot there. I think the personalized approach has to come with knowledge. It has to come with seeking knowledge. So one of the things that I'm really passionate about is seeking knowledge about young people and their context and their background and so on. There's been lots of studies on this. There's one in the West Midlands where they had an issue with truancy and they completely halved it by doing two things. Firstly, was, ⁓ well, they screened them for different risk factors and so on. So again, we're talking about this early intervention and then they would do a home visit, which is something that I don't think happens enough. And I think it does give information. It helps teachers get some, you know, get some real understanding of what's going on for the young person, what the home context is. It builds that relationship with parents and then it gives them information. What's going on? What's family life like? How can we then start to move to help this out and so on and so forth? The other one was greeting them by name in the morning. And it's all about that belonging piece rather than reacting all the time to behavior. It's actually look, you belong here and you're leading with that, you're leading with that inclusion rather than just doing it in response. So I think that knowledge is everything. When I work with particularly secondary school teachers, I talk to them about clean language and talk to them about how to have conversations with young people where they can have a voice so they can tell you more about what's going on. So I mean, a quick example, I was at a multi-academy trust last week, a week ago, and I was talking to some teachers. And I'll just give you one example from that. There was, because it's quite a soft one but there was a teacher who was teaching art and she has this belief that her pupils should have pride in their work and she doesn't understand why they don't want to have they're not engaging in the lessons and she wants to take the view that if they can be proud of their work, then they will they will engage more and be less disruptive So she tried moving them around and sitting in between them But one of the things that came out is that she'd never actually asked them because I asked them Have you ever actually asked them what being proud in their work means to them? What does pride mean to them? What would be doing a piece of work that they were proud of? What would that be like for them? She hadn't asked that another teacher was talking about how young people were attention-seeking now. That's probably true. That could well be true right? But they hadn't asked them about what they thought about attention and what was happening around attention. We live in an attention economy. Young people are on their phones and probably the biggest victims of this attention economy. I'm sure they have a relationship with attention and they have an understanding of attention when they're in secondary school and they're doing the GCSEs. I'm sure they do, but we haven't asked them. So what was happening on both accounts was two teachers were reacting to behaviour and making interventions that both of them weren't working.

But they were doing that without the knowledge, without context, without background context, and without simply knowing what pride in their work meant for those young people in the art class and what attention meant for the people in the other class, in the maths class. And actually both of them were being disruptive and both of them had made policies and they were doing things and they were leading with these ideas that they hadn't checked in with the young people. So I think knowledge, context, and lived experience is super important. And otherwise we're just, it's like the blind leading the blind in a way. ⁓ So I think that's really.

Alis Rocca (50:16)

Yeah. So step one is to really cultivate curiosity as an adult. Yeah. So that you're really, really trying to, like you said earlier, build that relationship, but ask the questions, find out more, acquire the knowledge to understand the behaviours in the child. Okay. So what would step two be?

Tier Blundell (50:21)

Absolutely. Yeah, because that also helps them in the instance that it might be better that they go to another school or it might be better that something else serves because you've got more of that information.

And then that just helps them in that transition, which is a real difficult and scary thing for young people and that can really affect them. mean, lot of young people go into AP, just disengage and then they're gone. They don't go to AP and they're neat and they get exploited and so on and so forth. So again, that knowledge, otherwise you're just handing over a problem to somebody else and they say that to me, APT say that to me all the time. They just get these kids and they have to learn all about them and they have to figure it all out but because they've got that time to build those relationships they do manage to do that often but it doesn't stop the fact that iniTierlly it's a really big problem. 

So I suppose that...Step two would be that's when teachers who are more qualified than me can actually start to really effectively think about interventions, effectively think about inclusion because you have knowledge. So once you have all that data, if you were a scientist, you wouldn't just make hypotheses, but you'd want data and you want knowledge and you'd want to kind of experiment and so on. But building that relationship, getting that knowledge and understanding what's going on for them, allowing them to articulate by using things like I really like clean language, I think it's a great way, I think it helps young people to do thinking for themselves and to... Okay, so yeah, clean language is this... 

Alis Rocca (52:10)

Can you just explain to our audience what you mean by clean language?

Tier Blundell (52:17)

It's this kind of theory of language where when you speak to people, so therapists use it a lot, people now also use it in the corporate world when they're dealing with work. And it's such a clean way of speaking that sometimes in our language, there is implicit bias, shaming, judgment, and so on. A lot of young people are quite alive to that, particularly as we said earlier, when there are reputations around them and so on and so forth.

So clean language is a way that helps an individual to go a little bit deeper and to really be thinking about what they're saying. So a quick example is when somebody says, ⁓ say an incident's happened and you might be talking to them. And by the way, again, I've lost count of the times that an incident happens for a young person. Mostly, have you asked why they did that or why what happened? And the answer is no. I've just heard a load of assessments and judgments about it and none of that come from the individual. ⁓

So they might say something like, I was angry. And so clean language would say, what kind of angry?

And it might sound silly at first, but what that does is you're using their language. not reframing. And so even if they use slang, you've got to, it's about them and their voice and their, otherwise they're trying to please you and they're trying to use language that they don't understand and it won't be authentic. So you would say, what kind of anger? And that makes sense because as I said to somebody last week, I said, I get angry at foreign policy, right? But that's a very different anger than if somebody hit me in my car with my pregnant wife in my car, because they weren't looking where they were going you're going to have two very different responses there, right? So the same thing is true of young people. So you can find out what kind of anger, what was that like and so on. And you ask these really clean questions and then they think and they're going a bit deeper and then they start to extrapolate meaning that they have that's in them that they're now bringing into consciousness. And it could be feelings they have, sort of right brain into left brain, all this kind of stuff. And all that does is just give us so much information. This is what the young person thinks about this. This is where the young person is coming from. This is what really upset that young person. They have a relationship with this because of this. And it just illuminates ⁓ all that kind of stuff. The other one that I'm really passionate about is the, obviously the unclean version.

Another example was, I'm gonna, this happens very regularly, that people say about young people all the time. They misbehave all the time. They're disruptive all the time. One guy said his student was constantly disruptive. Now, you know, I'm not trying to get pedantic here, but it's not true. It's almost certainly not true. If there's a period of the class or a period of one class that day where they actually sit through and they do manage to focus on it,

It is not true that they are constantly disruptive or they are misbehaving all the time. If we're going to hold young people accountable, we have to be accountable too. They have to know that they can rely on us. So we have to give them accurate data. So the accurate data is they were disruptive during this period of time, not they're disruptive all the time. It's lazy, it's unclean, and it contributes to what we said earlier about young people having this sense of themselves. Well, I just can't, you know. I'm bad 100 % of the time. I'm disruptive 100 % of the time. What's the point in trying? What's the point in engaging? I don't like school. I don't want to go to school. It's not accurate. So we need to look at accurate data and not create these kind of drama narratives around things that are not true, such as misbehaving all the time. It's not true and it's not fair. There was another example where the young person I was mentoring with, it's so important. is why speech and stuff is so important. He was going through this exclusion and all this stuff for calling his mum and his mum was so mad at him, rightfully so with the data that she'd got, she'd been told that he'd said to a female teacher, what's the point of you? Now that's a big thing. That's a big thing. But here's the truth, that's not what he said. He said, what's the point of the work? Now that changes everything. Because that's the, what's the point in this?

That's different, that's inquisitive, that's intellectual curiosity. It might not necessarily be, particularly for someone who was neurodiverse, it might not be subversive or throwaway, because in other experiences he has genuinely asked about why is this important, what is this all about. He is intellectually curious. And actually it was admitted by the head. He's like, you're right, no, you're right. That is what the teacher said, not what's the point of you. He got it wrong and he told the mum that it was wrong.

It wasn't even the young person saying, hey, I didn't say this, I said this. He was just dealing in sad and dealing with his things. But when I checked the language, the language wasn't right. And so the reaction wasn't right. So that's again where there needs to be this practice because it's so often unfair to the young people. And, you know, that's disastrous.

Alis Rocca (57:15)

That's fantastic, thank you. I think it's really worth going into that in depth. I think what I'm hearing from you at the moment is the first step is curiosity and gathering the data. The second step is then as professionals using the pedagogical knowledge, using inclusion approaches, using whatever tools you have to ensure that you're meeting their needs, but running through both of those ⁓ steps, if you like, is this clean language versus dirty language and this idea of let's be really accurate with how we are describing what we are seeing and what we're feeling.

What next? What if you're a school who has done all of that? They've been curious, they've got the data, they've worked professionally to try and put things in place that will help and will include and they're being proactive rather than reactive, but it still doesn't work. What would you suggest a school does at that point?

Tier Blundell (58:21)

Well listen, ⁓ there's so much there that could be looked at and external intervention that they might need and so on and so forth. There's so much. you know.

But I'll jump, for the benefit of the question and so on. Say you've got to a point where, yeah, like the school can't cope anymore and so on so forth. I think there's a way that can be done that is the least amount damaging to the child. There is one school that I spoke to and they do say that. They did say that to a young person. They said, our door is always open if you want to come and have a chat with us. The child's almost certainly never going to do that. you know, but the sentiment is important.

They'd even done a card for him. They'd done a leaving card for him. They'd written nice things about him and positive things about him that had happened in that school. I can't track how that is for him because it was only recently, but I think there are ways that it can be done to the benefit of the child. If you've got all that knowledge as well, you can pass that over and you can find out all those things. But it needs to be done without shaming. It needs to be done where, and then when they do go to new places, I'm doing some work with an alternative provision at the moment about this. When young people come in, they're so deflated, they've had this experience, they've lost out, they've lost out on some education, they are behind, they're deflated. It's like you've just had a breakup, you've just been dumped, right? If you've been dumped, you're not ready to like to fly back in in a healthy way, right? It's something to be good. But it's about reframing that and saying, look, this is a new beginning. I know, the private schools do this a lot. They just, if they've got a problem with a young person, they'll get on the phone to another private school. He needs a fresh start. That's very different to when you know it's done through the system and in state education it's exclusion and this and that and you know and the hcp and all this stuff and all the stress at home parents get so stressed and upset about it too and that's sad as well like that's i think parents often think that it's like there's this thing it's the end and my son isn't going to get gts and so on and so that's that's also not true that's also not like we need to the pressure off of that as well but parents need support they need that support they need support say this isn't the end and so on and we're open to you, we'll have a conversation with you. So I think that the pastoral point shouldn't be cut off. It shouldn't be cut off. There should be a conversation. They should still be onside. They've got information. There might be information that might be needed later. And I think that if there's this kind of whole effort, which is kind of what they do in Italy, there's this whole effort that people get into to make sure that child can stay and thrive in school. I think if that's the approach, that would be good. So I think there's got to be a way of thinking about how can we do this that is the best. So instead of it just being we did everything we could not to exclude, it's like we did everything we did to make a child's transition as positive as it could be. And I think that isn't looked at enough. That isn't taken enough. It's like a decision. It's signed off. And then the fallout is the young person and the family and that separation from community and so on. That's so intrinsically problematic for human beings. I think that that's the point you get to because people will always say what you've said. They'll always say, but, but, but. you know, to try and get to this outcome, it's almost willed.

I mean, that's me being a little bit harsh, but it's almost willed because there's almost this expectation that it will always, you're going to get to a point when it will happen. It's a little bit of confirmation bias. But knowing they don't do this in other countries, I kind of go, well, you know, let's not do that. But if you do get there, because you will in this country at the moment, you've got to do it well. And with that child's future in mind.

Alis Rocca (1:02:10)

Yeah, thank you.

Is there, blue sky thinking, anything that you would change systemically so that schools had the support they need to be able to do what you've just described?

Tier Blundell (1:02:28)

Yeah, I kind of don't reach that phase because I'm kind of firefighting with individual schools and people a lot. But I think that the one thing I'd love to, the love to kind of take away, is the pressure that's on schools and teachers. I'd love to kind of just take that away so that the teachers really did have that time and space to kind of slow down and look at young people and take some time and not that pressure of, you know, the classes, you know, ⁓ being disrupted and I've got to reach these targets and everything else. Like, I really wish that.

That there was less of that pressure on teachers from the very beginning. I always say that, now, taking that well-known kind of quote from the Bible about the Sabbath, I always say, education is for the child, not child for the education. Children should not have to fit this educational view. You've got to do this. It should be that education is there for the child. It should be that children are able to, as long as they are learning and not being taught, what's more important? Are they being taught or are they learning? And I think they're very different. What happened to me in my primary school classes, I was learning. But if they went, look, you're not being taught. In the way that we want you to be taught in the same class with everyone else looking forward. If you're not being taught, you're out. It's just good that they're learning, particularly. And actually the things I learned and how that helped me, it changed my life and meant where I'm at today is where I'm at today. And it comes back to somebody taking that decision and say, as long as he's learning, because education is more important than education, the system. So I think that's something that is super important systemically. The other thing I think is really interesting is it comes down to clean language and because I'm such an advocate for parents who have got children excluded and young people themselves, ⁓ I think that, and I went through therapy and as a mentor for young men on probation, I also had supervision. And I think that I've often wondered about teachers having supervision and I think that they should get supervision because it's a very hard job. And I always say like, you know, they're not responsible for the mental health of their class, that's way too much of an impossible thing and so on, and way too much responsibility. But reality is, is that they can impact it. And so I think that there have been teachers out there that are clearly I think projecting onto young people. As a mentor with supervision it was very clear to me that I shouldn't project onto young people. I shouldn't try and do other things as well like fix, rescue, save them, all these kind of things in equal measure because that has damaging implications when the wrong kind of person wants to fix, save and rescue and advise them. But I think things like projection and transference and all that stuff that people would look at in the mental health space does happen to young people and I know example of some people that they might not be listened to at home, they disproportionately feel like the class are not listening and so on and so forth. And these are all natural things that happen. We have to be honest about that. As adults, we do that to people. We don't give everyone a fair hearing all of the time because of what's going on with us. And when we're dealing with young people, that's even more pronounced, I think. So I would like to see more support for teachers around that, around supervision. Life happens to everyone.

I remember when I was working simply as a doorman, right? I was a bouncer. When my dad was dying of cancer and I was having to look at him gaunt and slowly fading away, my patient's threshold got very small when I'm working on a nightclub door and somebody's, you know, it's 5 a.m., someone's staggering around and they want to have a go at me because I'm not letting them in, you know? And I'm trying to help them by not letting them in, right? My patience got very, thin and I wasn't the kind of person I was. I wasn't the dormant I was proud to be and I wasn't the kind of man I wanted to be. And I think that that's true of all people. one's immune to it. People need support and sometimes teachers don't have that support, they actually have pressure. And I'd love to see that pressure alleviated and support put in place. I think systemically that would be the most radical thing because it's really about relationships. I think that's the most important thing, as I said earlier, relationships, all about facilitating and aiding those relationships in helping and it's just taking away what teachers say, their lived experience, which is there under pressure.

Alis Rocca (1:06:59)

That's a fantastic way of rounding up our conversation. think you've sort of hit everything really, really clearly in that last response. So thank you for that. What would you hope a listener would take away from this conversation today? And you might have two things, you might have one, you might be thinking about a parent as a listener or you might be thinking as an educator. But what would, if they were to take one gem? From your lived experience, what would you hope it would be?

Tier Blundell (1:07:31)

A really big question. A really big question. I think, yeah, it's about what we can do. It's about what we can do. When I first came into this, Alice, people were always like, know, what can we do, but it can't cost anything, you know? That is a promise that can't be made. What I can promise, it might not necessarily cost you anything financially, but it is going to cost you something of yourself. And that's where the whole reason I got to, the reason I didn't go down a negative path, the reason I sorted myself out, stopped messing around in relationships and all the rest of it that I was messing around in with my impulsivity of having ADHD and all the rest of it, going from job to job was really, know, honestly having a look at myself and holding myself accountable and say what have I done, what am I responsible for, what can I change? And I think that parents, teachers, educators, all sorts of people don't just keep putting it like they did for me.

You've got low self-esteem. You need to turn over a new leaf. You need to do this. Look at what you can do differently. So if you can have good, better expectations, have those expectations. If you can use your language better, use your language better. If you can look for more knowledge and seek more knowledge and learn more about this child do so. They're the kind of things. If you can be honest with yourself about your belonging policy and say okay does everyone really belong here or is it belonging if you do this? Is it only belonging to some? When you look at your who's being sanctioned. If you've got one group of people that look a certain way or have certain characteristics that are often being sanctioned, there's apps that do this now that schools buy, right? You've got the red children and the green children. If you've got one group that looks like that and then a certain homogenous group that are not, that are complying and so on and so forth, you've got to ask yourself, does your belonging policy fit all people or only a certain set of people?

And therefore is that contributing to some of the issues you have? It's all about honesty. It's all about honesty and accountability and being ready to unlearn what you've learned sometimes and taking that in all areas. So including, as I said earlier, with supervision and your mental health and your practice, is my practice the best kind of practice at the moment? Is it informed by evidence based, by trauma informed, all this stuff? Or actually is it informed by how it makes me feel? Am I taking things personally? Am I modeling what as a parent, as whatever,

as a mentor, am I modeling to these young people the right way to behave? If I take things personally, am I modeling to them, you take things personally when somebody says something to you that could have disastrous effects because they could hit out. Like when I hit people when they were racist to me, I was taking things personally. And actually it was just a reflection of who they were. And that's a sad reflection. I don't need to be affected by that. And think the same is true of teachers and young people. So I think there's got to be a reciprocal relationship and that has to be that we hold each other accountable.

Alis Rocca (1:10:29)

Thank you. Brilliant. Finally, we're compiling a list of good reads on our website. Did you get a chance to have a think about a book that you would recommend? Or a report, a document that you'd recommend maybe to a parent or an educator or a child that speaks some of the important things that you believe.

Tier Blundell (1:10:54)

So I didn't get that request or I missed it because I've got ADHD. So, okay, so I'm gonna have to think about that. The first thing that comes to mind is there is a book written by Dr. Christopher Arnold called Excluded From School. It just had a new edition last year. Actually, if you YouTube it or YouTube mine it, it will come up because I did a talk at that book launch. I recommend that because there's case studies in there and there is some information in there about dealing with this, particularly ⁓ quite a new and updated forward about BAME and about, you know, disproportionate exclusions for people, particularly in the black community. So off the top of that, and there probably are many, many more, but I usually actually have it on my desk. And I'm just checking.

Alis Rocca (1:11:39)

Thank you. That's brilliant. Don't worry. What we can do is we'll put that in the show notes, the one you've suggested. And if you can think of any others that you think…

Tier Blundell (1:11:55)

The other one as well is Clean Language. is at the front on the screen. No, it's not. It's because I'm holding it upside down. Clean Language by Wendy Sullivan and Judy Reese, a phenomenon. It's called revealing metaphors and opening minds. I think that's fantastic for all areas of your life. The other thing is just to add to what I was saying about Clean Language is when I do workshops, I like to get teachers to do that with each other. So again, it comes down to that supervision. So you might say something about what I'm feeling challenged by this young person challenged by this class and they can help you by using clean language to get a little bit more of an understanding of why you're feeling challenged and then the great thing is is you get out of that other person how they can fix it so they can what would you like to have happened what can you do? ⁓ those sort of things. And that really helps to kind of, it's like peer to peer mentorship and development through clean language. But actually it's not someone else giving you the response and then you thinking, they saved me or they're a better teacher than me or whatever. It's them helping you to get the answer. Because you have the answers, you're just stressed. You do know you're brilliant at your job. And this kind of stuff helps you bring that stuff out.

Alis Rocca (1:13:07)

Fantastic. I'm definitely going to go and buy both those books. They sound really good and you've inspired me to be more curious about this subject. So thank you so much and thank you for your time and well done with everything you're doing going into all these different organisations and we will all keep an eye on how exclusion slowly begins to reshape. So thanks, Tier.

Tier Blundell (1:13:31)

Thank you Alice, appreciate you. Thank you.