VIEWS From the pen of... Tola Okogwu
Daddy Do My Hair – a personal view
In the first of a new series of pieces in Education Today looking at authors of books on topics in education, TOLA OKOGWU, author of the Daddy Do My Hair book series and founder of the hair and beauty blog, My Long Hair Journey (MLHJ), reveals her personal reasons for tackling bullying and diversity through publishing.
Bullying is one of those difficult subjects that everyone has an
opinion on. My opinion is shaped by my experiences of being bullied as a child and my current fears as a parent. My experiences of being bullied took two main forms. The first was as a six-year- old new to the UK with a very strong Nigerian accent and no clue
about the new culture I’d been thrust into. Oddly, I was mostly bullied by other black children and it lasted until I’d learned to scrub my voice clean of the troublesome accent and navigate this new environment. My second experience of bullying was as a teenager, always one step behind her peers in terms of the latest fashions and styles because my parents couldn’t afford it. No matter how hard I tried I never had the right hairstyle, clothes or look. It wasn’t till many years later that I realised that, given my skin colour and hair type, I was always going to struggle to fit in.
When I became mother to a precocious girl who was the image of me, I realised that she might also face the same problems and it began to worry me. Bullying based on racial or cultural differences starts surprisingly early. My two-year-old daughter already notices skin colour and has an opinion of which one is preferable, white as it so happens. As a black woman of African descent living in Britain, I learned long ago to accept that I am part of a diaspora whose appearance and culture is still strange and outside the norm. To tackle this type of bullying, this is where our focus as educators and parents must lie. We must challenge the scope of what is considered normal and acceptable, beginning at the point where we start to understand the world around us and our place in it. It goes back to how we learn about the world, from the toys we play with, to the TV programmes we watch, and most importantly the books we read. This is in large part why I wrote my first children’s book.
If a child grows up reading books, which not only reflect but celebrate difference, then that becomes the norm for that child. It’s not just books of course - teachers have a very important role to play in challenging these norms and giving children as many diverse and inclusive experiences as possible. This also means having difficult conversations about race and culture. When my daughter told me her skin was dirty and she needed to wash it to make it white, my first instinct was to assume she heard it at nursery and go on a rampage. Once I got over my initial hurt and anger, I realised that whilst I can’t control what she sees or hears outside the home, I can reinforce and affirm her identity and sense of worth. It resulted in a conversation where we talked about different skin colours and how they are all beautiful, and explained to her that her skin was brown because mummy and daddy had brown skin too. I’m certain that I will have many more such conversations over the next 16 years or so, and I intend to maximise every opportunity to educate both her and myself.
http://tolaokogwu.com/ June 2017 British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA)
We now need “strong and stable” school budgets
There has been much talk in the run-up to this election about the need for “strong and stable” government. We at BESA have been working hard with our Resource Our Schools campaign to ensure that the need for “strong and stable” school budgets has been heard by the competing political parties too. As those at the chalkface are only too aware, school budgets are set to decline significantly over the next few years. If this wasn’t bad enough, the government’s on-
off approach to the National Funding Formula has generated a widespread climate of budgetary uncertainty. Some have told me that even bad news is better to cope with than no news at all. One of the most striking testaments to this that I have seen is a letter that was shared with the Resource Our Schools campaign from a number of schools in North Hertfordshire. This was an open letter to “Parents and Carers” of six secondary schools. They listed a wide range of costs that have increased significantly since 2012 – including a 4 per cent increase in teacher salaries, a 5.3 per cent increase in employer pension contributions, a 3.4 per cent increase in National Insurance contributions since April 2016 and major resources and training costs necessary to be prepared for wholesale curriculum changes at GSCE and A Level. Combined, the schools calculate that this has led to a whopping decline of between 35-45 per cent in the amount available to spend per pupil.
The letter outlines the pragmatic ways in which schools are attempting to deal with this decline – from increasing class sizes, to reducing management and admin staff – but they claim to be at “crisis point”, facing “the very real danger… that we are fast approaching the point where our outgoings will exceed our income”. This isn’t just numbers on a spreadsheet, it has a very real impact upon the education of pupils. “We are,” the schools say, “facing a vastly reduced capacity to ensure that all children’s needs are met”. These schools aren’t alone in facing this situation. We at BESA have monitored school procurement trends for decades and have never seen the situation so bad. Examples abound of schools abandoning science practicals for YouTube clips, parents increasingly being asked to pay for essential classroom resources. Class sizes that now make it impossible to give individual pupils the attention they require.
It’s never easy to put your head above the parapet and be vocal about these issues, for fear of government censure, or accusations that schools aren’t managing their budgets professionally. So credit to the North Hertfordshire schools for leading the charge. Why not take them up on their suggestion that you write to the Secretary of State for Education – whoever that will be following the election – and voice your concerns.
Also, do sign up to BESA’s Resource Our Schools statement at
www.resourceourschools.com and help us make the most powerful case possible to government that they must ensure every school across the UK has access to the resources they need to deliver the education that our children deserve.
For information from BESA contact: Patrick Hayes 020 7537 4997
patrick@besa.org.uk
www.besa.org.uk
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