Back to School
Yesterday I dashed out from work to give the leaving prizes at the primary school where my own children started their education. It’s a dauntingly old Victorian building containing some 400 extremely diverse pupils.
There’s something instructive about a sudden return to a place one knew so intimately. My youngest left fourteen years ago, my eldest started twenty four years ago.
Even then we had enough choice in Camden Borough to ensure that we did not ‘go private’. But in those years it was a struggle.
The building was physically draining – in a literal sense – the rain water came in through the closed Victorian windows and there were damp patches on the ceilings. The staff seemed older and exhausted.
The spirit in the place when I arrived at lunchtime yesterday was an extraordinary contrast. For a start the whole school was in uniform. How well I remember the getting up tantrums as my girls fretted about what to wear.
None of that now amongst the ordered rows of children packing into the assembly room. I guess I may have got older, but the staff have got younger too and seriously zesty.
The sweetest aspect was the appearance of women who were pupils with my daughters, now themselves the parents of departing children.
We all remembered each other with such clarity. I met Charlie’s Mum.
Charlie was the boy who lived in a council flat with his hard working parents. My daughter would go to them for tea. Charlie loved books so much that although denied many through the poverty of his parents’ income, I once found him reading the A to Z street guide. He would read the then vast London Telephone Directory too.
Today, having been to University, he works for a leading publisher. His parents still live in the same council flat.
But what struck me beyond anything else, was the cohesion and community of the place – and the investment. Somehow the teachers had worked round the drawbacks of the old building.
The windows have been fixed, the decor is immaculate. And the content – computers, a sophisticated music resource, and more. I felt proud that I was still even vaguely associated with such a place.
Yet it’s not a school that middle class parents pay hyped housing prices to get close to. It is in many ways a bog standard London primary school. Its stats are excellent – high maths and literacy achievements.
Each leaving child had chosen his or her own book prize – Artemis Foul, Jacqueline Wilson books, Michael Morpurgo, they had chosen proper books.
Well I admit, there were gory looking football books, and a bit of ‘Where’s Wally’ too. I noticed a small eleven year old Bangladeshi boy had chosen a book of Arthurian legends.
Afterwards we unveiled a huge mosaic that every child in the school had contributed tiles to. Here was soul, outreach and inclusion.
A brilliant school with a brilliant head and a deep connected community. Yet not a rich community, just one that pulls together.