NEWS FOCUS SecEd: On Your Side


A misplaced and unjustified attack


MICHAEL GOVE is at war. He is attacking the “entrenched, organised, vocal and determined opposition” who he accused this week of being against the ambition to close the attainment gap between the rich and the poor. The education minister says that trade unions and local


Pete


Henshaw Editor SecEd


authorities are among these enemies, as well as others who he accuses of having a “culture of low expectations”. I imagine he’d put SecEd in that final category. Speaking to the Brighton College Education Conference,


Mr Gove described the UK as a “profoundly unequal society”. He said too many people believe that pupil attainment is “overwhelmingly dictated by socio-economic factors” and highlighted the 440 secondary schools in which disadvantaged students get higher than average GCSE scores. He said that these schools’ unapologetic focus on standards proved the “fatalists” wrong. Of course, Mr Gove is right. The educational poverty gap


is the fundamental challenge that we have to overcome as a nation. However, so much of his rhetoric suggests that Mr Gove believes that schools should simply tell these children to “pull their socks up and try harder”. He seems to believe that teachers are not challenging


this group of students enough, or are refusing to foster their aspirations and ambitions. He actually seems to think that teachers are the enemy and that they set out each day to hinder the progress of their students, especially those living in poverty. But Mr Gove, it is your government that has cut the


Educational Maintenance Allowance and which has thus stopped many teenagers from being able to afford a further education, regardless of aspiration or achievement in school. It is your privately educated cabinet who have pushed


through a raising of university tuition fees – destroying the dreams of many – and who have stripped communities of the children’s centres which held so much expertise and support for young parents and their toddlers. It is your coalition chums who have dealt a devastating


financial blow to stretched families through changes to things like child benefit and tax credits and who have slashed local authority budgets leading to crucial SEN services being closed, not to mention careers guidance services, music and sports provision disappearing. Mr Gove’s ongoing attacks are perhaps designed


to distract us from the reality of the impact that his government’s economic policy is having. The issue, though, is not about the lack of expectation that


teachers have of those students who are disadvantaged – it is about the support that we give these students to overcome the financial and social barriers to their education. As Christine Blower of the National Union of Teachers (another on Gove’s enemy list) said, it is not about the educational achievements of disadvantaged young people, but their family’s economic abilities to keep them in education. Mr Gove also continues to define aspiration as applying


to Oxbridge and taking GCSEs contained within the EBacc. A Tory government with an education minister who defines aspiration as learning your kings and queens and then attending Oxbridge – no wonder so many young people are disenfranchised. The truth is that Mr Gove is attacking teachers in a bid


to hide the damage his coalition is doing to the life chances of many poor students. He is washing his hands of the responsibility. The truth for teachers, however, is that aspiration and


ambition come in many forms (Oxbridge and academia being just one) and that we can close the poverty gap if we focus on supporting good schools (academy or not) which have teachers who can understand and relate to their communities and strong networks of local support. And if these schools could operate in a society that


actually values social provision and supports its poorest citizens to access educational opportunity, well then that might just help as well.


SecEd


• Pete Henshaw is the editor of SecEd. Email him at editor@sec-ed.co.uk or find him on Twitter (@pwhenshaw).


Writing for human rights


Secondary winners: (from left) Alice Reynolds, Alice Woodhouse and Heather Booton


TWELVE TALENTED young writers have proved they have what it takes to become the human rights journalists of tomorrow after the finals of a prestigious national awards. Amnesty International’s Young


Human Rights Reporter of the Year reached its climax last week as the 12 finalists, nine from UK secondary schools, gathered in London. The annual awards is supported


by SecEd and the Guardian Teacher Network and this


year attracted more than 3,000 participants from across the UK in four age categories stretching from age seven to 18. The finalists had to write an


article combining facts, opinion and reportage on a human rights issue of their choice. Topics ranged from the death penalty and sexism to the use of tasers by the police and child soliders in Africa. Three of the four awards went


to secondary-aged students. Alice Reynolds, 13, from The Royal


Alice Woodhouse – Sixth Form Winner


Human rights abuses have the stereotype of being seen to happen in some far flung corner of the world, or else occur in some kind of hidden underbelly of society. Yet they can, and do occur, almost literally in our back gardens. Flamenco dancing as we know it


owes much to the Gypsy and Roma community. Django Reinhardt, was a Belgian Sinto Gypsy and one of Europe's first great Jazz musicians. Gypsy culture is built upon strict


codes of cleanliness learnt over centuries of life on the road. Concepts such as mokadi and mahrime provide strict guidelines, detailing, for example, what objects can be washed in what bowls. And Gypsies have been present in Britain for at least 500


years. Yet so many still seem to think of them as an invading, uncivilised, dirty force, setting out to wreck people’s livelihoods and their cultures. Evidence would seem to suggest that the attack comes from the opposite direction. Programmes such as Big Fat Gypsy Weddings have been criticised by people such as Roma author and teacher Dr Ian Hancock, and in the words of filmmaker Yale Strom, “when entertainment of any kind feeds the public's false stereotypical image of a particular ethnic, religious or racial group it only reinforces ignorance”. This is exactly what such programmes do. More than this, one of the many victims to the cuts was the maintenance of official Traveller sites in Britain. But the main issue concerning the abuse of Gypsy, Roma


and Traveller rights should perhaps be the common source of these abuses – a lack of knowledge and understanding from childhood about this culture. Casual racism and name-calling may not seem to be such a


major abuse of human rights, when far more dramatic horrors occur all over the world. But it is still abuse. And it is right in front of us, in a so-called civilised society. A Children’s Society survey in 2007 found that eight out of 10 Gypsy and Traveller children have suffered racial abuse and almost two-thirds have been bullied or physically attacked. Terms such as “Pikey” fall frighteningly easily from the lips


of otherwise amiable people. And if cultural conception of an entire culture is affected by programmes and myths which seem to focus on the worst, it does not look as though either understanding or acceptance is going to make any headway. An old Traveller woman and her husband come to our


village sometimes, to sharpen blades for old clothes. Doors and windows shut in their faces, like something out of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The Nazis killed about 25 per cent of European Roma. Of slightly less than a million before


School in Haslemere, won for her piece about Vietnamise labour camps; Heather Booton, 16, from Skipton Girls’ High School in Yorkshire, won for a piece on women’s rights and abortion in Kenya; and Alice Woodhouse, 17, from the Kings High School in Warwick, won for a piece on Gypsy and Traveller rights. After collecting her prize,


Alice said: “Being a journalist is something I have always wanted to be. And this has given me the confidence to go for it. It feels


www.sec-ed.com


The Young Human Rights Reporter of the Year 2012


Lower Secondary: Winner: Alice Reynolds, The Royal School, Haslemere


Runners-up: Georgia Gilholy, Paget High School, Burton-Upon-Trent; Francesca Talbot, Benton Park School, Leeds.


Upper Secondary: Winner: Heather Booton, Skipton Girls’ High School


Runners-up: Ciara McKay, St Andrews Academy, Paisley; Oscar Hutchings, Wellsway School, Keynsham.


Sixth Form: Winner: Alice Woodhouse, Kings High School, Warwick


Runners-up: Stephanie Gabbatt, Bolton’s School Girls’ Division; Beth Rowland, Bablake School, Coventry.


like that is no longer such a far- flung dream.” Among the prizes, all 12


finalists received copy of their article designed into special edition SecEd front pages. Kate Allen, director of


Amnesty International UK, said: “Reporters play a vital role in shining a spotlight on the appalling human rights abuses that happen every day across the globe. And hopefully the entrants can take up that mantle in the years ahead.” For details of the competition and


to read the shortlisted articles, visit www.amnesty.org.uk/youngreporter


the war, up to 220,000 were killed. Yet as a culture we are developing. For the first time in British history, the March 2011 census acknowledged Gypsy, Roma and Traveller as a separate ethic group. Perhaps equality is not too far away.


Heather Booton – Upper Secondary Winner Overdosing on malaria pills. Drinking bleach. Home-made “herbal concoctions”. Forcing bicycle spokes, knitting needles, water pipes, coat hangers, sticks and pens through the cervix. Anaesthetic? Unheard of. If you are a pregnant Kenyan


woman, living in poverty, this is your abortion. I am no doctor, but even I could tell you that these procedures are dangerous, excruciatingly painful and often fatal. If you are a pregnant Kenyan


woman, but lucky enough to be rich and educated, any number of private hospitals will carry out a safe and legal termination of a pregnancy for you.


Back-street abortions claim the lives of at least 2,600 Kenyan


women each year, and these figures don't include the scores of women who don’t dare seek medical care for fear of being arrested and jailed for up to 14 years if found guilty. A further 21,000 women are hospitalised for treatment of abortion- related complications. Unsurprisingly, Kenya's abortion fatality rates are nine times higher than for developed regions. It is no coincidence that abortion rates are higher and


procedures more unsafe in poorer countries generally, and Kenya is no exception. Lack of contraception and sex education, rape, sexual violence and prostitution as a means to combat poverty are all prevalent factors that contribute towards the myriad of unplanned and unwanted pregnancies that so many Kenyan women must face. They suffer, condemned to give birth to a child that they did not want nor can manage. But the real killer here is the law. The Kenyan law rules that abortion is illegal in nearly all cases, save for when the Mother's life is at risk, but the law is ambiguous. Not even doctors are clear when it is or isn’t legal to


terminate a pregnancy, leading to an unfair divide in the standards of healthcare available for the rich and poor. How long can we allow the Kenyan government to deny


necessary health care to those who need it most? How long are we prepared to let women, in desperate need of safe and legal abortions, rely on back-street “professionals” to terminate their pregnancies? And how long do we continue to allow the thousands


of easily preventable deaths destroy the poorest communities of Kenya?


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SecEd • May 17 2012


Photos: Lucie Carlier


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